May 04 2009
Recognizing opportunities to advance your career
Navigating a career path is an inexact science. All of us face constraints as we seek to develop our professional skills, enhance our resumes, and climb the career ladder to positions of increasing responsibility. While I have been fortunate in the opportunities I’ve had over the course of my 20 year career in librarianship, I’ve also developed a few strategies that I believe have maximized my ability to grow professional options for myself – even in the face of typical obstacles such as geographical limitations, competing spousal careers, and parenthood.
Tackle new things willingly
I cannot stress enough how important it is to actively seek out new projects and challenges no matter what type of job you hold. Right out of graduate school, I started in a typical entry-level reference position at a mid-sized academic library. I worked the desk, did “bibliographic instruction,” did some collection development, and worked in interlibrary loan a few hours each week. After about a year on the job, I became restless and began searching for new opportunities to widen my range of experience. I let both my dean and my department head know that I was ready and willing to take on whatever new projects they wished to throw at me.
At first, they started small, asking me to work on improving a few library pathfinders or tweaking the ILL procedure manual. After I successfully delivered on those early assignments, my supervisors got comfortable with my performance and began offering me more substantial projects to research and implement. Over the next few years, I went on to administer a CD-ROM LAN, develop a series of training sessions on the internet and our databases, and teach myself enough HTML to establish our first web presence and become the library’s very first webmaster. By actively seeking out new projects that fit with the overall goals of the library, I was able to transform a static reference position into an interesting blended position that remained fresh and exciting from year to year — while adding new skills to my resume.
Go where you can make a difference (or, look for something broken that you can fix)
I was quite happy at that first academic library. I sometimes joke that I would be there still were it not for family circumstances that forced a move to Chattanooga in the mid 1990s. Suddenly jobless in a city where I knew no one, I applied for a paraprofessional library clerk position at a local hospital in desperation – because it was the only thing I saw advertised that might fit with my skill set. The hospital library turned out to be in utterly deplorable shape, having been without appropriate staffing, technology or financial support for years. It did not, on the surface, look like the “right” career move for anyone to make. It looked like a sinking ship. But as I stood there gazing at that sad neglected little library with its 2 ancient dial-up computers, gloomy yellowed walls and scarred catalog drawers, I was gripped by this overwhelming desire to rescue it, to polish it up, show it the love and care it deserved, and bring it back to its former glory. I was heartsick over this library and I determined right then and there that I would be its savior.
Now, I recognize that these are the same emotions that drive people to adopt stray puppies from the pound, but once I was under the spell of this library, I could not be deterred. I could see dozens of ways that I could improve it; I could see several year’s worth of challenges and changes stretching out before me. I just knew this was where I belonged. After some salary negotiation with the hospital administrator, I got the job (just barely upgraded to MLS status) and I had my very own library to rehabilitate. I was quite literally terrified because I knew nothing about medicine. I started out by reading a very basic nursing textbook from cover to cover. I clutched a medical dictionary in my hand everywhere I went for those first few months. I gradually taught myself medical literature searching by studying, practicing, and consulting with a few other helpful medical librarians around the state. Once I had mastered basic research skills, I then moved on to teach myself virtually every other aspect of library operations: cataloging, acquisitions, collection development, interlibrary loans, outreach, instruction, budgets and personnel management.
I learned more in that job than I ever have before or since. I learned to envision change, to gather the information I needed to plan the change and ultimately carry out the steps to make it happen. I would not have had any of those learning experiences had I gone to work in a library that was doing just fine. When faced with the choice between a healthy library and one that is broken, choose broken. It may not seem like the right choice, but it is. The act of fixing what is broken offers you a once-in-a-lifetime chance to build your management skills, to prove yourself as a leader and to make a difference in an organization.
It isn’t always who you know, but sometimes it is…
In each city where I have lived, I have made efforts to connect with the other librarians in the area, regardless of the type of library where they work. This is not something that comes naturally to me; I tend to be more of an introvert who prefers spending time alone. But when it comes to professional connections, I make an exception. I seek out local library meetings, I call up colleagues and invite them to lunch, I correspond with my library friends via email and Facebook, and I volunteer my time and effort to local professional activities in any way I can. By actively creating and sustaining relationships with local professional colleagues, I’ve been able to seek advice and insight when I need it, explore what jobs look like in different types of libraries around town, and develop a series of both formal and informal mentors that have helped me immensely throughout my career.
I met my current boss about 6 weeks after she moved to town. I called her up and asked her to have lunch, because I was curious about my newest colleague across the way at UTC. We connected right away over a shared passion for progressive change and a focus on high quality user-centered services. When my current position came open in 2006, I had already made sure I was a known quantity, not only to her, but to most of the rest of the staff at the UTC Library as well. While I believe I earned this position fair and square based on my qualifications and experience, I also believe that my existing professional relationships with many of the librarians at UTC made it that much easier for me to sell myself as their ideal choice for Head of Reference and Instruction Services. By making sure you know as many local librarians as possible, you greatly increase your chances of finding out about job openings early and of landing at the top of the pile of candidates due to your higher level of name recognition.
Keep your eyes on the prize
No matter how fresh and exciting a new job is, I think it’s still important to devote some thought to your next career move. Over the years, my career goals have been all over the map. As a newbie, I thought that someday I would earn a PhD and teach in a library science program. That idea has fallen in and out of favor with me over the years, and in between I’ve explored a whole host of different scenarios ranging from director of a large medical library to branch manager of a public library to law librarian to media specialist in my daughter’s school. Now that I am back in academic libraries, I’ve begun focusing my thoughts on where I’d like to go next. I was lucky to attend a very small competitive liberal arts college as an undergraduate and I still consider those years to be the most meaningful and formative of my life. Based on my affinity for the liberal arts experience and my love of working with undergraduate students, my current dream is to be the dean or director of a liberal arts college library.
I am not at a point in my life where I can make a move to a new position any time soon. I have a husband with his own career ambitions and 2 daughters who are firmly rooted here in Chattanooga, at least for the time being. Most of us operate with similar constraints due to family and geography. But down the road, I am certain that we will arrive at a place where the potential to realize my dream will become much more feasible for us.
In the meantime, I am doing all I can to prepare myself. I read the Chronicle job ads and the lists every day, studying the position descriptions that interest me so I will know what skills and qualifications are in demand. I work hard to develop my administrative skills and to involve myself in professional activities that will make me competitive in a dean or director search down the road. It will take patience, hard work, and probably some luck, but when the opportunity finally does come around, I will be ready.
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Virginia L. Cairns has been a librarian for 20 years. She began her career as an academic reference librarian at Mercer University in Macon, GA but transitioned to medical librarianship when her family moved to Chattanooga, TN in the mid 1990s. After nearly a decade spent in the trenches of medical librarianship, she made the move back to academic librarianship when she accepted her current position as Head of Reference and Instruction Services at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga in early 2006. A frequent presenter at conferences, her research interests include library instruction, the use of technology in libraries, and project management.