reflection

First Year Reflections

Tuesday of last week, August 4, marked one year in my role at Vanderbilt. The time has flown by! One of my goals for the summer was to reflect on my first year as a librarian and to plan for the second year based on what I’d learned. Although I haven’t had as much time for that reflection as I’d hoped, for my final post as a First-Year Academic Librarian blogger, I wanted to share a few lessons learned that I’m planning to build on during the upcoming year:

Be proactive

I started this job last year only three weeks before the first day of fall classes. Although it felt like enough of a head start at the time, especially considering that I had only moved to Nashville a few weeks prior, I wish that it had been possible for me to start earlier. As it was, there were several classes that I had to get ready to teach or co-teach at the last minute, relationships with the department I support that I was trying to build in a hurry, and a lot of basic information about how everything worked that I had to learn. Even with support from the other librarians at my library, plus our library director, it all felt like a whirlwind.

One example of something that I wish I could have planned better for was when I met individually with around 25 students from the same degree program, almost all in October, for research appointments. I realized about halfway through the appointments that the students all needed help with the same skills – choosing databases and learning how to search with Boolean terms – and that it would be a lot more efficient for everyone’s time if I could have taught all the students that in one instruction session. This year, I reached out to the appropriate professor in late July and asked if I could come to a class early in the semester to teach everyone the basics of a library search. Happily, she enthusiastically agreed. My hope is that this year, I’ll be able to spend my appointments with students talking about their specific search topics and make the sessions more tailored to their research interests. But that wouldn’t have even been a possibility if I hadn’t learned from last year and proactively reached out this year.

Build community

During this first year, one of the main things I knew was how much I didn’t know. I had tons of questions (and still do), and more things to learn seemed to come up every week. Luckily, librarians are generally helpful people, and I’ve gotten very lucky with how many people around me have been willing to help me out. My colleagues at my library, Peabody, have been incredible, always willing to answer questions and take the time to walk me through different processes and procedures. Additionally, there were actually six new librarians (including me) who started at Vanderbilt last summer, and we all bonded pretty quickly. Being able to check in with them, ask each other questions, and serve as sounding boards has been a huge help. We also started a journal club that’s expanded to include other newer librarians, and having that built-in community is great.

I’ve also been able to make and strengthen connections with librarians outside of Vanderbilt. One of my professors from library school is now friend and mentor – in addition to our frequent Zooms, we’re also co-authoring a textbook chapter. The education librarian from UNC-Chapel Hill, where I did my MSLS, has also become a friend and colleague. We support a lot of similar degree programs, so we chat around once a month about what trends we’re seeing with our students, what helpful resources we’ve found, what new ideas we’ve tried, and more. And, because I get so many business-related questions, I’ve also looked for business mentors who can help with questions. In addition to all the business librarians at Vanderbilt, who have been great, I’ve also connected with UNC-Chapel Hill’s business school librarian. Building all of these relationships and communities has taken time, but it’s been time so well spent. My first year would have been so much harder without my colleagues and friends, and now I have these solid connections to move forward with this year.

Learn lots!

When I first started, my library director told me that “this is a learning year.” I agreed, because of course that made sense on the surface, but at the time I didn’t fully understand what she was getting at. It took going through this first year for me to really understand what she meant. There’s so much more that I know now after a full academic cycle. Some of it is tangible – like being proactive – but a lot of it is also intangible. I know which months will likely be busy and which will be slow(er). I know how much fun it is when the students come back to campus after the quiet summer. I know that I need to work ahead on projects because every day is different, and saving something for a specific day probably means that that day will get overtaken by something else and I’ll have to scramble. I know that a big part of my job is just being present, both at my library and at my department, and getting involved with whatever’s happening. And even with everything that I’ve learned in the last year, I’m very conscious that there’s still so much I don’t know. There’s always something else to learn.

Looking ahead

Students will be back at Vanderbilt in about two weeks. I’ve already done some prep work for the upcoming semester and academic year, but I have a lot more to do before classes start. I’m looking forward to being back in the classroom and meeting with students more regularly, as well as reconnecting with colleagues who I haven’t seen as much over the summer. Vanderbilt Libraries also hosts regular professional development sessions for newer librarians during the school year, so I’m excited to see familiar faces at those sessions as well (plus, more learning!). I’m also just really interested to see how I feel about this second year compared to the first year. My hope is that I can learn just as much, while also building on what worked from last year. I’m looking forward to it!

