work-life balance

Reconsidering Rest: Interruptions and Invitations (Part 2)

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, MSLS, Founder, Renewals.

(Activation notice: This post shares information about harmful workplace experiences and impacts on the body and may (re-)surface negative memories and/or associated emotions. Please take the time you need to move through this post at your capacity, and contact your healthcare team for support).

We’re continuing our reconsideration of rest practices, this time focusing on somatic interruptions to and reimagining rest invitations for harmed bodies. In Part 1, I explored causes of unrest and disconnections from rest for library workers. In this second part, we’ll look at how traumatized bodies respond to rest after long-term (and ongoing) exposure to harm, and I’ll highlight a trauma-informed framework to apply when considering established rest pathways. At the end of this blog, rather than a prescriptive approach to promoting rest pathways, I offer reflective questions about your experiences of rest and its connection to systems/policies – along with an invitation to a brief practice that gently increases your impressions of rest. I also hope the questions and practices spark reimagination of collective rest approaches in your workplace.

Interruption: The Traumatized Body’s Reaction to Rest

Traumatic experiences impact people despite their proximity to known harm and undermines their attempts to rest. Here are a few ways harm creates proximity-agnostic disconnections from rest practices.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Sufferers not only are subject to intrusive thoughts, but may internalize blame and shame as they remember their responses to harm (See Also, low-morale experience participant data). Comito’s Library Trauma Cycle highlights this blame cycle, implying internal messages and links to enacting harm on others. Additionally, PTSD criteria also include avoiding activities that may activate memories of trauma (think of all the activities we offer to library users!), sleep disturbance, and heightened startle responses.
Hyperviligance: a state of heightened emotional and somatic awareness despite absence of threats, hyperviligance is connected to PTSD, and is also associated with anxiety and depression (the most commonly reported mental health impacts of low-morale experiences). This state interrupts most standard rest practices as sufferers engage in second-guessing their decisions, avoiding conflict, catastrophizing, or rumination. Hyperviligance can also contribute to poorer quality of sleep as sufferers struggle to fall or stay asleep.
Cultural Message/Stereotype Reinforcement: people who identify or present as female, as well as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are often tacitly encouraged and expected to ignore their bodies’ need for rest. From Working Mom/GirlBoss tropes and memes to the Strong Black Woman archetype, these reinforcements are activated outside of work and in employees’ personal lives, taking on additional nefariousness in the predominantly white and female LIS industry (See Also, Oppressed Group Behavior; See Also “Running the Gauntlet“).

Invitation: Collaborating With – Not Against – Rest

Polyvagal theory reveals inadvertent impacts of sudden exposure to rest and relaxation for hyperaroused bodies, and includes formal countermeasures for traumatized bodies to process and release energy stored in the body after adverse events (Somatic Experiencing International 2025). Nervous system regulation techniques like resourcing and titration may help harmed minds and bodies acclimate to intentional rest practices. I’ve invited Sarah Wallace, a Licensed Practicing Counselor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and Founder of Blue Heron Counseling, LLC to share more. Listen in to hear her brief explanation of these techniques.

Invitation: A Framework to Consider

In addition to engaging in established rest practices, consider how they may be applied through a trauma-informed lens. The Wellness Wheel for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in LIS was created by Amanda Leftwich, founder of mindfulinlis, in 2018. The wheel counters conventional wellness models by considering the lived occupational wellness experiences of BIPOC library workers and offering somatic and system-interrupting responses to events that compromise worker well-being. See a fuller description – and examples – here (click the annotation icons).

Wellness Wheel for BIPOC in LIS — Reproduced with Permission. Image copyright ©2018 Amanda M. Leftwich.

