So you want to be a subject librarian...

I work as an Academic Liaison Librarian - a subject librarian - at the University of York. It's a role I'd always wanted to do (preferably at York) and last month I was made permanent, proving that it's sometimes worth taking a gamble for the right role! (It was maternity cover, and I was leaving a permanent contract elsewhere.) But even though I'd always wanted to do this job, and I'd work-shadowed subject librarians before, and I'd talked to LOADS of them about the job, I still felt like I didn't really know what it would be like - it seems everyone has a slightly different experience, and there isn't 'a typical day in the life' as the job changes all the time.

With that in mind, here's a post about what the job has been like for me, and specifically where it matched my expectations and where it confounded them.

Things I expected about being a subject librarian

• There's lots of teaching. October and the student-induction in particular are an absolute manic whirl of preparation and delivery. My previous experience of teaching was putting on sessions that any student could come to (voluntarily) - during induction you're fitting your content around what the department has set up for you, which brings with it its own set of challenges.
• Working with academic departments is great. I really like the academic environment but don't want to be an academic - academic librarianship shares quite a high number of themes, as it happens, representing the best of both worlds for me. And I'm really lucky to work with switched-on and fascinating departments / academics. Higher Education is ace.
• You have to be able to balance a budget. I've been in charge of a budget before, but it was pretty straightforward supply and demand. With book budgets there's a whole load of factors complicating things, like different pots for different periods of writing with one of my subjects, and needing to spend up exactly what you have by a certain time, and keeping some money back for emergencies, and developing the collection whilst meeting teaching needs, and all that stuff. There is a sense that if you take your eye off the ball you could really stuff things up. That said, spending thousands of pounds on really great resources is an undeniably great feeling... 
• There's a lot of freedom. You can really be the master of your own subject domain, which I love - and you get treated like a grown-up, and are allowed to get on with stuff in the way you see fit. I honestly don't think there's a better fit in libraryland for people who want responsibility but don't want the kind that leaves you fighting fires the whole time and all the stress that brings.
• You get your fingers in many pies. Relates to the point above - subject librarians tend to get involved with all sorts of wider projects which don't relate to our subject role, so for example I'm involved with the social media and marketing side of things, implementing the new catalogue, research support, info lit in the digital age, etc.
• It stumps your ambition. I don't know where I'll be in 10 year's time, but there's a strong possibility it'll be right here doing the same thing. I've looked at the kinds of jobs on the pay-grades above mine, and the increased stress and decreased freedom aren't worth the extra money / career advancement / prestige / whatever. I did think this might happen. You're always supposed to think two jobs ahead, but I no longer can.

Things I didn't expect about being a subject librarian

• Checking your email requires actual brain-power. I know this sounds stupid, but the emails you get take a lot more time and energy to process than I expected... They take a lot more thought. I've got used to it now, but compared with previous jobs where you could quickly deal with emails and move on, in this one it felt like almost every one I got (and there are lots - it's an emaily kind of a job) required concentration and good chunk of time.
• There's lots of tricky decisions... This is related to the above, and I should have anticipated it really - but it still surprises me how often I get asked questions to which there is no right answer. Lots of judgement calls, about whether to buy stuff, about what type of binding we go with, about whether the ratio of books per student we're buying is correct, etc etc.
• There is an expectation that you know what books you have in your collection - as in, all of them! A side of the job I wasn't prepared for was going into the houses of the recently deceased, at the request of their family, to see if they have anything we'd find useful. This has actually happened twice in the last month, and generally speaking we get asked quite a lot to look at people's collections that they wish to donate to us. And they expect me to be able to say "Ah, so and so's treatise on community in post-war Prussia! We've been looking for that!" when, of course, I don't have off-the-top-of-my-head knowledge of the tens of thousands of books we have in stock already. So I take a laptop and spot-check stuff against the catalogue and then it usually turns out we have much of it already. Maybe in 20 year's time I'll be able to nail this particular skill?
• Just how much of my existing interests and skills could be pulled into the job. I obviously thought the job would match my interests but I've been really pleasantly surprised by just how many thinks I've played around with and blogged and presented about have come in handy. I tweet for the library, create Prezis for the library, use Issuu for the library, edit and create video for the library, teach students about web 2 tools for the library, etc etc. Woot. .

 From Twitter...

I asked subject librarians from Twitter what they didn't expect about their roles - here are some of the replies, via Storify:

So there you go. Would I recommend being a subject librarian? Absolutely, 100% - it's even better than I thought it would be. Got any questions? Leave me a comment...