How to… Fre+nglish

Although I took one psycho-linguistics course in undergrad (very interesting, by the way), I never thought I would be able to apply the theories and examples I learned in that class to real-life. As I navigated my first-year of academic librarianship in a bilingual French-English institution, I slowly began to accumulate routines and activities that worked for me the most. With French being my third language, I wanted to take this post to share strategies and tips that helped me in my first year to improve my French more than it ever has.

Identifying Needs

Something that I found to be helpful is to organize my own personal needs in recognizing what skills I lacked the most. For me, they were conversational and oral skills, especially during bilingual meetings or when listening to presentations. Identifying a set of words that were commonly used within everyday work was something I quickly recognized that helped immensely in these everyday situations. In addition, really getting myself out there in terms of French training, lectures, workshops, events, conferences, symposiums and volunteering for co-teaching and shadowing opportunities were other ways to quickly be exposed to an immersed setting.

Confidence

Frenglish is definitely real. I use Konglish (Korean+English) quite often with my family, but I always thought that my French had to be perfect before I opened my mouth, especially in professional settings. If there is something I learned this year, it really is that trying is often enough! I often think about my parents when I think I speak broken French. When they first immigrated to Canada, they must have also felt this fear and wall in communication, accents, and judgement. Most people are simply just grateful that I am trying to speak and communicate, and often to help them! My favourite memory from a teaching session is a student coming up to me after and thanking me for learning French. These little fragments of memory and experiences really motivate me in wanting to learn and refine my skills further.

Building a Network

It is honestly 110% due to my amazing co-workers and supportive network that I continued to work hard on my French this year. From external French courses, to French courses through the university, conversation circles both within the university and at the public library, bi-weekly chats with co-workers, weekly lessons with a French tutor, group lessons, and much more were some ways I received help from my network. Making friends is definitely not something that comes natural to me, but when sharing the same struggles such as learning a new language together, it does become easier. Holding each other accountable and continuing to expand my network without any language barriers has been a challenging, yet rewarding process of this language acquiring journey.

Lisa Shin at the Rendez-Vous Québec Cinéma film festival at the cinémathèque québécoise.

Mélange into your Hobbies

As mentioned in a previous blog post here, one of my favourite ways to spend leisure time is to go out to cinemas and watch movies. Building a routine into incorporating French into my hobbies has been ideal as I find it to be a low-stress, yet beneficial use of my time (we love efficiency!). Things like the French cinema club, French film festivals, Québécois film festivals, purposely watching movies without subtitles, and trying to finish a French director’s filmography, are some fun ways I expanded learning into my time off. The different accents, countries, and cultures are only a snapshot, but the films provide stories and insight into atmospheres and environments that I found to be critical in understanding the language in a colonial, communal, historical, and different socioeconomical contexts.

Overall, I am quite pleased at how much my French has struggled and improved this past year. Having the confidence to teach in French was something unimaginable last summer but now I am happy to have taught 4 sessions in my third language. Of course, the learning never really stops, especially in librarianship, but I am looking forward to more that I will learn with this new lens of a third language.

The Supposed Summer Slowdown

I started my academic librarian position in August 2025. During the first few weeks of my role, before most of the on-campus students returned and the school year started, fellow librarians told me two (main) things: that I should enjoy the calm before things got busy again, and that the first year in my role would be a learning year.

I took both of those pieces of advice to heart and I can say now that both of them were very true. There was so much that I didn’t know back in August, and I learned a ton over the course of the year that will help me when the next school year starts. (I still have lots, lots more to learn.) I also made sure to soak in the quiet before orientation started and the students returned. My library is on the side of campus that has all the first-year student dorms, so we had a lot of students stop by with questions (library related and not) over the first few weeks of the fall semester.

I also heard from many librarians that things tend to slow down over the summer. Fewer students are on campus, many faculty members are taking time away, and the pace just tends to move more sedately. I’ve been looking forward to some time to reflect on the school year and work on the list of long-term summer projects that I’ve been compiling throughout the past year.

A month after graduation, however, I’m still waiting for this supposed summer slowdown to start.

