residency

Reflecting on Seven Years of Librarianship

Since 2008, ACRLog’s “First Year Academic Librarian (FYAL) Experience” series has annually featured 1-2 academic librarians in their first year on the job in an academic library. This new series, “Where Are They Now?: Former FYALs Reflect,” features posts from past FYAL bloggers as they look back on their trajectories since their first year. This month, we welcome a post from Ariana Santiago, Open Educational Resources Coordinator at the University of Houston.

Just over seven years ago, I began my career as an academic librarian. I also had the opportunity to write for the ACRLog First Year Academic Librarian Experience series. I’m so glad I did, because writing a monthly post motivated me to assess and reflect, and now I’m thankful that my old posts capture the unique experience of my first year on the job. So what have I been up to since then? And how have things changed?

Let’s start at the beginning

I started as the Residency Librarian for Undergraduate Services at the University of Iowa in August 2013. In my undergraduate services role, I focused on library outreach and information literacy instruction, and had a lot of flexibility to try things out so that I could make the most of my residency program. I got involved in campus committees, collaborated on outreach and programming events, was introduced to critical librarianship, and dove into learning about instructional design. I participated in professional development programs that had long lasting impacts on me, specifically ACRL Immersion: Intentional Teaching and the Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups. I also dealt with uncertainty, knowing that I didn’t yet understand the full picture – of the library and university where I worked, and academia more broadly. I struggled with imposter syndrome, especially when it came to teaching, and hadn’t yet figured out how to ask for the help that I needed. I definitely didn’t have a long-term plan for my career, but I knew I wanted to improve and excel at what I was doing.

Finding my niche with a side of burnout

After my residency, I moved to the University of Houston where I started as the Instruction Librarian in 2015. By this time I had gotten a lot more comfortable and confident with instruction, and really enjoyed not just being in the classroom and working with students, but the problem-solving nature of figuring out how to teach and engage students in different learning contexts. It was around this time that I started to realize my facilitation skills and that I really wanted to facilitate others’ success, whether through IL instruction, working with colleagues on their teaching, or leading a library project or committee. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I was headed towards burnout. I got increasingly involved in professional service, started presenting and publishing as I prepared for eventual promotion, and was working on a second master’s degree (M.A. in Applied Learning and Instruction, which I completed in 2017), all the while maintaining a heavy teaching load. I think it’s safe to say I still hadn’t figured out how to ask for help, or even admit when I was struggling and needed help.

Then in 2018, I got the opportunity to move into a new position at the University of Houston, and started as the Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator. I’ve read my fellow former FYAL’s posts and they all speak of the inspirations that shaped their career paths and landed them where they are today. For me, this part of my career trajectory was far less intentional. I had the opportunity to take on this position, though to be completely honest, at the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. But I took a chance, and I’m definitely glad that I did.

Although an OER position wasn’t something I had been purposefully working towards, I’m now 2+ years into it and clearly see how this work builds on my previous experience and strengths. I’m contributing to improving teaching and learning by helping instructors incorporate OER into their courses, allowing students to have free and immediate access to course materials. I get to incorporate elements of instructional design and campus outreach, and there’s no shortage of problem-solving on a regular basis. I enjoy working closely with instructors to support them in reaching their instructional goals, and further facilitating student success.

However, because I didn’t start with a strong background in OER, I often went back to feelings of imposter syndrome. When I transitioned into this new area, I was reminded of how it feels to truly step outside of your comfort zone and became painfully aware of how much I didn’t know or understand yet. Fortunately, by this time (or perhaps because of this experience) I had gotten a lot better at identifying when I needed help and asking for it. In recent years, I’ve also practiced my ability to say “no” to things. Earlier on, my eagerness to get involved and help out wherever help was needed led to burnout from taking on too much. Now I know the value of my time and to be more selective about the commitments I take on.

Still figuring it out

In my very last FYAL post, I gave the following advice: don’t take on too much, ask for help, and keep the big picture in mind. Turns out this was pretty good advice for me to listen to throughout the years! To add on to that advice now: it’s okay to not have things all figured out. I admire people who know exactly where they’re headed and what they want out of their careers, but I’m not that person (at least not right now), and I think it’s okay to figure things out as you go.

Along with everyone else right now, I don’t know what the future holds. I know that I’m about to submit my portfolio for promotion, and that I’ll continue to work from home for the immediate future, but that’s about it. I don’t know what the next seven years will bring, but I’m excited to find out!

Diversity Fellowships: Finding Your Place in Academic Librarianship

Please welcome our new First Year Academic Librarian Experience blogger Karina Hagelin, Outreach and Instruction Librarian and Diversity Fellow at Cornell University Library.

