Tag: remote working

Office Space

I’m not going to sit here and lie to all you loyal readers and say I haven’t had “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta” by the Geto Boys playing in my head after I nail yet another info lit session, coming up with the perfect keywords and a search strategy chock full of Boolean operators, fields, and parentheses to do a live demonstration in Scopus, without Scopus freezing or needing to reload the screen once. Nor am I going to lie to you and say I haven’t daydreamed about taking our Kyocera TASKalfa combination photocopier and colour printer out to the fields on campus and hitting it repeatedly with a baseball bat because yet again, my carefully plotted out handouts on APA citations (7th edition) keep having their margins cut off.

But I think of Office Space, the 1999 cult classic by King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, when I think about my new working space; I hesitate to call it an office. I shouldn’t complain; many of you may actually be jealous of my new cubicle—I get lots of natural light as I gaze across twelve feet of unkempt jungle towards the limestone walls of our library’s storage facility, I can keep up with all of the latest library gossip as I can hear every conversation(s) happening in real time, I get lots of exercise by having to move to temporary meeting spaces to take any and all online meetings, and best of all, my coworkers can gaze in the wonder, splendor, and glory of my important library work since my monitors are visible to everyone all the time.

No, loyal readers, I’m not going to lie and say that it hasn’t entailed a shift in my mindset and getting used to how things will be in my new office space for the foreseeable future, as my science library goes through a two-year long renovation. I will say it’s not lost on me that after two (or three, or four?) years, I will be moving back to a shiny, new office space in the redeveloped science library. However, before that day dawns, I’ll be spending my working hours in an open office-style working space, with bookshelves making our cubicles three feet longer.

I joke, but it really isn’t that bad. It’s just a change in working space that will take time to adjust to, and there’s been changes that make working just a tiny bit more challenging. To be completely honest, the biggest change is how it is much more challenging to participate in online meetings and have private or sensitive conversations.

Open Offices and Flexible, Hybrid Work

In Steven J. Bell’s opinion article—which I personally think is indefensible and starts with a false premise: that somehow we must accommodate open offices rather than agree they’re terrible and moving away from them as much as humanly possible—he argues in defense of open offices, asking the reader to accept that open offices aren’t going anywhere. Rather than debate the merits of open offices (which I will note largely comes from administrators), he asks, “we should focus on how to make open office environments productive and satisfying for all library workers.” Um, hard no, Steven.

I will also note Steven comes from a library where flexible work arrangements are available. How about those who have little to no flexibility and work in an open office? He doesn’t address this directly while he spills a lot of ink claiming fewer and fewer library staff are working in-person due to hybrid work. I have to think, maybe library staff won’t want to come to an open office to work; classic chicken-and-egg situation there, Steven. Maybe to Steven, there won’t be library staff anymore, anywhere. I don’t think he actually thinks this, although his article is situated firmly in the context of saving the library’s money (“Building private offices is expensive for new projects, as well as far more expensive to remove for future projects”).

Meredith Farkas wrote an insightful response to Steven, noting his article isn’t supported by the literature (contradicting what he writes), writing “the scholarly consensus on open offices is uniformly negative and the move to open offices comes with many detrimental impacts on employee well-being, organizational health, and work output.” Meredith deftly addresses accessibility issues that are much more challenging in an open office environment, compared to a private office. Contrary to what Steven claims, Meredith makes a strong case that equal working spaces does not make equity for all, even if everyone, including administrators, work in an open office. Working from home or private offices can help alleviate different accommodations.

Online Meetings and Working From Home

As I said, one of the challenges of working in an open office is attending online meetings. It’s more challenging, for sure, compared to a private office. There are bookable spaces close to me that I can take my laptop to attend. I recently was leading an online library workshop. Compared to having my two-monitor setup at my desk, screensharing off a laptop is more difficult, but not impossible. Working from home alleviates some of this, which I do occasionally when I have a glut of online meetings or instruction.

