Update: the File, Feedback and the Future

It has been more than three months since my last post. You could imagine how hectic it has been since the labour disruption ended and classes resumed at my university. The academic year has been extended into June and the natural rhythm of my work life has gone topsy turvy! It is the end of March and normally teaching information literacy classes wind down around this time. However, it appears we are in the swing of things for teaching. March is the new January! Despite the academic year being shifted, other timelines relevant to my position have not. Take for instance, the fiscal year. The end of April is still the deadline for expending your collections fund. The problem is that my colleagues and I will be preoccupied with teaching and reference services during the time that we usually devote to purchasing books and other materials for our respective subject areas. I like to call it hyper shopping. You have one month to spend $5-$8000 on books that you should have been selecting throughout the fiscal year. As a result, I feel more and more out of balance at work. It is a casuality of the strike.

 Or maybe it could be that I’m pregnant again!  

As for my file…I received the gists of the references that my T&P committee consulted, late December. Reading the summaries of the comments from solicited referees and my own recommended referees. Although anonymous some of the referees were easily identifiable. I was happy with the comments. Now to wait for the final verdict.

Librarians with Faculty Status: Revisited

I’ve contemplated whether to write this post given that it will no doubt tamper with my anonymity. But this issue has been on my mind for a couple of weeks so here goes… For two weeks now my university has been an eerie ghost town. Contract faculty, teacher assistants and graduate assistants have been on strike for almost two weeks. The university administration, having learned from a previous 11-week strike, decided to cancel all academic activities (including most classes with some exceptions).

This is my first strike. I narrowly escaped a strike at this university as a student almost a decade ago (I graduated the summer before the previous strike). I have to admit that I’m still on the fence about supporting the union on strike. I feel the demands of the graduate assistants and teaching assistants are unrealistic given the current financial climate at the university. However, I sympathize with the contract faculty who do not have job security. Having been a contract employee for three years, I understand the anguish of uncertainty that hangs around you. What is unconscionable is that contract faculty who have worked for many years at the university must re-apply for their jobs each academic year. The university does rely heavily on precarious employees to teach a largely undergraduate population.

For two weeks now, the library has been eerily quiet with a few students (mostly those living in residence) dotting the library. The university is still open as is the library. Full-time librarians and professors are part of the faculty association that is separate from the union on strike. During the strike everything is expected to be status quo. The library is open. Librarians are expected to come into work. Librarians are still providing reference service in person, on the phone, via email and virtually. Cataloguing librarians are in their offices cataloguing away. Committees are still meeting. Librarians must cross the picket line to get to work. Everything is status quo (with the exception of teaching information literacy classes) for the librarians. Professors are not teaching classes. Are professors expected to cross the picket line?  Nope.

That is the difference between librarians as faculty members and professors as faculty members. We, the librarians, must cross the picket line, to serve our users (the handful that are in the library and virtually). The truth is that librarians will never truely be like professors because we are not. A strike makes that very clear. We are service providers as well as teachers (for those who do teach information literacy classes or subject-specific classes). Professors are not tied to their offices on campus. With classes cancelled their focus might now turn to their research or service committments. They are more flexible to work elsewhere. There are some tasks that librarians can accomplish from home (such as collection work and writing reports), but officially librarians are expected to be in the library during the strike. Arguably, librarians can take this opportunity to use some of their research days and not cross the picket line, but prior arrangements must be made to take a research day and work from home.

Librarians will never truely be faculty members. But that is alright. I’m personally taking the strike time to catch up on some collection work and readings. I’m not sure how long this strike will last, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. As the days get colder for the picketers outside the ivory tower, I find myself growing more and more sympathetic to their cause….

Productivity: Web 2.0 style

I have to make a confession about an obsession. I am obsessed with productivity. Our department collaboratively writes a quarterly report (once monthly) on the activities of the department, including individual works. Sometimes I wonder how some of my colleagues manage to accomplish all that they do! I find that I’m a bit overwhelmed at times. I’m an odd duck about technology; a split personality embracing emerging technology one day and threatening to chain myself to the print reference collection another day.