Invitation: Holding Space to Practice

With love, bell hooks reminds us that healing is done in community – not alone. Therefore, in addition to sharing information about rest – and even in addition to presentations about how we have applied rest – we must also offer spaces for people to imagine, craft, engage, and be held accountable for protecting space(s) to and practices of rest. Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry collaborative sleep installations are an example of how these spaces can be made available. In libraries, we are aware of the need for these spaces; yet they are often reserved for people visiting the library. In the “back rooms” of our buildings, spaces for employees to rest and decompress are scant beyond a mandated milk expression room or institutional-feeling breakrooms. Invitations to share challenges and apply solutions are met with skepticism as worker recommendations fall into administrative, municipal, or political hinterlands. During the Pandemic, rest/restorative practice spaces were offered to BIPOC library workers, and Renewals offered its inaugural online practice and resonance community space in June 2025 (see the impact). More practice spaces are needed – and additional collaborations with counselors and therapists should be cultivated to increase somatic education and access to LIS practitioners. Whether you’re interested in practice, conversation, or both, here are some upcoming opportunities to engage:

The Reset Experience – mid-winter 2026 (Renewals, February 4, 2026)
Recharging in Challenging Times (American Library Association, February 10, 2026)

Invitation: Questions and an Activity to Inspire Space-making for (Collective) Rest Practice

What workplace supports (did you wish) were available to you when you began your rest practices? How did these supports (or the lack thereof) play out as you identified, advocated for, refined, or expanded your goals? Note which policies provided these supports (or note what policies are needed to offer the supports that did not materialize).
Try a practice that helps you gradually re-engage with rest sensations: Sarah Wallace expands on titration and offers a brief somatic practice.

Works Cited

Brewer, M. (2021). Strong Black woman archetype in organizational life. Dissertation. University of Kansas. https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/c2c43dbf-4358-439f-af0b-107e22c04c59/content

Cleveland Clinic. (2023, Nov. 16). Always on alert: causes and examples of hypervigilance. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/hypervigilance

Comito, L. (2022, Jul. 25). Library trauma cycle. Urban Librarians Unite. https://urbanlibrariansunite.org/library-trauma-cycle/

Dozier, D. (2025, May 2). Hypervigilance and sleep: Breaking the cycle of restlessness. Anchorage Sleep Center. https://info.ancsleep.com/blog/hypervigilance-and-sleep-breaking-the-cycle-of-restlessness

hooks, bell. (2018). All about love: New visions. New York: William Morrow.

Kendrick, K.D. (2019, Sep. 18). Considering: Oppressed group behavior. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/considering-oppressed-group-behavior/

Kendrick, K.D., Leftwich, A.M., & Hodge, T. (2021). Providing care and community in times of crisis: The BIPOC in LIS Mental Health Summits. https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/25125

Kendrick, K.D. (2026, Feb. 6). PTSD in the low-morale experience. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/ptsd-in-the-low-morale-experience/

Kendrick, K.D. (2018, Mar. 19). Running the guantlet: Lives of practicing minority academic librarians. The Ink On The Page. https://theinkonthepageblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/19/the-gauntlet-the-life-of-the-practicing-minority-academic-librarian/

Kendrick, K.D. (2025, July 15). Report: The (inaugural) Reset Experience. Renewals. https://renewalslis.com/report-the-reset-experience-june-2025/

Leftwich, A.M.(2018). Redefining the Wellness Wheel for librarians of color. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=pocinlis

(tenor. (n.d.). Working mom. https://tenor.com/search/working-mom-gifs

Somatic Experiencing International. (2025).Trauma and polyvagal theory – Stephen Porges and Peter Levine. https://traumahealing.org/product/trauma-and-polyvagal-theory-stephen-porges-peter-levine/

The Nap Ministry. (2018). Month: August 2018. https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/2018/08/

Reconsidering Rest: Interruptions and Invitations (Part 1)

Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, MSLS, Founder, Renewals.

In 2023, I shared a short Instagram reel promoting the seven kinds of rest, along with ways to engage in each. At the time, I’d just begun my intentional recovery after leading through and navigating a higher education landscape that was (and is still) grappling with how to center humanity and dignity and balance them with the expectations of capitalism. When I made that reel, I was very hopeful about ways I – and other library workers – could remix and apply these rest practices. A bit more than two years later, I am still identifying and refining my approaches. I recognize that while those established pathways are necessary, more context is needed, especially as we consider the interruptions to rest that workplace harm causes. This two-part blog will share an overview of invitations and interruptions to rest. Part 1 will explore causes of unrest and disconnections from rest; Part 2 will explore relationships between rest and trauma, recenter a recognized framework, and offer reflections inviting you to reimagine and cultivate collective rest approaches.