The 2024 ACRL Top Trends speak to the growing trend of hybrid work environments. Like Meredith, the authors cite scholarship that confirms the benefits of remote work: “remote work offers benefits like greater productivity and reduced stress while onsite work fosters better onboarding, engagement, and team building.” However, the authors continue to say that “[t]his new hybrid environment may also require redesigning staff spaces and setting new priorities for onsite work.” When I look at the article they cite for “redesigning staff spaces” (Fayard, Weeks, & Khan, 2021), again the authors clamour for social spaces at work, a place for “unstructured collaboration” and “impromptu conversations.” Not again!

What seems like a cliché and tired stereotype at this point, Steven notes during his library’s redesign, “the designers touted the potential benefits of open office environments, such as increased collaboration, serendipitous idea generation, or simply more opportunities for staff engagement.” I’m still waiting for all this collaboration and idea generation to happen, something that flies in the face of the scholarship that Meredith cites[1]. I’ll have to get back to you when I’m collaborating and generating ideas at a higher level in my open office.

[1] “It is a common misconception that moving to open offices will lead to increased communication and collaboration, based on the assumption that if people are in closer proximity, peers and organizational leaders will be more accessible. Not only has that not been borne out by research, but the exact opposite has been found” (Farkas, 2023).

Similarities and Differences

I’ve spent all semester struggling with writer’s block here at ACRLog, feeling a lack of both focus and ideas. Which is not at all surprising (or unique to me) given the many crises unfolding simultaneously in the U.S. and the world right now. I think what I keep getting stuck on is the desire to write something useful, a piece with practical suggestions and ideas for how to make our experiences in our libraries and institutions this semester just a little bit better and easier, for us and our patrons. I sometimes feel like I should be writing more here about library leadership, shining light on my day to day tasks as a library director. But there have been so many terrific articles and blog posts and twitter threads about managing with compassion during this time of remote work and multiple crises. What could I possibly have to add to the conversation, surely everything has already been said?

At my college and university our physical libraries are still closed, and my colleagues and I are all working remotely. It strikes me that while so much of what I do in my day to day is different with our continuing remote work — from spending hours figuring out how to share and sign PDFs across each of my and my colleagues’ different home computer setups, to trying to figure out at least semi-reasonable lighting for my many zoom meetings — lots of what I do is the same as in the beforetimes. I still meet monthly with each library faculty and staff member I supervise, to catch up on their projects and see if there’s anything they need (and brief meetings are still okay). We still have a meeting for all library faculty and staff, and I still share as much information as I can about the budget, campus planning, and the promotion and tenure process. My tenure-track and promotion-seeking colleagues and I still try to hold coworking space for a few hours each month to support each other as we make some progress on our research, writing, and scholarly reading.

There are differences, though what’s feeling most different right now are mostly the details. I send a very brief update email to my colleagues each morning to let us all know if anyone’s scheduled out and to share other information when I have it. We’re now having our all library meeting every other week rather than once a month, just to make sure we all have a chance to share anything that’s coming up in our day to day (and if those meetings are brief that’s fine). Zoom fatigue is real, so it’s not ever a requirement for my colleagues to turn on cameras or to be participating in meetings on a computer — calling in is just fine, listening is just fine. I will admit that one detail I didn’t consider at the beginning of the semester when scheduling meetings is what it would feel like to me to have multiple back-to-back zooms. That is not a mistake I will make again next semester, for sure.

I appreciate all of our work in the library to support our patrons while remote. But it’s still hard, even 8+ months in. The college and university where I work decided several weeks ago that next semester will again be held overwhelmingly online, and like most of the other campuses our library will not be open to patrons next semester, nor will library faculty and staff be required to work onsite. I’m so grateful that we’ll be able to work safely off-campus next semester, though I miss working in person with everyone, so much.

I’m not sure that I’m leaving us with anything useful at the end of this post, despite my intentions. It’s easy for me to focus on the differences, the difficult differences in the ways we are all having to work together now. Though in writing this I’m reminded of how much is the same in our work, a reminder that’s helpful to me, and perhaps to you, too.