Some interesting musings here ...
Regards
Ingrid Thomson
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Two recent articles are prompting me to muse about our professional life within academia, and how we are inducted into this life. The first article, Embedded Librarianship: A Point-of-Need Service, by Bernd W. Becker, discusses how academic librarians can contribute to teaching, learning and research pursuits through course management systems and other formal and informal tools used by students. It reminded me that a few years ago two former colleagues, Heather Berringer and Sarah Fedko, created an information literacy course module that could be customized into an instructor's course site in a course management system. If you are looking for examples of the kinds of things that you might be doing or supporting as an academic librarian, and what kind of technical know-how is desirable, this article is for you.
And yet… there is something about this article that encourages me to reflect about academic librarianship as a career choice, and I think that Naming may have something to do with it. A few years ago the LIS literature was replete with articles about "blended librarianship" in terms of teaching collaboration; now we are to become "embedded librarians" in software. A host of valid and useful practices to help with teaching, learning and research have grown from these concepts, but there remains this sense that there is no traction. Partnerships are fragile. We still must "break into" areas of academic endeavour as if we are not already a part of it.
The second article is a book review for The Market for Academics, by Christine Musselin, reviewed in Contemporary Sociology by Gaye Tuchman, which looks into the recruitment process of professors in history and mathematics at research universities in France, Germany and the United States. Why should faculty hiring practices outside of Canada be important to new academic librarians in Canada? Academic librarianship, as with the professoriate, is a global environment. You want to thrive here. Sooner or later these practices will define or at least influence how your colleagues are selected. If you wish to foster lasting partnerships and collaborations, such information may provide insight. Furthermore, at many universities, librarians have faculty status; how do hiring practices for librarians compare? Understanding recruitment of all academics will add to the body of knowledge that we have about how higher education works, and it will help us to "embed" ourselves more durably in all aspects of higher education.
What of recruiting practices for academic librarians, then? Performing a descriptor search on "academic libraries" and "recruitment" in Library and Information Science Abstracts, it is easy to find articles that shed light on what roles are available and what skills, talents and background are (or have been) desirable. [HINT: if you are looking for "insider" tips, LISA is a good source for you. Check with a local academic library for access.] Much of this information, however, is gleaned from advertisements or job descriptions and may or may not represent the hiring reality. One article stands out: Wang & Guarria's Unlocking the Mystery: What Academic Library Search Committees Look for in Filling Faculty Positions. The study sought opinions from people who were experienced with the recruitment process within academic libraries. Many of the questions revealed background information about institutions and hiring practices. More to the point for new librarians, some of the questions also focused on scanning practices for applicants (including information on résumé faux-pas, the importance of library-related experience, demonstration sessions, scoring and evaluation systems, and recent hiring statistics).
This article is a great start, but it is geared toward practice in the United States. Does this extend to Canadian higher education libraries? Furthermore, although this survey did obtain rich data to add to the picture from the responses to the open-ended questions, we need more. Face to face interviewing would add to this picture.
Returning to my original concern, there is much more that we can learn about the larger academic environment in which we "do" librarianship. I think it's important that we monitor all of our practices within this context. Looking at hiring practices is a great place to get started. Interestingly, when I tried my LISA search in ERIC, I noticed no academic librarian recruitment articles in the higher education journals – only in the LIS literature. Tuchman indicates that Musselin's research is craftily constructed so as to allow comparison of professors, doctors, lawyers and accountants… why not librarians? Finding out how librarian recruitment (and retention!) compares with that of faculty, and writing about it in the literature of higher education, will give us a much better idea how we can be, within higher education.
Becker, B. W. (2010). Embedded Librarianship: A Point-of-Need Service. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 29(3), 237-240.
Musselin, C. (2010). The Market for Academics. New York: Routledge.
Tuchman, G. (2011). The Market for Academics (Review). Contemporary Sociology 40 (1), 66-68.
Wang, Z. & Guarria, C. (2010). Unlocking the Mystery: What Academic Library Search Committees Look for in Filling Faculty Positions. Technical Services Quarterly 27(1), 66-86.
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