Fear (Revisited) or Untenured Angst!

As a younger, untenured librarian I might be a good candidate for introducing new ideas or fresher ideas to the library. I’m encouraged to contribute my ideas and offer solutions to problems within the library. The problem is that those bearing the “untenured” status are vulnerable. The whole process requires that you be evaluated by your peers. You are told that you should be free to express your opinions or ideas without fear of reprisal from colleagues. I’m not too sure if that is actually the practice. As petty as it seems, your colleagues might hold grudges for ideas or projects that you might want to pursue or advocate. I hate to think that disagreements or differences in opinion might affect my career, but it is a possibility. What is the solution? Not sure. Just. Grin. And. Bear. It! OR…

Get a mentor who is aware of the political climate, allegiances etc. in the library and the overall institution (i.e. college or university). This mentor (preferably tenured) should be able to guide you through navigating the tenure process , advise you on your professional development and/or be a source of emotional support during the rough patches of this adventure. You might also want to get a mentor outside of the department or the institution to get another perspective on these areas of your career. I’ve turned to my mentor on a number of occasions and her advice has always been invaluable. With her assistance I’ve identified areas where I could contribute in the library (committees, projects etc.). I’m also aware of the political underpinnings in the library and where to tread lightly.

The tenure process makes you more aware of your performance and how others might perceive you and your work. I’m experiencing much fear angst about my vulnerability. It might be the whole process or I might be too much of a worrier.

But they don’t understand…

I’m a pretty calm and rational person (with the exception of deciding to have a child at this point in my career, but that is another story on its own!) However, since my little one is almost two years old it seems more and more people in my life (in-laws, family, friends and even daycare workers) are urging me to have another baby. Their reasoning:

The little one will be spoiled by being an only child…
The poor little one will not have anyone to play with… (hello! it is called daycare and play dates!!)
Two is easier to handle than one because they will keep each other company (hello??! twice as many chances to get sick!)

I’ve tried explaining that I need to achieve tenure before I would even consider the idea, but to no avail. What is wrong with that? I can certainly understand why female academic librarians as well as female faculty members decide to wait until achieving tenure before having children. It is extremely difficult! Case in point: I’ve decided that I would like to be more involved in my local library association, but I have to coordinate the timing with daycare and my husband’s schedule. I’ve decided to revisit this idea next year. It is just too complicated. I just don’t have the time freedom, which is vital to pursue scholarly activities and professional development, outside of the 9-5 pm realm. I hesitate to make such a commitment if there is a chance that I can not deliver. Will this affect my bid for tenure? Most likely, but I will have to adjust and find other ways to contribute to the profession….

Fear, Tenure and All that Jazz!

The Oxford English Dictionary has several definitions for fear:
1. In OE.: A sudden and terrible event; peril.
2. a. The emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impending danger, or by the prospect of some possible evil.
c. An instance of the emotion; a particular apprehension of some future evil.
d. A state of alarm or dread.

However, I think they should add “tenure” to this list. I am in a state of alarm about going through the first round of the tenure process this year. I dread the thought of putting my file together and bearing my working soul for my colleagues to judge. The whole idea of the tenure process is scary. Imagine being under scrutiny for 6 years and working at a job for 3 years before you are evaluated. In essence you are taking 6 years to prove to your colleagues and employer that you are worthy to be included among the “elite” and, as one union representative mentioned recently, become one of the “untouchables”. After the 6 years if you are not “good enough” then you are fired!

There has been an innumerable amount of blogs, lists and articles debating whether librarians should have tenure or not. I don’t want to get into the debate, but for those tenure-track librarians the process is unbelievably stressful. Last year, while I was on contract (before my tenure-track position), a library school student mentioned that he had heard that many academic librarians suffered from burnout. In my naivety, I expressed surprise by this. Yes, the job is stressful at times, but there are cycles to this madness. I was in a fool’s contract fool’s paradise. Now the realities are becoming even more apparent to see as I plan ahead for the first round of the tenure process. I have a list of projects to start, papers to write and committees to join before the Fall semester. Why? Because I don’t like how I look on paper right now. I need to build my CV as well as think and plan strategically for my first review. That “sudden and peril event” will be upon me soon!

The Scholarship of Canadian Research University Librarians

I’ve submitted my article for an online journal (not peer-reviewed) and am awaiting feedback. In the meanwhile I found ” The Scholarship of Canadian Research University Librarians” quite interesting. The researchers surveyed Canadian academic librarians regarding their research and scholarly activities.

Some highlights:

Motivation for doing research: most librarians engaged in scholarly activities for personal growth and professional development

Requirement for scholarship: over half (51%) of surveyed librarians worked for institutions that required them to research or engage in scholarly activities. At my institution, tenure-track librarians are expected to contribute to the profession (e.g. writing articles/books, presenting, participation in association work etc.)