Non-Traditional Program Support

In my role, I support nine programs, all of which are master’s or doctoral programs. Some of the programs follow a traditional schedule and enroll students on-campus full-time, but others are set up so that students can work full-time while completing their degrees part-time, often almost completely online.

I love working with all the students that I support. Fellow librarians have told me that it can be hard to engage online students, but I actually work the most with students in the part-time, online programs, especially the doctor of education program. I’m lucky to have support from a lot of faculty members and program leaders to help make this happen. I speak at orientation sessions for each cohort of Ed.D. students, and a new cohort starts three times a year. Although it’s primarily an online program, the students come to campus for their initial orientation and for several weekends throughout the three-year program.

The week after graduation in May, I taught my regular library session for the new Ed.D. students, and chatted with many of the students after my presentation. This was a Saturday, and the students were in orientation sessions for the rest of the day. I’m used to a couple of students booking appointments after a session, but on Sunday morning, I was surprised to see four or five students who had booked research appointments for the upcoming week. I had hoped to get started on my long term projects that week, but clearly they would need to be pushed to the following week. I figured that the students who reached out had wanted to go ahead and meet with me to get the recommended meeting with a librarian out of the way, and that my schedule would get back to the slow, standard summer I’d been told about after that first week.

However, I also remembered something that the education librarian at another institution had told me when I first started in this position. She also supports Ed.D. students who start three times a year. She told me that often, we don’t get the same summer break that other academic librarians do, because with a new (and large) cohort of students starting for the summer semester, they need a lot of library support just like any students do – except that they need support in May and June and even July, unlike many other students who are only taking classes from August through early May. I was now watching my colleague’s caution play out in real time in my own job.

Adjusting Expectations for a Different Type of Summer

It’s been four weeks since graduation and three weeks since this new cohort of students started. The research appointments haven’t slowed down – in fact, they’ve picked up. Working directly with students is my favorite part of my job, and I’m thrilled that so many of them want to meet with me for research help. But what I’m also starting to realize is that I may not be able to save my big, long-term projects for the summer slowdown like some of my other colleagues – because I don’t have a summer slowdown. For this summer, I’ll need to find a way to complete at least some projects that need to be done before the fall. But for the next school year, I’ll need to think back to this past year when I had slower months, and plan to complete other projects then. Spreading them out throughout the year is probably going to be more effective for me than saving them for a few “slower” months.

The advice I was given early on – that this year would be a learning year – is still true. Until this coming August, it’s still my first year as an academic librarian, and I’m still learning something new every day. But I love to learn, and it’s one reason I became a librarian. I know I’ll continue learning in my second year in academic libraries and beyond.

All the Roads that Lead to Librarianship

Everyone’s path to academic libraries is a little different. Some of us start as public library pages in high school, some of us have been library student workers as undergrads, and some of us found libraries as a second career – whether the first one had to do with libraries or not. All of those paths are valid, and we have a lot to learn from each other and our different experiences.

One common refrain that’s come up among this year’s ACRLog First-Year Academic Librarians (FYALs) is what we’ve learned from our past jobs – which could be anything from previous careers, library jobs that we had during grad school, and non-library jobs – that we use in our work today in academic libraries. Today, the three of us are sharing some thoughts and suggestions about what we learned from previous jobs.

Lisa: Approaching all experiences with care…

As with many other students tight on finances, a part-time job was a must for me, ever since I reached the legal age of being able to work. Some positions that I credit my current career to and those that I highly recommend future librarians to think about are student internships and on-campus positions.

A particular position that I look back fondly upon is being a residence don/assistant (I wrote a whole blog post about it in November in more detail if you’re interested: The Unexpected Overlaps Between a Don and a Librarian – ACRLog). The brainstorming of fun ideas to make sure there was sufficient attendance, conducting user needs analyses, working across campus with different partners, creating a safe atmosphere for everyone, while teaching students in one-on-one sessions, floor meetings, and workshops were so foundational. Especially in the beginning of the semester where first-year students would ask questions on everything and anything, I felt like I was back working at the public library where I was matching the right question to the right resource! This was where I volunteered at my first conference and did my dream project of hosting a month-long screening and events in celebration of the World Cup at a residence for international exchange students. Student engagement and targeting specific demographics for events that they would be interested in is something I think about on the daily, and having experience in student housing allowed me to first become exposed to the transferability of skills and knowledge in a post-secondary setting.

