Tag: summer projects

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.

A different summer vibe

Writing, especially blog writing, has been tough in 2021. I keep looking at open and blank documents, trying to think of something new to say. Spoiler: that strategy hasn’t been working too well. And frankly, I, like many others, are tired. This past spring semester, I did what I needed to do but didn’t try to push the envelope. A lot of great work did come from this semester — a successful student showcase, many undergraduate research award winners, and a short story contest where I got to learn way more about circuses than I anticipated. I brought a similar energy into summer outreach and engagement and so far, that has been paying off. I feel like I have time to think, plan, and dream up new ideas.

However, there’s a different vibe to this summer. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been to a few meetings where my colleagues have referred to the pandemic in the past tense. When I first heard the past tense, I waited to see if this was a slip. It wasn’t. I asked the group text if they were also seeing this use of past tense at their institutions. “Yes” was the response I got. 

This pandemic is definitely not over; sure, we might be coming back to campus, but that doesn’t mean COVID has gone away. Although the United States has ample access to vaccines, we, as a county, will miss the 70% of adults having at least one shot by July 4. I know there is a desire to “return to normal” but to speak as if the pandemic is over feels like a disservice to what we all experienced the past year and a half. This attitude also completely misses the fact that vaccine access is not equitable across the world. That inequity does impact our university community members who are not located in the United States. The pandemic isn’t over, we are just in a new season of it. Hopefully, this is a chapter near the end of this story, but we aren’t sure yet.

It also feels like there is a different energy behind planning over this summer. Last year, we spent a lot of time waiting — what would our institutions decide? How would we do outreach? We invested more energy into summer online programming, planned for different scenarios, and pushed some events off until we had a clearer sense of the fall. This summer, we are moving full steam ahead for in-person activities. We want to open ALL the doors. 

A part of me is ready to interact with people in real life and not over a screen. I’m ready to run into colleagues in the hallway on the way to a meeting and grab coffee with someone new to brainstorm new collaborations. And a part of me is nervous for what the fall will look like. In my research this past year on student engagement journeys, we’ve seen a spectrum of experiences. Experiences where students were lonely and joined clubs in order to find community. And we talked to students who ran some of those clubs and felt that they feel short of the engagement and interaction they could get when they were in-person. It feels that there will be a growing period where we all readjust. As we readjust, I hope we talk about it. Some parts of this transition will be difficult or challenging. To learn and grow together, we have to be able to communicate. 

Despite my hesitancy at calling the pandemic over, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve felt change on the horizon. Maybe it’s the nicer summer weather or new leadership at my current institution that has me feeling a bit more hopeful. Whatever it is, I think I’m ready for the rest of this summer and what fall might bring us. We’ll see.

What about you? How are you feeling about this summer?

Shifting Gears for Summer in the Library

At my workplace — the City University of New York — our semesters run later than many others, and finals just ended for us yesterday. Today the library’s practically a ghost town, nearly empty of students during our short intersession before summer classes begin next Thursday.

As I imagine many of us do, I’ve been looking forward to this summer slowdown (though not the hot & humid weather that’s accompanied it this year). The summertime can offer mental, physical, and temporal space for us to work on library or research projects that can be tough to schedule during the academic year, or even just the opportunity to take a day to clean our offices and organize files (surely I’m not the only person who’s really looking forward to that day?).

I’ve had an unusually busy semester and am getting ready for a week of research leave coming up soon, so it’s not quite time for me to hit those summer projects yet. But I’ve already started thinking about how to organize my time this summer. Every year I’m surprised at how challenging it can be to schedule project work over the summer when it seems like it should be the exact opposite, since there are fewer meetings and other commitments. My fellow ACRLoggers (and others in higher ed) have written about this in the past, and today I find myself revisiting these posts for tips and suggestions:

And as we go into a long holiday weekend in the U.S., I hope everyone has a chance for rest, relaxation, and whatever forms of self-care you prefer, in order to start the summer off right.