Interruption: States of Unrest in the LIS Industry

As library worker exposure to library values rejection, systemic harm, and compromised safety continue (and even while we try to protect targeted citizens in our communities), we need to revisit and to acknowledge the very real interruptions to rest practices – especially for truamatized workers and those with historically ignored identities. While established scholars writings on rest practices for these groups is available, the library and information science (LIS) industry continues leaning towards and normalizing passive-aggressive communication and resilience narratives. Consequently, we must recognize that pathways to rest may not be easy to access or practice, even if they are known. Low-morale experiences reveal that even when harm is not immediately present at work, harmed workers are actively anticipating harm. When they are not at work, they are thinking about the harm that may come to them when they return to the workplace. For BIPOC librarians navigating low-morale experiences, the threat of harm is so pervasive that active signals of rest are ignored due to their worries about being perceived as less-than-hardworking (See Also, Stereotype Threat). Acknowledging the spectrum of harm and how it presents, these interruptions have implications for not only for practicing rest, but for somatic awareness and activation when rest of any kind is attempted.

Interruption: Denying Rest in Library Workplaces

Exposure to long-term active and passive harm, vocational awe, and resilience narratives create internal narratives that cause overwork, heighten people-pleasing behaviors, and dampen intuition. If you tell yourself that the harm you’re experiencing “isn’t that bad;” if industrial values tell you to be “good,” but not to yourself; if you’re expected to produce and perform like others who may have more resources, it’s hard to think about boundaries, much less create ones that feel effective – and then build the strength to consistently apply them. There are more hurdles to clear as workers navigate questions about boundary-making – the first step to activating any of the rest types. We must recognize the internal narratives that tell traumatized library workers that they are not safe enough to consider rest practices and collaborate with workers to scaffold support and encouragement as they begin the non-linear journey of reconstitution and recovery.

Workers are often excluded or retaliated against when they engage in health-centered practices – even when they do so within the parameters of their workplace’s stated policies. Workplace wellness is a relatively new concept, and many organizations have policies that read as helpful, but are only tacitly so when applied. Moreover, many of the ways people care for themselves – within policies or informally – can be subverted or denied by authoritarian or toxic leaders and/or colleagues (and with deeper implications for identities who have been historically marginalized or ignored). Consider these examples:

The administrator who endures macro- or microaggressions after salat.
The worker who requests and receives an ergonomic personal work desk, and then is assigned to tasks requiring them to work away from that desk.
The employee who resists taking on extra shifts, and is summarily excluded from important meetings during their regular hours.
The worker who takes FMLA and whose position is phased out soon after they return to work.
The colleague who eats and takes a walk during their meal break – and is surveilled, harrassed, or guilted for not coming back early.
The manager who is told to not take “too long” of a vacation because they are the only ones responsible for their tasks.

Consider how myriad systems and behaviors – from funding to favoritism – may be leveraged by toxic employees or within a dysfunctional organization (or within a toxic department in a healthier organization) when an employee requests support for or engages in rest practices.

Another area that is implied with promoting these rest types is that rest can happen (more easily) when you’re away from the sites of unrest. But trauma doesn’t acknowledge where the body is now – it’s remembering that the body was threatened or was harmed, and is trying to signal to the body that it must maintain in a state of vigilance even if harm isn’t immediately present (traumatized bodies prep for the danger that could return at any moment, from anywhere). What happens when rest is introduced to the traumatized body after a long state of unrest?

In Part 2, we’ll consider this idea by exploring links to trauma and (un)rest. I’ll also reshare a useful framework and offer reflections that can help harmed and recovering library workers – as well as those who’d like to improve their organizations through reimagined and/or revisited policies and procedures – cultivate incremental, authentic, and trauma-informed routes to supporting and enacting rest practices. For now, here are two reflective questions to think about:

Invitation: Questions for Reflection

Which, if any, workplace behaviors or LIS industrial frameworks or expectations have interrupted your rest practice goals?
What external messages or social/ethnic/cultural/economic contexts come with these frameworks or your responses to these frameworks?