In graduate school, attending an institution where there was sufficient support for student internship programs was necessary for me. I luckily had opportunities at several different libraries and departments where I feel that experience was incredibly beneficial in securing my current position. Scholarly communication, copyright, health sciences, and user engagement are some of the areas of academic libraries that I was introduced to. Due to the realistic constraints of living in an expensive city, having part-time jobs may be necessary, but trying to approach each opportunity, no matter what they might be, with an open mind and an empathic heart was essential for me to be generous with my time and energy to really apply what I was learning in school to positions outside the classroom.

M: What does working with reporters and students have in common?

For me, librarianship is a second career. I worked in my undergrad institution’s library as a student, then spent about six years in the communications and PR world before going to grad school for my MSLS (with a pretty random half-year stint in the federal government mixed in too). In grad school, I was able to work and volunteer in several different libraries. I also worked for a year at the campus performing arts organization’s box office.

This is a pretty eclectic work history. What stands out to me the most now is that I use something that I learned at all of these past jobs, whether that’s a workplace lesson, a skill, or just general information, in my current academic library job almost every day. A lot of the knowledge, skills, and experience that I use now are also things that I hadn’t thought I would ever use again. I learned how to connect people with the information they need during my time in comms and PR – back then, I was connecting reporters with sources; now, I connect students with books and articles, but the fundamentals are the same. I learned how to intake random requests in communications and at the box office and figure out what people actually needed; now, I know what questions to ask students when they reach out and how not to let their panic get to me when they’re worried about a deadline (because reporters are always on deadline). I learned how to write a great proposal for a conference when I worked for the PR firm; now, I can write them for myself and help out my colleagues too. For my first few years in communications, I was also a scheduler; now, I know how to stay on top of my own calendar and also keep a lot of dates and deadlines in my head (and save my fellow librarians from accidentally scheduling a meeting for a holiday). I volunteered at a public library during grad school and now I know what things like “shelf-reading” mean (something library school doesn’t teach you). These are just the first few that come to mind – I could definitely keep going.

I think there are a few important points to take away from these examples. First, librarianship is a career where a lot of different experiences can translate – and translate well. It’s also hard to get experience in libraries. I would encourage anyone who’s interested in this career path to think creatively about what past experiences you have and how you can apply them to the library world – there’s more overlap than you would think. Additionally, but on the same theme, I would encourage people who are thinking about this career path or who are early into it to try to say “yes” to jobs, volunteer opportunities, and anything else, even if you think it won’t be relevant. You don’t know which of the lessons you learned in a job five years previously might turn out to be relevant during your first few years as an academic librarian. All experience is valuable – don’t discount or write off anything!

Eleanor: Jack of all trades, master of some

One of the most important moments of my MLIS degree happened when I was introduced to SJSU’s MLIS Skills at Work: A Snapshot of Job Postings report. My professor heavily emphasized the “Job Duties Listed Most Frequently” slide, shown here:

The “Job Duties Listed Most Frequently” slide from the Spring 2025 report.

At this point, I had no idea what kind of academic librarian I wanted to be; all I knew was how hard it would be to find a job in the economy I’d be graduating into. I made it my mission to acquire experience in as many of these job duty areas as possible before graduating.

I had already worked circulation at a medical library during my undergraduate degree, and when I began my MLIS, I worked part-time in technical services at a law library. During my second year, I applied for a liaison practicum, gaining experience in instruction and liaison work. While reference wasn’t originally part of the practicum curriculum, I specifically asked to be trained on the desk so I could check off the “reference” skill from the SJSU report. (I was on a mission!) When the opportunity came for a second practicum, I could choose either another liaison practicum or an e-resources practicum. As much as I wanted to keep doing liaison work, I decided to strategically broaden my portfolio of skills, particularly since my program did not offer any courses or other learning opportunities about e-resources.