Hello there, colleagues and comrades. I’m Karina and I’m one of your new First-Year Academic Librarian bloggers! I’m currently a Diversity Fellow and Outreach and Instruction Librarian at Cornell University Library (CUL). For my first post, I thought I’d introduce myself and share about what being a diversity fellow is like.

Outside of my position as a librarian, I am also an artist and organizer. I create art, especially zines, centered around radical vulnerability, queer femme joy, and healing as resistance. I love cats; I adopted two kittens a day after I started working at Cornell and volunteer as a “feline friend” at the shelter I adopted them from. I think it’s extremely important to have a life and identity outside of librarianship. I enjoy writing snail mail to my penpals, collecting unicorns, reading, bullet journaling, and being crafty/crafting in general.

Many diversity fellows are structured around rotations, giving the fellow the opportunity to explore several departments. My fellowship at Cornell is similar, allowing me to learn more about academic libraries while building on core competencies and skills in instruction, scholarship, and research. My fellowship is supported through a mentoring program, continuing education, professional development, specialized training, and participation on library committees. Since I knew I wanted to be an academic librarian – but I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on just yet – this fellowship was an ideal fit for me.

I spent my first rotation working in Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) where I focused on working with our Human Sexuality Collection through archival processing and metadata creation, policy, and procedure. I was also trained on the reference desk with specific attention to the special collections and archives environment I was working in.

During this time, I processed my first archival collection – the James D. Merritt Collection – which includes the personal journals, correspondence, and other personal papers of Dr. Merritt. I utilized my knowledge of this collection (obtained through research and archival methodology) to arrange the materials from this collection (ranging from photographs to fifty years of journaling to bags of hair and dirt to social justice and activist papers) to facilitate research access and long-term preservation of the records. After I finished rearranging and rehousing the materials from this collection, I prepared a finding aid for use by scholars, using current technology, descriptive standards, and techniques (like Encoded Archival Description aka EAD). I also prepared scope and content notes for this collection.

My primary focus was making digitized photographs from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Collection accessible by creating metadata for each of the 600+ images that had been digitized. Around the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, my hard work paid off and the photographs were finally available to the public via Cornell’s Digital Collections.

And of course, what is librarianship without committee and service work? I also was active on the Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIB) Council, RMC’s DIB Task Force, as well as a few subcommittees dedicated to specific projects, like creating research and resource guides on diversity. With RMC’s DIB Task Force, we collaborated to create a 40+ page “best practices” guide for our department, covering topics from social media to events and programming and instruction.

Eventually, it was time to move on from RMC, although I still collaborate with Brenda Marston, the curator of the Human Sexuality Collection, on a regular basis. My next rotation and current rotation is at Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University’s library that serves students in our College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, where I will be finishing my fellowship. I focus on instruction informed by queer and feminist pedagogies, outreach to marginalized campus communities, our Makerspace, and social justice advocacy.

In this time, along with two fellow colleagues, I co-founded the Equity and Empowerment Reading Group, a monthly social justice reading group focused on libraries for librarians and library workers. So far, we’ve read articles about and discussed topics such as recruiting and retaining marginalized librarians, salary transparency and wage equity, the invisibility of race in library and information studies, and sexism in women-majority workplaces. These sessions have proved valuable for cultivating rich discussions and building community at CUL.

I also founded the Women, Trans, Femme, and Nonbinary Makers Night: a biweekly meeting where all are welcome to come learn about making in our Makerspace. We recently collaborated with a LGBTQIA2S+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, and the countless affirmative ways in which people choose to self-identify) student group, as well as Fiber Science and Apparel Design students, to host a gender-affirmative fashion night, where we shared our sewing skills and made, mended, and altered clothes together. It was a really fun and engaging evening!

This week, I’m reflecting on a First-Year Writing Seminar session I led on creating zines about Black feminist icons, activists, and organizations, focusing on organizing a disability justice event for the library system, working on coursework for a class on Trauma-Informed Care in Libraries, researching starting a zine collection at my library, and shadowing my colleagues as they lead instruction sessions. I appreciate the ability to explore and try out new things, learn from my brilliant colleagues, and do work on subjects I’m passionate about.

If you’re interested in learning more about diversity fellowships, I recommend checking out the ACRL Residency Interest Group which “provides opportunities and a platform for current and former resident librarians and other interested parties to share their experiences, research, and availability of library residencies.”

Karina Hagelin is an artist, community organizer, and Outreach and Instruction Librarian and Diversity Fellow at Cornell University Library. You can find them tweeting about critical librarianship and cats under @karinahagelin or more about their work at KarinaKilljoy.com. They can be reached at karina.hagelin@cornell.edu.