Works Cited

American Library Association. (1999 – 2025). Book ban data. https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data

Berg, J., Galvan, S., & Tewell, E. (2018). Responding to and reimagining resilience in academic libraries. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1),1-4. https://newlibs.org/index.php/jonl/article/view/805

Caldwell-Stone, D. (2025, Jan. 24). Libraries and immigration enforcement. Intellectual Freedom Blog. https://www.oif.ala.org/libraries-and-immigration-enforcement/

Ettarh, F. (2018, Jan. 10). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In the Library With the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Kendrick, K.D. (2017). The low morale experience of academic librarians: A phenomenological study. Journal of Library Administration, 57(8), 846-878 doi: 10.1080/01930826.2017.1368325

Kendrick, K.D. & Damasco, I.T. (2019). Low morale in ethnic and racial minority academic librarians: An experiential study. Library Trends, 68(3), 174-212. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/113621

Ko, M.E. (2017). Stereotype threat. https://ctl.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj17446/files/media/file/stereotype_threat_handout.pdf

Knox, K. (2024, Feb. 8). Protecting library workers: The ongoing battle for the health and safety of library staff. Public Libraries Online. https://publiclibrariesonline.org/2024/02/protecting-library-workers-the-ongoing-battle-for-the-health-and-safety-of-library-staff/

Miss Julie. (2025, Oct. 18). The call is coming from inside of the house. Hi, Miss Julie. https://himissjulie.com/2025/10/18/__trashed/

Reece, J. (2025, Nov. 15). Baltimore County reinstates 14 part-time librarians after abrupt mass firings. CBS News Baltimore. https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/part-time-librarians-fired-baltimore-county-public-library/

Evaluating Evaluations During a Continuing Crisis

As we enter year two of this pandemic, I’m thinking about annual evaluations. At my university our annual evaluation schedule has library faculty writing our own annual reports and our appointments committee holding evaluation meetings in late Spring, and reappointment and tenure votes happen in the early Fall. And while schedules may differ at other colleges and universities, now that we’ve lived a full year with covid19 everyone has probably had an opportunity to go through the evaluation cycle at least once.

Last year there were lots of articles in higher education news outlets discussing the extraordinary circumstances of the abrupt shift to remote operations during the pandemic, and it seems like many (most?) institutions canceled student evaluations last Spring, as did my institution. While the college where I work extended due dates for faculty annual reports last year, they were still required, as were evaluation meetings and supervisor reports. This academic year our student evaluations of teaching are proceeding as usual, and all signs so far are that our annual reports and evaluations will be, too.

Librarians are faculty at my university and with the contractual requirements for evaluation dates and processes we’re not able to make changes at our local level in our library, so we’ll be going through the process the same way faculty in all departments are. But I still find myself wondering about the evaluation cycle this year. Should we be doing things the same way this year, when this year is still very much not the same as the pre-covid19 years? The uneven impact of pandemic on all aspects of academic life is well known by now, and especially for those already marginalized in higher education, including folx who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Abigail Goben and Nell Haynes are compiling a terrific bibliography of the effects of covid19 on women’s labor in particular, which has been especially concerning around time and resources for the research and scholarship often required for tenure and promotion. Just today there’s a new report from Ithaka S+R on the results of a survey that digs into the effects of the pandemic on women and caregivers, and the disparities in research and publishing are on stark display.

The faculty union at my university negotiated an optional tenure extension for those on the tenure track, and any faculty member can choose to extend their tenure clock by a year, to acknowledge the incredible disruptions of this past year. The process requires faculty to make that decision at the time that they come up for tenure, which to me has both strengths and weaknesses. It’s definitely true that for some untenured faculty, especially early career faculty, the pandemic might not end up having a big impact on their research and scholarship by the time they come up for tenure. Some may be working on research that can continue uninterrupted even with lockdowns and other restrictions, and others might have had to radically change or even cancel plans. Some may have newly available time and attention in their schedules to devote to their scholarship, without the need to commute, for example, while others have new responsibilities like homeschooling and other caregiving. Ithaka’s report highlights a similar decision at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst that’s implemented differently: the one-year tenure deferment is automatic, and faculty who don’t want it can opt out.