- thewikiman

P.S

Some other stuff I really like about this role which doesn't really fall into the categories above

• Working with students. I have a real bug-bear with people who dislike students en masse - don't work in bloody HE then! I like them - some groups are more engaged than others, but the really engaged ones make it all worth while. They're likeable, enthusiastic, self-aware. It's fun working with them.
• Helping people. I'm not a particularly virtuous person, I don't wander round thinking about how lovely it is to help people - but when I actually do, I love it. Quite often students will come for a one-on-one session on finding information and stuff, and leave really, really pleased with what they've learned. They're better equipped and more enthusiastic than when they came in - that's a great feeling.
• Related training and conferences. I had a bit of an issue in my old job, where they didn't particularly encourage me to go and present at stuff -  I did a lot in my own time. Here, though, they're very encoruaging - plus the kind of stuff I like talking about is much more relevant to this job. So I'm enjoying presenting as a York person, rather than just as me independently. (Here's my schedule for 2012 if anyone is interested - so much for saying no to everything! While I'm self-promoting, here's the updated publications page too, with news of books and things.)
• Twitter being a constant source of invaluable stuff. More so than ever, the time I put into Twitter pays massive dividends. The amount of times I can go from not knowing anything to having several valuable opinions in minutes is amazing - it's enabled me to learn on the job much quicker.
• My colleagues. Obviously this is a very York-specifc one, but I work in a really great team, with supportive, nice, and funny people. .

P.P.S This has very little to do with the above, but I'd recommend reading Katherine Widdows' excellent post about social media and Web 2.0 in the academic library environment - it's on her blog here and it's really informative. Warwick are brilliant at this sort of thing, and this is an insight as to why.

Why the 2nd job you ever get in libraries may be the most important of your career

I have a theory: I think the 2nd job you ever get in libraries is the most important. We’ll come on to the why in a minute – first of all I wanted to see if others’ experiences backed up my hypothesis. I put a poll on to Twitter, asking this: Which job was most significant in getting you to where you are in libraries now? Which most influenced you onto your current path?

I didn’t want to prejudice the outcome so I didn’t mention my theory. The results were interesting – they did seem to (just!) back me up:

Now, this is a very specific question. I’m not asking which factor is most significant to where people are now (a lot of people would say professional development outside of their 9-to-5 jobs, or their Masters perhaps) and I’m not asking which job is the most important in terms of people being in the information profession at all (presumably that’d be the first job for the vast majority of people) – it’s all about where you are, the path you’re on, the area of librarianship you’ve ended up in or the role you’re currently doing.

So I believe the 2nd job you ever get in libraries is arguably the most important because it dictates much SO of what happens to you afterwards. Obviously all jobs have an effect on what comes after them to some extent, but the 2nd job is something of a tipping point whose significance is, I’d imagine, not appreciated at the time most people are applying for it. Most people’s first library jobs fall into one of two categories – securing an entry-level position prior to doing the Masters (or becoming a graduate trainee), or securing an entry-level position because you’ve sort of stumbled into libraries accidently, and then finding it was a lot more interesting than you thought, so you stay in the sector. As has been discussed before, almost no first library jobs are beyond the entry-level – even people who have the Masters have to start at or near the bottom.

So – as a result of this, there’s not much proactive career choice about your first library job: you just need a job. Most people start as something like a ‘Library assistant’ – often a customer facing role, in the library itself, issuing books and helping with queries etc. You only really start to mould you career when you apply for that 2nd job – and my argument is that you need to make a really sound choice here, because it has a vital domino effect on your subsequent career. And actually, it’s tricky to divert off the path you choose for yourself at that 2nd job choice, because the 3rd job will (probably) be a higher up or better or related version of that 2nd job and (probably) pretty good, meaning you build a career off the back of it.

I’m obviously generalising here, and of course there will be exceptions – and throughout I’m imagining someone staying in more or less the same place, rather than having accrued several jobs at the same level on their CV simply because they’ve relocated a few times. But generally speaking, if you’re in that position that so many of us were in – you’re in your first library role, thinking it’s actually pretty good, wondering about making it into a career – you need to think carefully about the path you choose and, not least, how long that path is in reality.

