In my various social circles, I’ve been talking about my upcoming “mid-tenure.” I’m sure my friends in academic institutions know what I am talking about, but I also have friends who are not in academic libraries, and I even have friends who are not (gasp!) librarians at all who probably have little to no idea what I’m babbling on about. So, I want to give a brief overview of what it is and what the process has been like in my place of work.

In the most general sense, tenure invovles successfully completing some kind of probationary period in order to make one’s job more or less permanent. Most employment situations have this even if they don’t call it such.

In many academic work places, usually just for faculty, this “probationary period” is much longer, usually in the neighborhood of 5 to 7 years. The point of this long period of time is to give the faculty member time to prove his or her worth and a scholar, teacher and/or researcher. I put “probationary period” in quotes because even though the position is not permanent, it usually is a contract position. Most often, a person in this position is on a yearly contract that more or less automatically gets renewed unless there are extenuating circumstances.

When faculty members are “up for tenure,” they need to provide evidence of their achievements. A board of tenured faculty members evaluates the work and decides whether or not they have achieved enough to be granted tenure and be given permanent employment.

Many places have a mid-tenure review, which is what I’m heading into and have been talking about. At my library, mid-tenure candidates go through the motions of applying for tenure in order to get feedback from tenured librarians regarding our progress toward tenure. The process for mid-tenure stays within the library. When I am up for tenure, my work gets evaluated at the campus level.

Whether or not librarians should be considered faculty and whether or not they should be held to the same standards as teaching and research faculty is a Ginormous Can of Worms which I am not going to get into here.

Getting one’s work scrutinized is stressful, but the mid-tenure process is meant to be helpful. What candidates gets from the process is constructive feedback on how well their work is progressing and on what they may need to do in the next couple of years to make getting tenure much more likely.

At my library, the process involves a few things, which, I would assume are fairly similar to those at other institutions.

• As a state funded university, there is a form to fill out in which we provide an overview of our education and work.
• There is the infamous “packet,” which for us takes the form of a binder. Into this binder, we put any evidence of our accomplishments, including our CVs, annual reviews, annual reports, publications, presentations, the state form and anything else we can think of to help us make our case.
• Our direct supervisors and our tenure committee provide feedback on our binders and we have some time to make revisions.
• The bindesr then go to the administrative office in the library where other librarians can go and review them.
• There is a library faculty meeting where all the candidates field questions about their work so far and plans for improvement.
• Finally, we get feedback from the library Dean and our direct supervisors.

We get evaluated on three general categories:

• Job performance: how well we execute our daily job duties.
• Scholarship: what we’ve published and/or presented. What also gets considered is the quality of the publication or the importance or prestige of the conference where we presented.
• Service: what we have done to provide additional service to the library, university, and professional organizations.

Although I have been working in academic libraries for 17 years (yikes!) and have been a professional librarian for 10, I have only been a tenure-track librarian since taking this job in 2007. The tenure process is still somewhat new to me. I would be interested to hear what the process is like at other libraries.

A year ago, Bobbi Newman over at Librarian By Day, proposed a project asking librarians to chart what we do at work for one day. The results, which you can find at this wiki, were enlightening, mainly because no one seems to have a typical day. July 27, 2009 marks the 2nd Annual Library Day in the Life Project and you can get the lowdown here.

It’s an interesting time for me to take part in this project. I just past my 2 year anniversary at UNLV and I am currently working on my mid-tenure packet, so what I do all day is much on my mind. I had never had a tenure track position before, and I think the prospect of tenure persuaded me to become over-committed to work above and beyond my actual job. At my 2 year mark, I was feeling stretched too thin and decided as I rotated off some committees to limit myself as far as joining any others. I have my committee work under my belt for my mid-tenure packet and intend to focus more on the day job, so to speak. The Day in the Life Project comes at a time of transition for me.

• Checked email and updated to do list.
• Took a look at a demo for Swank Digital Campus and contacted rep with a bunch of questions.
• Set-up a meeting with the Systems Manager for the afternoon and created a list of topics to discuss.
• Nominated Poisoned Waters for the ALA Video Round Table Notable Videos for Adults. Typed up some notes I made about it.
• In looking up the links for the Round Table, I discovered that the video presented at the VRT program celebrating the 10th anniversary of Notable Videos is available on YouTube and I wrote a post.
• Wrote post for our departmental blog promoting some new additions to the collection.
• Took a look at a trial for American History in Video.
• Met with Systems Manager and discussed progress on the fall image, getting IP addresses for new copiers, finding time to set-up and test a software trial, and providing access to streaming media content.
• Worked on mid-tenure packet.
• Worked on semi-annual report.
• Updated stats for Media and Computer Services web site and other web services. In updating stats, noticed something amiss with a couple of the media pages, so fixed the problems.
• Set-up meeting with Web Technical Support Manager for Thursday to discuss LabStats implementation for the public.
• Google Reader
• Back to the mid-tenure packet.