I was glad to see annual evaluations as a topic of discussion at a recent department chairs meeting at my college; though I had to miss that meeting, a colleague attended in my place and brought back lots of useful notes. There seemed to be general agreement that extra attention is needed this year to be compassionate, constructive, and supportive in our evaluations. One chair noted that the annual evaluation is always a snapshot of a faculty member’s career – with faculty responsibilities in teaching, scholarship, and service, every year will not necessarily look the same even in non-pandemic times. I’m keeping in mind Dr. Amanda Visconti’s tweet during the CALM Conference earlier this month that quotes overhearing someone say “the pandemic is a stretch goal,” and I hope everyone who’s in the position of evaluator this year keeps that in mind, too. And with so much still uncertain for next year, as the vaccine rollout accelerates, as states take different approaches to getting back to “normal,” I hope the evaluation process can continue to adapt as the pandemic does, and continue to center support and compassion.

From Cyber Attacks to Pandemics: Reflections on Trying to Work During Times of Crisis

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 Melissa DeWitt, Research and Instruction Librarian at Regis University.

My final post as an FYAL blogger was in July of 2019. I ended that post on a reflective note, and like the themes I reflected on. In particular, I still believe that relationships are the most important thing, which I hope comes through in this post. While I liked those themes, there were some things I didn’t realize during my first year – mainly that my work life and personal life are not separate. That’s not to say that I don’t take time to myself or find ways to decompress (I love my hobbies, and I definitely know how to chill!). What I mean is that I am not a person that carefully tucks work into bed when I leave for the day, nor can I separate the ways my personal life affects my work. All facets of my life intertwine with and influence one another. I suspect that this is true for most people. Stacey Abrams, in a podcast with David Tennant, describes work/life balance as a myth. Instead, she equates it to a game of Jenga. You carefully stack and pull pieces out whenever you need them, hoping it all won’t come tumbling down, but the crash is inevitable. You have to put the pieces back together and try balancing everything all over again.

The goal of this series is to reflect on our trajectories since the first year, and I’m not sure how to reflect on my trajectory without providing some context. The truth is that reflecting on my work experience since I last posted is upsetting. Sometimes reflection is cathartic, but sometimes it’s like ripping the scab off a wound you’ve been trying to ignore. This reflection is a combination of both.

On August 22, 2019, three days before the beginning of the semester, my workplace detected an external security breach. We learned later in the day that we had experienced a cyber attack, and would eventually learn that it was ransomware.

I could spend hours talking about what happened next, but there’s not enough space in this post. Here’s a brief overview. We did not have systems back up for months. We used personal devices to perform our work. All data on my work computer was lost or unrecoverable. The library did not have access to databases or any online content, and so we contacted vendors, one-by-one, to ask for alternate access, which we listed on a password-protected spreadsheet. The research desk became an IT desk, as we spent hours helping students print and navigate research without purchased resources. We spent months without any of the tools we needed to do our jobs (because if it was tech, we did not have it), and yet we were still expected to do our jobs. My main takeaway from this experience? It was awful.

I mentioned that work and personal life affect one another because this was especially true during the cyber attack. Work became a low point for me and many of my colleagues, which affected my mood at home. Several people left during this time, morale was garbage, and I woke up every morning with a deep sense of dread. We did absolutely everything to try and provide the same services, but that was part of the problem. We should have been able to take a break, to look at the situation and say, “this isn’t sustainable.” Instead, we pretended that we could do the same work without any of the resources that made our work possible. There were also professional repercussions: we had layoffs, incentivized retirements, hiring freezes across many departments, and mergers between colleges. It felt like it would never end. The worst part was that no one outside my workplace really got it, so it felt like we were isolated in our little bubble of misery. That’s not to say that people were not supportive. When I reflect back on this time period, the one bright spot were the people in my personal and professional life that created an amazing support network. I do not know what I would have done without my people. Despite that network, it’s hard to relay the despair, fatigue, anger and poor morale I felt. It consumed all aspects of my life, and that semester is now a huge blur.