Recommended percentage of time librarians should spend on scholarship: about 42% said 10-14% of our time should be devoted to scholarship. In my case, I calculated that 9% of my time is allocated for scholarship. This is based on working 260 days during the year minus 22 vacation days and minus 17 holidays=221 days worked. 221 days worked x 7 hrs a day (yeah right!!)=1547 hrs worked for the year. Out of that 20 days are allowed for research. Therefore 20 research days x 7 hrs=140 hrs allowed for research. 140 hrs out of 1547 hours worked is roughly 9% of time worked. I personally think it should be higher given that scholarship is a requirement of tenure. This, however, is contrary to the next finding….

Ranking of activities in order of perceived importance for tenure and promotion: most ranked the practice of professional skills as the most important criteria for tenure and promotion with scholarship ranked second last. Interestingly, Quebec librarians (who don’t have to go through the tenure process) spend more time on professional responsibilities and less time on scholarship. Since I just started my official tenure position last term I’m not sure how much weight is actually given to scholarship in the tenure and promotion process at my institution. On paper it appears that professional performance and knowledge is most important during the first stage of the T and P process, but I’ll see in the upcoming months whether this is the case!

Importance of Scholarly Activities for Achieving Tenure and Promotion: not surprisingly most librarians ranked peer-reviewed journal articles as the most important form of scholarship. Interestingly, published books was ranked as second most important although the process of publishing a book is, in my opinion, more time consuming. Professional blogs and websites were ranked low (slightly above unpublished reports and artistic performances). What a pity because I know of a few bloggers that contribute a world of ideas worthly of publication via their blogs.  

Gender and Scholarly Intensity: there is a corelation between gender and intensity of scholarly pursuit.

“The data suggest a positive correlation between gender and scholarship. Male librarians are more likely to be represented in the Above Average and High categories of scholarly intensity and female librarians are more likely to be represented in the Below Average and Low categories. A Chi-square test of statistical significance indicated this result to be significant at the 99% level. The survey does not suggest any reason for this result, although there was also a statistically significant difference between male and female librarians in terms of hours per week devoted to scholarship. Male librarians were more likely to be in the Medium and High categories in terms of time devoted to scholarship, while female librarians were more likely to be in the Low category.”

Scholarly intensity was based on the results of Ranking of activities in order of perceived importance for tenure and promotion (i.e. someone publishing 3 peer-reviewed journal articles had a higher score for scholarly intensity than someone who published 3 book reviews). The results raise an interesting question: Why are female librarians less likely to publish or engage in scholarly activities? Could it be that family responsibilities prevent them from using extra time (beside the time offered at work) to pursuit scholarly activities? Or is it just that female librarians tend to participate in the lesser ranked scholarly activities (such as writing book reviews or publishing in non-peer-reviewed journals)? This sounds like an interesting research question….

New Year Resolution #1: Get Organized at Work

Now that I’ve been back to work the panic has set in! I’ve got information literacy classes to teach, students to meet with, meetings and more meetings! To make things just a bit more complicated I’ve got numerous emails I allowed to pile up while on a 3-week hiatus! I wonder sometimes how other librarians organize their work!

Be it resolved that I will get organized at work AND maintain this organization throughout the year.

This is my first New Year’s resolution for 2008. Starting with….. my email.

I will organize my email messages using message filters in Thunderbird to automatically move incoming messages (from the INBOX) to specific designated folders. . Here’s how:

1. First identify listservs, committees, people who frequently email you (e.g. secretary, acquisitions personnel etc.), frequent email notifications (eg. wiki changes, journal issues alerts, electronic slips for acquisitions etc.), agendas/meetings notes for committees/groups, or emails that you get regularly that might have the same subject (e.g. schedules).

2. Identify or create folders for these messages to be automatically placed. Try using sub-folders (e.g. “ListServ“, “Winter 2008“, “Tools“, “Professional Development” for the folder “Information Literacy“)

3. Note email address (e.g for alerts, listservs) or texts used in subject line or body of message. In Thunderbird go to Tools and click on Message Filters. Click on New to create a new filter.

4. Name your filter (e.g. Information Literacy Listserv). Type in the email address (e.g. ili-l@ala.org) or words in the subject line (e.g. ili) or content of the email that you want the filter to match.

5. Under “Perform these actions” select the folder/sub-folder that you want the message to be moved to (e.g. Information Literacy/Listserv) and click on OK.

6. Once you have created a number of filters you can arrange the order that you’ll like the filter applied. The filter will only apply to one message. So if you have an email that has “information literacy” in the body and you’ve set up 2 filters that flag messages with “information literacy” the email message will only be moved to the first filter listed in your list of filters. So choose your filter criteria very carefully!

7. After you set up your filters click on “Run Now” to apply the filter to messages already in your INBOX. Once the filters are set new messages will automatically be filtered.

Note that message filters only work on the computer that you set it up on. When I check my email from home via a web-based system the message filters don’t apply to new messages. When I return to work though I manually run the message filter to move the desired messages automatically!

This will help me save a lot of time. Once alerts and messages from listservs are moved to the appropriate folder my Inbox will (hopefully) only contain more important messages. The best part is that I’m aware of which folders have new messages because the folder colour changes to blue and it is bold. For more information go here.