Strategy for Success!

What do you WANT from us?

I am so tired of hearing librarians ask our users, “What do you want from us? How can we be relevant to you? Please tell us what to do!” It seems to me that WE need to tell them what we have to offer and why they need us. It is pitiful to watch these exchanges. The faculty from other parts of campus are confused that we don’t seem to be grounded in our value and therefore, pause to question our value. It is not a good strategy.

Identity Crisis 3

Library does not know what it wants to be. Why are we here and how do we justify our existence so that we will have some security in the future? Everyone wants to be relevant in the workplace so that they can continue to work and be paid and some even want to be useful members of society.

Libraries are undergoing a huge fear driven self examination since the Internet has become such a fixture in our lives. How will libraries compete? What do we have to offer that cannot be gotten with Google? Will anyone still want us?

How do libraries decide what they will be in the future? Well, I can tell you what they don’t do in Library. They don’t do calm analytical rational thinking about the future. They grasp onto ideas of what others are doing with no data to backup the validity of choosing a particular path. It is the behavior of those driven by fear.

I hate to tell them, but they are already so far behind, frozen in their fear, they may never catch up…

Identity Crisis 2

I like the idea that librarians tend to have very different academic backgrounds but that does not mean that we don’t have some characteristics in common. No, I’m not talking about the need to have quiet and organization and control – although I have seen a lot of that. I met many students in library school classes who shared a love of books, a passion for freedom of information, a concern for the preservation of knowledge and culture, and a desire to provide public service.

I don’t know if anyone that I work with cares about any of these things…

Identity Crisis 1

One of the results of having faculty librarians seems to be an identity crisis of sorts. Are they librarians or are they faculty? Which is more important? Which will you get credit for in terms of tenure and promotion and how does that effect how you perform your job?

It seems to be that those areas of evaluation that other professors use are of utmost importance: teaching, service, and scholarship. There is a mention of professional responsibilities but since this is not a norm amongst teaching faculty, there may be less emphasis and value attached to it.

Unfortunately, there are librarians who must spend a great deal of time doing this work. There are also librarians who should be spending some of their time doing this kind of work but will trivialize it since other teaching faculty may not value it.

The Library Team

I understand that the faculty status of librarians is important to them but I am not sure why yet. Is it that they want the status of educators or is it just that they want the nine month contract and the same pay as other university faculty?

I completely agree that librarians are educators but I am not sure that faculty status for all makes sense. There is the issue of the job of being a librarian, responsible for a library – collection and services. This is not a nine month job and for some it can be very time intensive. It also requires a team mentality when working with others in the library, especially the staff. Unlike other departments where the staff may include only the department secretary, we must work together with a large staff integral to the successful management of the library.

Weeding – Long Overdue

I don’t know when the last weeding of the collection was done. It has been a long while since. It seems that it is not a priority and why would it be? It is not something that has an obvious parallel to other faculty’s responsibilities.

It is actually considered a professional responsibility but the library faculty do not seem willing to spend their precious time on something that they have to defend as a necessary part of our job. I see this as another conflict for faculty librarians. They want so badly to “look” like other faculty members that they trivialize or just ignore those tasks that are specific to our jobs. Most of these tasks seem to be oriented toward the technical services of Library.