My world isn’t solely professional. In 2019, I attended three funerals for grandparents. Life didn’t stop just because work was shit. There were amazing things too. I attended my sister’s wedding, and I got engaged. I planned a wedding during the cyber attack and in between funerals, and then I took a break from the chaos of my workplace to get married in early February 2020. The pandemic was not quite on our radar, and I remember my wedding as the last real gathering with all of my friends and family before everything went down. We were incredibly lucky, and it’s an event I’ll never forget because it’s this amazing, bright and shiny spot on an otherwise miserable year.

Then the pandemic hit, and we all had to deal with it. The only saving grace was that, after working through a cyber attack, pivoting library work for the pandemic felt easy because I had the tools necessary to do my work. Except, this time, the crisis was present in every facet of our lives, and people were (and still are) dying. I won’t spend much time reflecting on the pandemic because, reader, you know what it’s like. Reflection is a process of looking back, but the pandemic is still happening. I don’t know how this ends yet. Instead, I’ll tell you about bright spots amidst the chaos.

When I was first hired, I asked about the possibility of teaching a credit-bearing class because creating a course was one of my professional goals. That goal came to fruition in fall 2020. The class was difficult to teach due to pandemic-related reasons, but also incredibly rewarding. I suspected that teaching a course outside the traditional, one-shot library session would foster my growth as a teacher, and this turned out to be true. I learned so much about myself, my capabilities as a teacher, and about students. Students are the reason I wanted to become an academic librarian in the first place, and teaching a class solidified all the warm fuzzy feelings I have towards them. I will never forget ending our last class of the semester and students remaining in the Zoom room because they did not want to leave. I cried. They cried and wrote the sweetest things I’ve ever read in a chat. There’s something about taking care of one another during a difficult time that brings you together. I also would not have been able to navigate this class without my friend and colleague who was my mentor while teaching the class. She answered all of my frantic emails with grace, and I probably would have melted into a puddle without her.

I also co-wrote my first publication, which was a source of angst during my first year. The timing was not ideal, but it got done. This was, again, not possible without the support of my co-writers. Writing is already challenging, but writing during a pandemic is something else. It’s nice to work with folks who keep you accountable but also understand that we’re all human beings just doing our best. First year me would be very proud. In addition, you can catch me all year presenting at conferences, including two pop culture conferences. I’ll be presenting with some really cool people.

Furthermore, I look forward to the progression of my teaching skills and the evolution of my pedagogy. Continuing my teaching adventures, I will co-teach a master’s level research course in March, which I’m really excited about. I will also teach writing and composition to first year students again in the fall. Teaching and working with students brings me joy in my work, so that’s what I’m going to keep doing.

Final Reflections

It was hard not to feel anger bubble up as I wrote 30 versions of this post (some a little spicier than others). I’m curious to see what my professional life will look like when I no longer have to perform during a crisis. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that institutions will do what’s best for them, not for you. I like my job and my work, but it doesn’t need to be this difficult. We can’t keep doing more with less and expect that to work forever. The professional accomplishments I’m proud of are in spite of my workplace, not because of it. It’s possible I would have published sooner, or achieved more of my goals if I hadn’t worked in a place that was weathering multiple crises. I am trying to acknowledge that impact and recognize that I am not above external factors. At the same time, I do not need to simply roll with the punches. Since my first year, I’m a little louder, a little more jaded, and a lot angrier. I’m less afraid and more confident about what kind of impact I want to make in my work and at my institution. The time since I wrote my last post was jammed with low points, and at some point, I’d like to take a nap. In the meantime, I’ll celebrate my accomplishments, lean on the strength of my relationships, and see what I do next.

Burning with Your Own Passions

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 Kimberly Miller, Assessment Librarian and Liaison to Psychology at Towson University.

“Where are they now?”

Right now? Like many of you, right now I am at home seeking quiet and solitude away from the chaos of managing work, family, school, and self-care during a global health crisis. Thinking back to my first-year librarian experience, I can’t help but laugh and think, as our ALSC colleagues already reminded us, responding to a global pandemic was definitely not covered in library school.