Of course, there were a lot of other little routine things during the day too, but these are the items of note. It was a rather calm day, which I haven’t had a lot of recently. Last week was crazy because I was catching up from being out for ALA.

I recently received the good news that 2 of my proposals for Internet Librarian have been accepted, so I’ll be heading back to Monterey in October for my 3rd IL.

I presented once before at Internet Librarian and twice for its east coast counterpart, Computers in Libraries but these upcoming presentations will be different because I have only presented solo at these conferences before. The two proposals that were accepted were ones that I submitted with someone else. The conference planners grouped us together with other speakers, most of whom I know. I am rather excited to be presenting with these colleagues and am looking forward to meeting the couple of people who I haven’t met before.

Bobbi Newman, of Librarian by Day fame, and I sent in a proposal about cloud computing. We have been added to a session with Rachel Vacek, Web Services Coordinator, University of Houston and Anna Creech, Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Richmond. We are slated for Monday, October 26th at 3:15pm.  The session is Collaborating in the Clouds: Selecting Tools:

Do you collaborate on documents within committees that are made up of members scattered around the world or your institution? Are you looking for alternatives to mail discussion groups that will push your content out to committees and beyond? And, most importantly, are you interested in tools that manage documents which can easily be transferred as staff and committee rosters change? The first presentation discusses the pros and cons of some of the best online and open source tools for simultaneous creation, sharing, and management of content. Newman covers a variety of cloud productivity tools including word processing, spread sheets, wikis, presentation, calendars, task managers and other free applications. Ipri discusses how the move away from desktop applications is influencing academic libraries. Many libraries are investing time and money in restructuring their public areas into collaborative learning spaces. Will the move to cloud computing assist or undermine these efforts?

Jason Griffey, of Pattern Recognition, and I submitted a proposal about using mobile devices in libraries. We will be presenting in a double session with R. Toby Greenwalt, Adult Services Librarian, Skokie Public Library; Jason Clark, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Montana State University (MSU); Matt Benzing, Information Technology Librarian, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Michael Sauers & Christa Burns, Nebraska Library Commission. We are slated for 10:30 – 12:15 on Tuesday, October 27th. The session is Dreaming, Designing & Using Mobile Library Platforms:

Ipri & Griffey start this double session by explaining why you can’t just replicate your existing web site for mobile users – needs and technologies are different in the mobile world. They discuss how libraries must rethink their services and go with completely new models in light of ubiquitous computing and connectivity. Greenwalt discusses the specific Skokie Public Library’s “going mobile” LSTA grant project to develop a suite of mobile tools, including a mobile website, catalog, text messaging alerts, and mobile reference service. Clark talks about delivering video and images through optimized web sites that work with the next generation of smartphones and mobile devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre, Google Android). He discusses challenges and advantages of developing mobile sites, the debate between native smartphone apps versus mobile web apps, best practices for mobile web design, and the lessons learned in development processes. Benzing discusses creating alternative versions of a website for mobile users, utilizing needs information of users from surveys, focus groups, and usability testing. The last segment of the session looks at mobile reference, where Sauers and Burns look at the basics of using the Internet on regular cell phones as well as smartphones.

I have joined the ranks of the other fabulous people in accepting a Shover and Maker award. The brainchild of some of the wonderful Library Society of the World people (Josh Neff and Steve Lawson), the award is a supplement, if you will, to the yearly Movers and Shakers Awards put out by Library Journal every year.

This project, as with all the LSW efforts, is another excellent example of various librarians sharing and celebrating their accomplishments. And real beauty is that you too are a winner.

Rudy Leon, the new Learning Commons Librarian at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign’s Undergraduate Library posted a request to try and make a list of other “learning commons” librarians. I spoke with Rudy at Internet Librarian and she and I talked about trying to have a more vocal and collaborative relationship with other librarians who run a learning/library/information commons. Her request is a first step in that direction. So, if you are in charge of a commons and want to connect to a larger community, please go to her blog and respond!

Time does fly. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was contacted about doing a workshop for the Metropolitan Library System based on the presentation I gave at Computers in Libraries, but that was back in June. The workshop is in November, and I just made my flight and hotel arrangements.