I’ll take the academic library as an example, because that’s what I know best. Your first role was in Lending Services on the desk, so where do you go next? If you choose to stay in Customer Services then you’re looking at a Reference / Enquiries Desk role perhaps, otherwise there’s a big jump up to something like Customer Services Manager or Site Manager. If you go into the cataloguing side of things you could go for an Assistant Cataloguer post. You could try and move towards the subject librarian side of things by going for a Team Assistant post in an academic librarian subject team. Or there might be a ‘Digital Library Assistant’ type role, to do with digitisation or e-Resources. Whichever of these you choose, your 3rd job will probably also be in this area, is my point. And your 4th job too, perhaps. Of course people change all the time, but it’s quicker to develop a career in a roughly straight line. (I know this, because I didn’t - and have only in the last few months arrived at the job I actually wanted to do all along, and have much younger colleagues who took a more direct route…)

Part of the reason I’m writing this is because I know some people who’ve been working in libraries a good while, and are just sort of treading water – because that second job took them down a path, and now that path is blocked for whatever reason. There just aren't any more senior jobs than they're already doing, in the area they've come to specialise in. So I’d recommend getting hold of one of those organisational structure charts for your library (or the library you’d like to work in) and literally plotting your ideal route upwards, seeing what’s feasible, where the obstacles are, when you’d be waiting an age for people to retire or leave, etc. Some paths have very few destinations so are more competitive. Some might not even exist by the time you get to the good bit. Some paths might look like their beyond you in terms of expertise, but actually you could get there over time. Some paths have loads of destinations but aren’t well paid. Money certainly isn’t everything, but progression means a lot – you don’t want to get stuck in a rut.

It would be nice just to live in the moment, just to ‘be’ and not worry about all this stuff. But librarianship is a hugely competitive profession, with far more qualified librarians than there are jobs for qualified librarians. So it’s really never too early to be thinking about the career path you’re embarking upon – ideally, you need to start making informed choices almost from the very start.

If you’ve made it through all that - do you agree with my 2nd Job Hypothesis?

- thewikiman

#libday7: a Multimedia Journal

It's Library Day in the Life time again! Here is a week in my life as an Academic Liaison Librarian - works best in full screen mode:

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(Here's a link in case you're viewing this in Google Reader and the embedded content doesn't display.)

I don't normally write much for this (last time round I did a video) because I think people are often over-saturated with LibDay posts - but I'm making an exception this time because my new job is so much more interesting than previous roles! Also, subject librarian is one of those roles which people find very difficult to really get a handle on - no two days are the same, so finding out what subject librarians actually DO is tricky. So the journal above is a fuller account.

Let me know if you have any questions about the job, particularly if it's an area you're wondering about going into yourself...

- thewikiman

Average is no longer enough? Noted. Now let's move on.

A lot is being made of the fact that in librarianship, Average is No Longer Enough. Was average enough at some point previously? Possibly; it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are enough librarians in the profession who love it enough that they don't want to be average, rather than reluctantly excelling themselves because they've been told to do so at a conference or by a blog post.

I predict that the total number of information professionals (in the current understanding of the word) will shrink at a fairly steady rate during my career. The Average will probably be the first to go (the Really Bad being, in my experience, remarkably stubborn). It'll be a Darwinian process - the people that really love this will probably be strong enough to survive, because they're the ones likely to be enthusiastic about embracing new challenges.

In a job market where there are far more qualified professionals than there are professional posts, the whole idea of trying to turn the drifters into yet more super-librarians is perverse anyway. The people who think average is enough are probably never at the kind of events where people say it isn't. Let's stop telling each other what we already know, take the non-existence of THE SPOON as read, and use our time in conferences and on social media to talk about something more useful - like specifically HOW to find your 'extra' rather than just the fact that you need to.

- thewikiman 

p.s Please use the Comments section for all puns about what mean-spirited post this is. :)

The MACHINES are Coming! Recent advances in library technology

Earlier today I did a session on technology and libraries, for the Prison Libraries Group at CILIP HQ. Prison Librarians are extremely limited in their access to technology - essentially they operate under the same restrictions as the prisoners, so not only can they not use Twitter, they can't even Google it at work! Here is the Prezi I used - it's a whistle-stop primer of recent advances, and while normally I try to make my presentations stand up on their own I'm afraid this one is really only the bare bones and I filled in a lot of gaps with what I was saying. (Works best on full-screen mode.)

 

The Machines Are Coming: Recent Advances in Library Technology on Prezi

I had a really good time even though I had to leave early due to starting my new job tomorrow. It reminded me again how diverse our roles are, and how two people called 'librarians' could go for years potentially without doing the same stuff. Having to make sure certain prisoners don't get access to fiction which glorifies the very crimes they are incarcerated for is not a Collection Development decision I'll be needing to make any time soon. And having to retain the catalogue in my head because not only is it not online but there isn't even a card catalogue is a skill I'm glad I don't need - I'd be really bad at that...

For the delegates

So for anyone who was there today, here are the links I mentioned that I'd include in this post:

• Click for the SCONUL Focus issue with the technology timeline
• Click for the guide to starting a blog
• Plus click this for another seperate presenation on libraries and technology and if you're interested, click this for all the guides to technology-related library stuff I've ever written, in one place...

- Thanks for having me, I had a great time! And especially thank you to Sibylla for inviting me. :)

- thewikiman