What’s Happened?

In 2012, shortly before joining ACRLog as an First Year Academic Library Experience (FYALE) blogger, I was hired as Emerging Technologies Librarian & Liaison to Psychology at Towson University. In that role I provided technology leadership within the library’s Research and Instruction Department. I also taught information literacy workshops, provided student and faculty research help, and worked with the Psychology-related collection. While the open-ended nature of the role was sometimes daunting (what exactly “counts” as an “emerging technology” still remains a mystery to me), all-in-all it was a great first position because the diversity in my responsibilities provided a lot of areas for exploration and growth. And some of that growth, particularly around risk taking and experimentation, is captured in my FYALE blog posts.

Over time, as I began to articulate my expertise and vision, I successfully advocated to narrow my position to focus specifically on “learning technologies” necessary to support formal and informal learning within the library. Other highlights between my first year and now include:

Changing my job description (twice)
Applying for, and achieving, rank promotion and permanent status
Participating in ACRL’s Immersion and the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship
Attending too many conferences and serving on too many committees
Starting an instructional technology doctoral program and, recently, transfering to the masters program (graduating May 2020!)
Becoming a parent
Serving in leadership positions within regional and national professional organizations
Collaborating with senior library leadership as librarian representative to the library’s Leadership Council

Turning Point

As I reflect on those experiences it’s clear to me that the month I had a child and was notified that I was awarded permanent status marked a significant turning point for me personally and professionally. When I returned to work, I realized I was spending more time managing projects and, indirectly, the people associated with those projects than I was exploring and creating technology-based instruction itself. And I was good at it. I loved my job and the people I worked with, and I had developed a talent for leading people to solve interesting problems. As a doctoral student, I also gained a deeper expertise in educational leadership and professional development necessary to take on new challenges. At the same time, I was growing tired of running into the same roadblocks and questioning whether what I did really mattered while seeing little opportunity to grow into new professional areas.

In my cubicle, a now-faded handwritten quote reminds me that “People who do not blaze with their own passions burn out.” This quote has been my guiding principle as I’ve made decisions, both small and large, about how I spend my time. Throughout my career, one of my driving forces has been a desire to deeply understand the rationale behind our work and the evidence needed to help make that work a success. With this in mind, I proposed that my experiences and interests made me a good fit for the new Assessment Librarian position our Dean of University Libraries announced in the Fall of 2018. After several conversations and some final job description editing, I transitioned into my new role as TU’s Assessment Librarian in January 2019.

Now and the Future

I’ll admit that, unlike technology, assessment initiatives are not high on the list of exciting or flashy library projects. But I would argue that’s because assessment is best when it is infused within all other work that we do on a day-to-day basis. Assessment is not just counting, number crunching, and correlating. The flashiest project will fizzle if we don’t know how or why it was successful. And that’s what assessment is about to me – it is being curious and asking questions about the way our services, systems, and collections support our community. Academic libraries make profound differences within and beyond our campuses, and the best way to continue doing so is to continually learn from our work.

As an Assessment Librarian, I find meaning in dispelling myths about assessment while building our library staff and faculty’s capacity to apply evidence within their specific domains to provide excellent user support and services. While I help everyone learn about the nuts-and-bolts of assessment, I also get to tie assessment to how we explore new possibilities for serving our users. For example, in November I spoke to our staff as part of our library’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Spark series about using assessment to dispel the “myth of average” when designing library services, spaces, and resources. I’m excited to explore how I can continue to support this work in the next stage of my career.

While the jump from instructional technology to assessment may seem strange to some, for me it was a chance to lean into new skills and solve new challenges while leveraging the talents I cultivated in my previous role. I also continue to learn a lot about navigating the politics of projects that require working both horizontally and vertically within the library’s organizational chart. As the first person in this new role, I have come full circle and once again find myself with an open-ended opportunity to shape our library’s path forward on key strategic initiatives. This time, I get the unique and exciting privilege of a front row seat to the amazing work happening in nearly every area of our library. I can’t wait to see what else I didn’t learn in library school!