Experimenting with all these different areas of librarianship helped me discover the type of librarian I wanted to be. While I loved digging my teeth into a huge e-journal spreadsheet, I realized I couldn’t do that for 40 hours a week. I was the most energized when working with patrons, either in the classroom or research consultations. I loved sitting out at the reference desk, soaking in the buzz of the library, even if nobody came by! This helped give me direction when I began my job search. On the other hand, my diverse portfolio of library experiences also gave me flexibility on the job market, which was important in an unpredictable environment. Additionally, my experience in collections, e-resources, and circulation makes me a stronger liaison librarian today. Understanding these elements of the library helps me better assist students and faculty who come to me with access issues, and I can collaborate more effectively with my colleagues across the library.

All experience is experience

All three of us FYALs took different paths to reach our current academic library positions. Although those paths were varied, they were each valuable in their own ways. All of the work, volunteer, and practicum experience we gained both inside and outside of libraries helped to make us competitive candidates on the job market and currently helps us to be the best librarians we can be!

Thinking about Contract Work… Positively!

As a first-year academic librarian on a one-year contract, I am slowly feeling the pressure of time creeping on me as I navigate the job market once again. A previous blog post by YoonHee Lee, a former FYAL (first-year academic librarian, also Korean-Canadian :)), helped me to digest the precarity of contract positions in academic libraries with their thoughtful writing: https://acrlog.org/2019/12/21/reflecting-on-contract-work-and-precarity/ I wanted to build on this by sharing of some of the ways I approach my work, many thousands of kilometres away from home, and the strategies I use to cope with learning, understanding, and enjoying my life even as the clock is ticking.

Changing my mindset

Like law graduates doing articling, or doctors being matched for residencies, I came around to the idea of these one-year contracts replacing sabbaticals or parental leaves as a sort of testing the waters of a position. Is academic librarianship even right for me, what are some of the things I look for in an institution, what does a good workplace dynamic look like, what are must-have supports I need in a workplace, what is a good city to live, and so on. The positive aspects according to the survey participants from Mcniff & Carter’s 2022 study are also reinforced by gaining experiences in different settings and developing social networks within academic institutions. Whenever I think that I am over-compensating by fixating my thoughts on the positive aspects, I take solace in reading interviewees’ transcripts, statistics, and discussions, and it helps to reframe my mindset in a more beneficial way.

Tackling Manageable Projects

The constraints of a year-long contract are most felt when I am thinking about projects, committees, and organizations to join. Since I don’t know where I will be in a couple of months, it’s hard to write my name down for something when a role comes up or even choose which email to register for a professional association with. Something I do to counterbalance this wishy-washy feeling is to actively seek partnerships in the library or projects I can help with in the short run. For instance, even though I am a research librarian and outreach is not explicitly expected of me, I work with the outreach department during exam seasons to help with crafts, games, and opportunities to share what I do at the library with students. Another workshop I did recently combined my background (although limited) in scholarly communication on how to publish in STEM for the first time, with the engineering and scholarly communications librarian. Finding opportunities that I can focus on for the short-term also allows me to get projects from ideation to delivery effectively while showing progress in my skills and knowledge as a new librarian.

Finding the Small Joys

There is a rising internet star in South Korea, an editor named Kim Min-Kyung of the publisher Min-um-sa. Her attitude towards life is something that I have been finding refreshing these days. For example, if someone was talking for a really long time and was going on and on about something that I couldn’t follow, instead of cutting them off verbally, she would instead internally think inside her head like, “Wow, how long can this person talk for, this is amazing,” or “Wow, would I be ever able to talk as long as them,” to create some fun and excitement in situations that would otherwise be difficult to quietly sit through. Ways I took some of her advice in my work is finding a laughing buddy at work ie. someone who I would have an easy time communicating or talking to on the daily, finding a peaceful spot on campus to read at, putting holds on books and DVDs in the collection to pick up before work, and going to events on campus from student symposiums, community lectures, to Indigenous walks.

Concluding Thoughts

As new graduates start to look for work, and as old graduates’ contracts run out, the job market is starting to come alive with new positions and deadlines and stress, but also with the excitement of new positions and beginnings. Uncertainty and ambiguity are some unavoidable aspects academia that I hope will change (or are they avoidable?), but like all things in institutions, change is slow, and so for now, we can only do the best with what we have by being kind and showing gratitude wherever possible. I purposely avoided talking about the negative aspects of contract work in the post as that list is just endless. However, I am happy to connect with any library students or others on contract if anyone needs a set of ears to rant on!