My latest battle is with my agenda. I recognize that technology can help us to increase productivity, but sometimes it only complicates things. It seems that I am one of a very few who still use the paper agenda/journal to keep track of my busy life. I actually have a Google Calendar account that I’ve used, but ultimately the print agenda is the one that has a final say. There have been times that I’ve forgotten my agenda at work and having my schedule online to review over the weekend would have been wonderful, but I’m still tied to lugging that agenda around and writing (not typing) my schedule into it. I might revisit the Google Calender again because it really does appear that resistance is futile in this area. I’ll try a month with only using the Google Calendar and see what dire consequences ensue!

Another tool I found that assists in my productivity is the electronic post-it notes. It is a free software download that allows you to type up notes on your computer desktop and print them out. I do my weekly to-do lists Monday mornings and print them out. I also have electronic post-its for on the fly things to do, reminders, little notes etc. The official software is available at the Post-It Note site for purchase. The purchase version has more features (such as the ability to categorize notes, setting alarm reminders etc.), but I find the free version adequate for what I’m doing. Once everything has been cleared from the note, I usually trash the note. Often I have more than 1 Post-It note floating around on my desktop to remind me of yet another matter to attend to. 

I’m always curious to know what other tools/technologies librarians are using to manage information and their workload.

The File is Returned

The file has been in my possession now for about 2 weeks. I have not looked at it yet, but I have about a month to look at it and revise it. The chair of the tenure committee met with me a few weeks ago and we went over the file and the committee’s suggestions for changes. I have to make some changes to my CV (mostly grammatical) and add some more “evidence” of my work in the area of collections. I think the recommended changes were reasonable, but I think someone on the committee went a bit overboard with suggestions for periods and other punctuation marks (LOL)! In my opinion, the experience of having your file criticized (albeit constructively) wasn’t as terrifying as it seem a few months ago. Time has really flown by and I honestly don’t believe that I can put the same amount of energy in revising the file as I did originally in the summer. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit resentful of the deadline being in the middle of the busiest time of the year, but this forces me not to take the process too seriously. In theory, I don’t have to revise my file at all since it is only a “suggestion” from the committee, but knowing me I will be spending another Saturday in my office long after the reference desk is closed, to work on this. In the meanwhile, the file is lying on a stack of papers beckoning me to look at it. While I am working at my computer, I can feel its presence bearing down on me and silently calling me to it. I try to ignore it and so far, I’ve succeeded, but I will try to resist opening up that can of worm until I have hours upon hours of time to devote to it. I give myself one more week to ignore it and then I’m toast!

Work/Life Balance

A colleague at another library hinted that slaving away for years just to achieve tenure was not worth it to her. She said that at her age it wasn’t worth it at all. Her eyes were open to a better opportunity. A job that didn’t require too much stress and wasn’t at the expense of spending ones time with family. She was eyeing a public library job! I was astonished! What about the perks of being an academic librarian with faculty status? The research opportunities, the teaching, the sabbatical and the expense account? To her it wasn’t worth it. Albeit, she does work in a different environment from myself, but the internal and external pressures of work, the tenure process, campus and library politics and family demands has contributed to the dismal conclusion that it isn’t worth it for her.

I had to pause and reflect a bit about my own personal battle trying to balance work and life. I should be in the depths of despair right now, but I’m too busy to have a meltdown. It seems the demands at work has increased tenfold since last September. The added pressure of proving myself to my peers doesn’t lend well to balancing work and home life. After the little one goes to bed I’m checking my email and trying to catch up on work that was not completed today. My to do list must be cleared before tomorrow or else I won’t be in control of the next day. I feel like Sisyphus. I cross off things off my to do list at 12 am at night/or in the morning, only to have another to do list to complete the following morning.  I try not to think that I’ve only spent 3 hrs with the little one today and only about 1 hr with my husband. I try not to feel too guilty; assuring myself that this is for my little ones future etc. The reality is that I enjoy the stress, the chaos, the busyness.. I enjoy what I do. I love my job. And that might be my downfall. The only comfort that I can take right now is the fact that “this too shall pass”. Once November rolls around, I will be planning my vacation in December! I’d like to think that once tenure is achieved, I can slow down and perhaps achieve the elusive work/family balance. Until then, I’ve got to keep my chin up and keep rolling that rock up that hill.

