Tag: workplace

Navigating a New Campus

One of the challenges I’ve encountered as a new academic librarian – that I’m sure other new professionals can relate to – is navigating the campus outside the library. I don’t mean physically navigating (although we all may get lost in a new building every once in a while), but figuring out the connections between various units and departments.

This particular issue stands out for me because I haven’t had to deal with it before – or at least, not in a very long time. Although I was in my last position for only a little over a year, I already knew the library and the university very well by the time I started in that position. This was the university I attended as an undergraduate, where I worked as a student assistant in Interlibrary Loan for my four years at the school, and later went on to work part-time in Special Collections while I was in graduate school. By the time I was a full-time employee, I was already familiar with the library and many of the people who worked there.

Having gone to school there as an undergraduate gave me a lot of prior knowledge about the university, which meant I didn’t have to worry about “figuring out” the campus when I began working there in my first full-time library job. Thanks to my experience as a student there, I already had a thorough understanding of how the campus worked in so many aspects – colleges and degree programs, various units and departments, the traditions and history of the school, and the general sense of “who does what around here.” In comparison to my previous experience, it’s clear now just how helpful it is to have that knowledge of the whole campus – something I’m sure I took for granted at the time. Now that I’m in a new position at a different university, I no longer have the advantage of already knowing “how things work” and “who does what.”

Getting a sense of the campus at large is something that has to be learned and pieced together over time. Not everything is going to make sense right away, which is why it is so important to ask questions, and to ask many people. I think that is an obvious bit of advice for anyone, but it can’t be said too much. My point of “knowing your campus” and “figuring out how things work” may be coming across a bit vague – that’s because it’s different for everybody and varies depending on the academic institution, and the individual’s job and responsibilities.

My recent venture into working with International Programs is an example of what I’m talking about. There is no one at the library designated as a liaison to International Programs, so I have taken on the project of looking at how we are currently serving international students and how we might serve them better. Upon investigating the International Programs website, I discovered that it consists of several sub-units, and it was unclear who I should contact to talk about creating a connection between international students and the library.

Although I didn’t fully understanding the structure of International Programs or who I should contact, I still had to take some sort of action to get the ball rolling (in this case, starting string of emails asking the same questions to multiple people didn’t seem like the best course of action) . Fortunately, I saw that the International Students Orientation was coming up soon, and was able to get myself on the agenda for a 5-10 minute presentation. I’m really excited that I was able to talk to the students at orientation, and it was great way to start strengthening our connection with this student community – now they have at least had an introduction to the library and know that they can ask librarians for help. It was also helpful for me as a chance to meet someone from International Programs in person and have a quick conversation, the result of which was a better understanding of International Student and Scholar Services (a sub-unit of International Programs) and knowing who I should contact next.

In a situation where I wasn’t sure how to get started on something due to being unfamiliar with the organizational structure, I was able to learn more about the campus unit by literally getting my foot in the door and showing up. It takes time to learn your campus and get a better idea of the bigger picture, but it definitely helps to jump on opportunities to get involved with, collaborate with, or even just have a conversation with people outside of the library.

In The Sweatshop Or Reaping The Lottery Win

Are you feeling overworked these days? Do you feel the pressure to publish, present and serve on a dozen different committees? Does it seem like you are trying to do the work of two librarians, and that you just never have time to get much of anything truly constructive done? If so, welcome to the “Ivory Sweatshop”. That’s the term used in an article in this week’s Chronicle [Paywall Alert!] to describe the current academic workplace – or at least the way it feels to many faculty. What the article really attempts to do, is to frame the way today’s junior faculty feel in comparison to those who went through the tenure process a decade or more ago. The consensus of those interviewed appears to be that faculty are under much more pressure now to produce – and are being held to a much higher standard than colleagues who have already achieved tenure. I hear from academic librarians who know they aren’t keeping up with the latest news and developments as well as they should because they are challenged to find the time. This is reflected in one of the comments in the article: “This job has gotten a thousand percent harder than when I started out,” says Mr. Bergman, who began teaching in 1967. It takes a lot more time now, he says, for scholars to keep current with advances in their discipline.”

In the very same issue of the Chronicle there is a personal essay [Paywall Alert!] that presents a quite different picture of what it is like to work in academia these days. The author, a tenured faculty member at a rising research university, shares the process he went through in working out a midlife crisis resulting from that perennial question – what should I do with the rest of my life. His ultimate epiphany about his lot in life and what to do about it could be described as anything but feeling like working in a sweatshop. He writes:

That led me to the moment of clarity I had been searching for: I woke up to the fact that achieving tenure and promotion are like winning the lottery. With the odds against landing a tenure-track job in the humanities growing longer every year, I had hit the proverbial jackpot and been granted an opportunity that very few people have: the freedom to pursue my own interests on my own terms. Within the constraints of my job obligations, I could do whatever I wanted with my life.

That’s sounds like a pretty good deal. Who wouldn’t like to be in a position where they have many options and could take advantage of any of them. How many of you feel like you’ve hit the lottery in your position? Or do you feel like you are working in an academic version of a sweatshop? Which is it in academia? Depending on what you observe and who you talk to you will hear both versions. More likely you’ll hear from someone who feels like they are in the sweatshop complaining about a colleague who they believe has hit the lottery. It’s the “why I’m I working so damn hard while that co-worker seems to be barely doing anything at all?” I don’t know if the difference is simply an outcome of being on the tenure track versus having survived it. There’s no question that those on the track are feeling enormous pressure to succeed. But it would be a bad case of generalization to suggest that everyone who has made it shifts their career into neutral.

I have a good friend at a research university that has a very rigorous tenure process. Although he received tenure two years ago I’ve noticed no slowdown in his work or research agenda, and if anything he seems even busier. The difference I observe is that the pressure has shifted from external – exerted by a tenure process – to internal – the pressure one puts on oneself to achieve beyond the normal expectation. I wonder if there are also differences in perceptions based on being on the front line versus being in the administrative office. I know that reference and instruction librarians can feel overwhelmed trying to keep up with the demands placed upon them. I can also tell you that it’s no picnic for administrators these days, especially when we are all expected to be doing much more with fewer resources.

My own philosophy is that it’s always better too have to much to do than not enough, and it’s not that hard these days to come up with more than enough to keep the pressure cooker on medium to high range. Doing so doesn’t have to mean that you are working in a sweatshop though. In fact, I think that on the average day, a faculty member or an academic librarian, no matter how many deadlines there are, no matter how many committee reports are due and no matter how many classes there are to prepare for, is incredibly fortunate to have a challenging and rewarding career – and that’s why so many new professionals seek to enter this arena despite the odds of landing a job and why many who are past the age of retirement refuse to leave [Paywall Alert!]. And when you compare the work of many employed in academia to those individuals performing jobs where there is considerable physical labor or unpleasant or dangerous working conditions, you can’t help but conclude that those of us working in academia are more lottery winners than sweatshop toilers. How would you describe your situation? Sweatshop loser or lottery winner?