A Midwestern Girl in the Land of Politics

Please welcome our new First Year Academic Librarian Experience blogger Quetzalli Barrientos, Resident Librarian at American University.

Bender Library Under Construction, courtesy of the American University History Photograph and Print Collection

I have been at my new job for two and half months as the current Resident Librarian at American University (located in Washington, DC). My main job duties consist of reference and instruction, with the freedom to pursue some of my own interests. Like a lot of you might be thinking, what is a residency position? Is it like an internship? What exactly does it entail? I’ll admit that before getting this position, I was also not familiar with the term “residency.” However, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have to go back to before I got this position.

As I began my last semester of library school in the Spring of 2015, I began to apply to jobs. A lot of jobs. To say that the job-hunting process is stressful is an understatement. While I was focusing on mostly reference and instruction positions in academic libraries, I also applied to outreach and community engagement positions. As anyone who has been on the library job-hunt (or starting) can tell you, the job description and requirements are a very important part. While applying, I saw a fair share of job descriptions. A lot of them were detailed and gave the applicant a good sense of what the job entailed…and there were some job descriptions that had three or four sentences.

One particular job announcement caught my eye. The position was for a Resident Librarian for American University in Washington, DC. By that time, I had been applying to jobs for about three months and this was the first time I had encountered a “residency” position. I’ll admit that I was a bit confused about the term “residency,”- but I am glad to say that the job description answered my questions. “American University Library invites early-career librarians to apply for its Resident Librarian Program. The program is a fixed-term appointment of three years and designed to provide an immersion into academic librarianship.”

As I read through the job posting, I saw that the responsibilities would include reference and instruction, just what I wanted! I quickly applied and waited. As you may now have realized, I got the job. However, I want to go more in depth about the residency position, its structure, and its place in the library.

My residency position is part of the Diversity Alliance Institute. The purpose of the program is to bring diverse set of entry-level librarians into academic librarianship. The Diversity Alliance has partnered with the University of Iowa, West Virginia University, and Virginia Tech (and obviously American University). By having the resident librarians immersed in academic librarianship, they are given the opportunity to explore their interests.

Recently, all the residents involved in the Diversity Alliance Program gathered at the campus of West Virginia University. I had the pleasure of meeting the other residents, their supervisors, and the people who made this event possible. This conference was meant to do a couple of things. First, it was meant for the residents to meet the people who came together to make the Diversity Institute possible. Second, it was meant for everyone, but especially the residents to network and interact with people from the various universities in attendance. Third, and this the most important in my opinion, is for the residents to meet each other and be able to exchange ideas and collaborate.

Having met the people who are in the same position, I feel like I am not alone. I was also able to get to know them, their backgrounds, what their interests are, and how their residencies are shaped and organized.

A little bit about my position. I am part of American University Library’s Research, Teaching, and Learning (RTL) Division. As a member of this division, I do reference at our Research Desk and help students, faculty, and staff with their research needs. I also do instruction for the College Writing Program at AU. This consists of communicating and reaching out to faculty members who teach these classes and organizing and planning a library instruction session for their class. I also have the opportunity to get involved in projects that reflect my interest. I participate in social media and marketing within the RTL Division and the AU Library.

Like some of the other residents, my job will have a “rotation” aspect to it. What does this mean? This means that I will be rotating around departments within the library. However, while I am doing the project or tasks within a certain department as part of the rotation, I still have my duties to reference, instruction, and anything else I might be involved with.

As I was talking to the rest of the residents, I was interested to see how their residency had been organized. For example, Virginia Tech University has their residency broken down by year.

“In the first year, the Resident will serve in three or four functional areas, determined mutually by the Resident’s interests and the needs of the Libraries.”

“In the second year, the resident will begin to specialize by contributing to one or two functional areas of his or her choosing, in consultation with the Library’s Resident Program Coordinator and directors in charge of the functional areas. The resident will then begin to formulate the basis for a capstone project.”

Among the choices were Learning Division, Data Curation, Assessment, and Scholarly Communications, to name a few.

“In the optional third and final year, the Resident will continue to specialize and will complete a capstone project, preferably suitable for publication, which incorporates the expertise and perspectives gained during the residency.”

I have recently started a project with Technical Services at the AU Library, but it feels good to have a home in the Research, Teaching, and Learning Division. Throughout my time as a blogger for ACRLog, I will be writing a bit about my residency job, adventures, and other cool things that might pop up. Most importantly, I want to hear from you and I look forward to getting to know you!