The T & P File: File Advisor #2

So I met with file advisor #2 and, putting my bruised ego aside, the result of this meeting was very insightful and productive. File advisor #2 was a great choice because of her intimate knowledge of the workings of the T & P committee (she chaired the committee not too long ago!). It is interesting that file advisor #2 picked up on things that file advisor #1 did not. File advisor #1 took a top down approach to the file. That is, looking at my my personal statement to guide the development of the file. On the other hand, file advisor #2 had a bottom up approach. She focused on looking at the individual documents and evidence to help form/shape my descriptions and statements (particularly my teaching statement). This is just an example as to why it is important to have different individuals consult your draft file.

I got some very valuable feedback from file advisor #2. Some include:

• CV: moving some things from my CV to the actual file (as evidence); be consistent with my tenses
• References: consider using a tenured librarian as a reference as opposed to another tenure-tracked librarian (I was a bit surprised by this as I didn’t see why it would make a difference, but I will incorporate this change, because file advisor #2 is very knowledgeable and I trust her candor)
• Information Literacy section: to include a separate page for each sample class I chose and in bullet form (to make it easier for the T& P evaluators) address the specific techniques or methods I used for that class
• for documents created with others or documents which are modified, I should include detail description of what I did
• for each section of the file, include the most recent examples first

The end looks like it is sight. I will be tackling all these issues and pray to complete the finalized draft of my file by the end of the week. I need a vacation!

The File: 2 weeks to go!

My subconscious mind has been playing tricks with me for the past few weeks. When I dream about working on my file and wake up at 3 am in the morning to jot down a thought, I know that I’m sweating this file thing! I feel as if I don’t have enough time! I have two weeks to go before the deadline for submitting the t & p file, but it is not complete yet! I was hoping to have the file completed by now so that I could show my draft to various file advisors. These are tenured librarians who have volunteered to discuss your file with you and offer any possible suggestions for improving it. I’ve showed my incomplete file to a file advisor outside my department. Her feedback was wonderful and it made we rethink including an information literacy philosophy statement. It is optional to include an IL /teaching philosophy statement (for librarians who do teach) and I decided that I wouldn’t include one (after an off-hand remark by another colleague). HOWEVER, after speaking with file advisor #1, I decided that the contents of my file and my CV warranted discussion of my approach to teaching information literacy classes and professional development in this area. I now realize that this is the best route. I did experiment a bit with different technologies and methods of teaching library classes over the past few years. The CV is very telling in this area, but they are scattered across the CV (some in presentations, some in materials created and published etc.). The IL statement will bring these scattered bits of information into one place. File advisor #1 also asked for clarification regarding certain parts of my file. Since she was outside of my department, she was able to look at my work history and accomplishments (via the file) with fresh eyes. I had to be a bit more explicit in my personal statement so that outsiders (i.e. the t&p committee members) who were not familiar with my work and responsibilities would be able to fully understand the file. Thus, I am partially grateful that I saw a file advisor before the file was completed.

Tip: If you have file advisors, show them your file before a draft of your file is completed. Their feedback might lead to a different approach to your file and save you a lot of time in the long run.

The file is about 98% completed. The only problem that I am having right now is deciding which course materials created for information literacy/library classes I should include. This should be samples of the types of different materials created for a class as well as the different approaches or methods I’ve used for classes. I’ve selected 2 classes, but I’m not sure if I should include more. I’m trying to follow the rule of 3s, but when you’ve taught over 100 classes in 3 years, this is a challenging task.  Should I include handouts created for an undergraduate vs graduate course? Humanities vs Social Sciences? Hands-on library session vs lecture hall session? ESL students vs high school students? Blogs vs traditional paper hand-outs? Materials from year 1 or materials from year 3? Should my hand-outs demonstrate the natural evolution of my teaching abilities or should I just stick with only the best ones (i.e. the most recent materials)? I have to remember that file documents provide evidence of your work. In the guidelines regarding documents supporting your file, it stresses that you should not include EVERYTHING, but this is easier said than done.

Next week, I will be meeting with file advisor #2 (complete opposite of file advisor #1) for feedback on my file. This meeting should prove interesting! In the meanwhile, I doubt those dreams will go away!

T & P=Triumph and Perseverance

It has been a month since my last message. In between posts I have been working on 2 research studies simultaneously, starting several new highly involved projects and trying to assemble my file for promotion and tenure file.

