Looking Back to Look Forward: The Promising Profession of Academic Librarianship

Abstract

Looking Back to Look Forward:The Promising Profession of Academic Librarianship Rebecca S. Albitz (bio) In a Forbes op-ed piece in July 2018, Panos Mourdoukoutas, an economics professor from Long Island University in New York, suggested that Amazon bookstores should replace our local public libraries to save taxpayer dollars.1 He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the first nor the last to predict the demise of libraries, and by association, the passing of the librarian. But, if my professional history is any indication, librarians' career opportunities continue to grow. We in academic libraries have an amazing array of options when we create a career trajectory that is uniquely our own. We can choose to work in small colleges or large universities, either public or private. We can consider a position that offers the opportunity to earn faculty rank and tenure. Do you want to become a manager? You can select roles that will prepare you to become a department head or even a head librarian. In the following essay, I explore the three areas mentioned—large and small libraries, tenure, and management roles—through the lens of my varying experiences to consider the ever-evolving opportunities available to an academic librarian. To offer context to this perspective, I need to provide a brief outline of my career thus far. My first position was media services librarian at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, which included managing the media and microforms department, building and cataloging the video collection, providing reference services for media and film studies, and serving as liaison with the film program. This was truly a unique position: I did everything—acquisitions, cataloging, reference, collections, microforms, department management, and instruction—in a large research library. My next position, archivist for media and the performing arts at New York University (NYU), was more focused on video, collection building, reference, and instruction for all the performing arts departments except music. Following two positions focused on media and reference/instruction, my next role was the first shift in my career. I became the head librarian (and the only librarian for [End Page 1] part of my tenure) at Penn State Shenango, a regional campus in Sharon, Pennsylvania. The differences in this role from my previous positions were numerous, but the most obvious was the type of campus. Shenango was nonresidential, with a student body split between traditional undergraduates and returning adults. Although four-year programs were just being established, most students either earned an associate's degree or took core courses with the intent of transferring to Penn State's main campus for their junior and senior years. In addition, librarians at Penn State have faculty rank and status. The tenure process closely follows that of teaching faculty, with an expectation of publication, presentation, and professional service along with librarianship, which takes the place of credit teaching in the dossier. My husband's career prompted me to apply for my next position—the inaugural electronic resources and copyright librarian for Penn State. The job required that I move from Sharon to University Park and involved a dramatic change in the library's size and scope of services. I no longer had management responsibilities, and my public service duties diminished dramatically (though for much of my tenure in this position, I did provide copyright instruction programs for the entire university). I went from being a public services generalist in a small library to a highly specialized technical services librarian in one of the largest research libraries in the country. After 11 years, my next position took me once again to a small library at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where I was responsible for collections and budgeting. From Bates, I moved to my current position as library director at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, a master's-level institution with a focus on graduate professional education. Size of Institution I have worked in small and large libraries, both public and private, and am now employed at a master's-level institution. Size does make a difference in work environment and upward mobility, as I discovered. Large Research Library In a study of job-hopping, Kelly Steenackers and...