Do you really need to market yourself? Community-verus-local impact

I think there's a danger that being in the twitter bubble or the biblioblogosphere can really mess up our understanding of exactly what is and what isn't necessary to succeed in librarianship. There's an interesting post on the ever-excellent Hack Library School blog, about New Librarianship (or, as some more cynical people are calling it, 'librarianship'...) which I think relates to this issue. I'm going to quote a chunk of it here:

New Librarians and people-who-work-in-libraries are two very different things. The latter is a job; there’s nothing wrong with that, and I believe very strongly that libraries need passionate, good people to help fulfill their purpose.

On the other end of the spectrum, “Librarianship” isn’t a job—it’s a vocation. It’s not something you can put away at the end of the day, when you leave the building. Librarianship is an aggregation of personality, ethics, politics, education, worldview, and focus; there is a reason why librarianship requires graduate study to embark upon.

Now I have to say, I've thought very much along these lines in the past, but my position is changing somewhat. In particular, whilst agreeing with the notion that this is a vocation rather than just a job, I also want to be able to leave it at the door of the building (unless I'm specifically doing something library-related like a presentation) and I have no wish to walk into any room and turn it into a library, as is suggested later on in the post. It could be just that I've done SO much library stuff in my own time last year (because of having just written a book) but I really value switching off and I consider myself a person who is a librarian, rather than being defined or consumed by librarianship. And, I should add, I don't think I'm any the worse for it as an information professional.

Anyhow, these thoughts prompted a debate on Twitter which I put into Storyify at the prompting of several of the participants - it's too long to embed here but this a link where you can read it. It includes a lot about whether you really need to market yourself as an info pro - there are a lot of successful librarians who are very good at their jobs who have no interest in marketing themselves, don't spend time online, and focus their energies entirely on what happens within the walls of the library building they work in. I think in the Twitter bubble it's easy to imagine that all employers want cutting and thrusting info pros who're always presenting at prestigious events etc, but actually I think a lot of them would much rather have someone who put all their energy into the 9-5 role in front of them.

The key point of this post:

There are two reasons why this is a danger - firstly that we over-estimate the value that our national or international achievements will have locally (and so our careers won't progress as we expect them to as a result), and secondly that if we aren't doing stuff nationally and internationally we (wrongly) assume we aren't going to be successful in getting good jobs. In other words, being 'on' all the time - not leaving librarianship at the door - appears to become a prerequisite to progress, which is intimidating to many.

Fundamentally, I think the most important thing is to continually re-evaluate one's own situation and never assume that Method A or Method B will work across the board. So for example, if you're not employed at all then the more stuff you can do instead, like presenting and writing and so on, the better. If you're trying to get other jobs, then again it might be helpful to market yourself - but only if the type of organisation you want to work for cares about that sort of stuff. If you want to continue working in your current organisation but wish to progress, it should be possible to learn enough about your senior management to know whether they'll value your efforts to market yourself online (for example) or not. If you're a brand new just-qualified librarian, then chances are marketing yourself online and getting out there nationally will be much more important because your CV will lack job-experience, meaning you HAVE to find another way to grab people's attention. But the earlier you can start focusing what you do to the job you expect to get, the better. In my opinion.

Finally, at the risk of being narcissistic but in the interests of providing a solid example, here are some things which I consider high points in my career but which insofar as I can work out DIDN'T influence me getting my current (ideal) job:

• Being commissioned by a publisher to write a book on marketing libraries
• Being named a Mover & Shaker by library journal
• Winning one of the SLA's Early Career Conference Awards awards
• Winning a best paper prize at a conference
• Creating the New Professionals Network .

Here are some things which insofar as I can work DID influence me getting my current job:

• Understanding the organisation I was applying to work in
• Having a good grasp of new technologies relating to information
• Being able to provide evidence of  innovation, and of good communication - specifically how I'd quickly be able to develop good working relationships inside and outside the library
• Coming over as the kind of person who could fit well into the existing team
• And my obvious enthusiasm for and dedication to this particular role at this particular institution .

At no point in the interview did they say 'have you ever won an award - tell us about that?'. They don't care about the national stuff - in fact there's the potential for them to care about how it could impact negatively on your dedication to the role.

(That's not to say all that stuff hasn't helped my career - it has - but just that it wasn't important to securing my ideal job. Unless you're planning to go freelance, the job is the most important thing, right? It pays the bills. A lot of the presentations I've done and articles I've written were useful, however, because they allowed to demonstrate knowledge and awareness of areas my previous jobs hadn't covered.)

If you ask people online 'do you need to market yourself?' then 99% of people will say yes automatically (myself included until very recently) - but remember, Twitter is a bubble. Marketing yourself online and doing exciting things nationally is admirable, it's useful, it helps you learn and develop - but make sure you assess whether it will help you go where you specifically want to go. Find your ideal job, and work backwards from their to anticipate your ideal employer's potential needs and desires.

I realise a lot of people will disagree with me about this, but as ever I'd be interested to hear all views in the comments...

- thewikiman

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. :)