I’ve created a table of contents to organize the information and I am slowly plucking information from my files (going as far back as 2004) for the file. I must admit that when you dig up material that you’ve designed, classes you’ve taught and projects that you’ve completed, there is a deep sense of just how much you have accomplished. This is why I think that instead of T & P being a process of “tremble and puke” it should now be one of “triumph and perseverance”! One of the librarians on the T & P committee mentioned that there is no room for modesty when preparing your file. It is your turn to shine and tout your accomplishments. The items that I am assembling for the file, I believe, speak for themselves! I can’t believe that I’ve taught that many classes or accomplished so much in 3 years!

On a more bitter-sweet note, I’ve learned an excellent lesson about being extremely organized. I was working on the section about the IL classes that I’ve taught and wanted to select some classes to list in my file. I wanted to look at all email messages from instructors thanking me for teaching a particular class. To my horror my email folders for “Classes Taught” from 2004-2006 were deleted! How could this be?  Apparently, I did not notice that I hadn’t copied them from my local drive to the server before deleting the email messages from my hard drive. I’m not too sure what happened there as I was pretty sure that they were transferred over. Anyhow, I was fortunate that I had printed out all email correspondence regarding each IL class taught and placed the print-outs in a folder! What luck! I’m a paper person through and through and this time it helped. It would have been extremely difficult to select the courses to add to my file without these print-outs! But I learned my lesson and I am now being extremely careful with organization of work-related files.

The T & P File: References

Although I’ve got 3 months to go before I need to submit my tenure and promotion (T & P) file, I am nontheless panicking. I have been so preoccupied lately with pursuing my research projects and serving on committees that I’ve neglected time to sit down and examine which materials to include in the physical file as well as contacts/references to ponder.

A seasoned librarian gave me a wonderful tip about my CV that I hadn’t considered before. She mentionned that the committee will be looking at my CV to identify potential referees (e.g. colleagues on committees etc.) to contact who can vouch for my work in the 3 areas under review (professional performance, professional development and service). This is in addition to the 3 or 4 contacts that I will include in my file. This seasoned librarian said that I should strategically drop names on my CV. The more frequent, the better. If I mention a particular name several times throughout the CV this will improve the chances of the committee selecting that person! Interesting thought.

I am a bit concerned about the 1 year gap on my CV and how this might impact the creation of my file. I am particularly worried about references. I have my own references roughly mapped out, but the committee might find a contact that doesn’t remember me! I’m thinking mostly faculty members. I am contemplating adding information in my file about an information literacy class in which I did extensive preparation for. I am particularly proud of this class because of all the hard work I put into it. The problem is I did the class a year before I went on maternity leave and was planning to work with the instructor during the summer to teach another class the following fall. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to reconnect with the instructor before I went on maternity leave (and after I returned). I am wondering whether I should reconnect with this instructor and possibly, collaborate with her to teach another couple of information literacy sessions for her students. Am I doing this for purely selfish reasons (i.e. reconnect with her this summer so that I can use her as a contact)? If I had the time, I would certainly pursue another collaboration with this instructor and teach these particular students. The problem is that I am on 3 committees (possibly 4 in the near future), working on 2 research projects, coordinating information literacy courses and supervising librarians. Plus there are a few “little” projects I would love to pursue in the fall! I need to think on this a bit more.

To address the gap in my CV, I started writing a personal statement outlining my history at my institution (i.e. contract status and maternity leave). I was unsure about how personal I should make it. Most of the people on the committee will be aware of the maternity leave, but once the file is reviewed by the t & p committee (consisting mostly of my librarian colleagues) the file will move up in the academic chain and will be read by people outside of the library. I tried to be as succinct and factual as possible. One can not help but wonder whether the maternity leave will impact how this file is received. I don’t know. It is still a draft.

Resistance is Futile

I’ve finally decided that resistance is futile, jumped on the bandwagon, and submit to Google’s total domination. I’ve set up a iGoogle account. I’ve decided it would be nice to have a portal after all. I’ll try to go to my portal every day at work and look at my to-do-list through Toodleo, read my blogs through Google Reader, read my emails through Gmail, share my documents through Google docs and even play some games to reduce stress. It feels good to not think about privacy issues and wondering what sorts of information does Google has on me from all these services that I’ve signed up for. I am learning to love the Google bomb while I can. I’ll report on any interesting ways to use iGoogle to organize information and make my job a bit easier. Right now, I’m just learning to control the urge to play Pac-Man instead of working!