More information (including how to register) about the workshop can be found here.

An interesting thread on FriendFeed as become a grander meme, which I shall help perpetuate. This thread is an off-shoot of the Day in the Life of a Librarian discussion begun by the heretofore tagged Librarian by Day. The follow-up questions raised by Superstarchivist are:

What made you become a library/archives/museum employee? Was there a person? A life-changing event at a reference desk? A tarot card?

My path to the library world was rather unintentional. I never had a burning desire to become a librarian but am rather glad that this is the path I ended up on. After a few rather lousy jobs in the for-profit world, I decided I needed a job “that wouldn’t make me nauseous.” That was actually the phrase I used at the time.

I had a couple of jobs during college, the main one being as a maintenance person (for lack of a better term) for a local bank. It got me through college but ended rather unpleasantly when I was fired at the Christmas party…outside the men’s room…in front of my date. Classy.

After college (during the first Bush recession), I had a rather difficult time finding a job. I was an English major, which certainly didn’t help. I eventually (through a relative) got a job as a proofreader at an ad agency. Their business was to place classified ads, and my jobs was to clip out the printed ads and proofread them against the original copy to check for mistakes. Zzzzz.

One of the things I like about the library world compared to the for-profit world is that it tends (tends, mind you) to be less rigid. The ad agency had a rule that everyone had to work until 7pm on Thursdays. Something to do with placing all the weekend ads. This had nothing to do with me, but I was still required to stay late. At that time, the train I needed to take began to run less frequently, so when I left at 7, I had to wait something like 45 minutes for a train. The train I took in in the morning got me to the job early, so I asked if I could leave 5 minutes early so I wouldn’t have to catch an earlier train. The answer was a categorical no. Everyone had to stay until 7. I got fired from this job as well.

After another bout of unemployment, I got a job working at a friend’s family’s print shot. When I actually got the chance to learn to work some of the printing machinery, I rather like the job. Unfortunately, that made up only a small fraction of my time. Most of the time, I was in shipping and receiving.

Again, rigidity was an issue for me. They actually had a buzzer that went off at the start of the day, at the beginning and ending of break time, the beginning and ending of lunch, and at the end of the day. I don’t do well in that kind of atmosphere, to say the least.

So, I began to realize that I hadn’t anything akin to a “career path.” Having an English degree, I figured I would teach, so I started in a graduate education program at night at the same school I got my undergraduate degree. Most of the people in the program were already teachers and were taking the next step. Then there was me and the roofer guy.

I found out that employees at that school got a major break on tuition, so I started looking for jobs there. My shipping and receiving experience landed my a job at the acquisitions department at the library. Part of the position was filling in some desk coverage in the media department. I held that job for about 3 years before moving up to be the student-worker supervisor for the circulation department. I was there for about a year before getting a job as a serials assistant and a small medical library. At that time, I realized that working in libraries did not make me nauseous, so I decided to get my library degree (having dropped out of the grad ed program a while before).

And that’s how I became I librarian.

In addition to Librarian by Day, I shall tag:

• Attempting Elegance
• Pegasus Librarian
• Pop Culture Librarian
• The Strange Librarian
• And the Superstarchivist since she avoided her own question

Librarian by Day had someone find her blog searching on the phrase “What is a librarian’s day like.” She suggested that her readers post an answer to this question so that other librarians and potential librarians get some idea of what working as a librarian is like.

I’ll start by making some fairly obvious disclaimers. I don’t really have a “typical” day, which is one of the benefits of being a librarian. It’s not usually the same thing day after day. I’ve had those kind of jobs. So, I have picked today. Also, as an academic librarian, the summer sessions are quite different than the fall and winter sessions.

I’ll also point out that I am not living up to the parameters that Librarian by Day established. Namely, I don’t see to have the wherewithal to post everyday during the week as some people have. You can get a list of participants here.

So, what you’re getting is a fairly random assortment of things I’ve done the past few days. No real rhyme or reason other that these were the things I was thinking of when I thought to write.

• The mornings usually begin checking email and looking at my to do list, which I recently (Monday) migrated to Remember the Milk. I was able to go through some of the stuff piling up around me and organize it and add items to RTM.

• I had a meeting with the usability working group, of which I’m chair. The usability group is planning on a card sorting activity. One member of the group sent out some links to some card sorting software, so I looked at those and prepared some notes about my preferences. As chair, I also put together an agenda for the meeting. The meeting went well, as usual. I’m not saying that because I run the meetings. It’s a great group of people who work well together, and we seem to get a lot done. In addition to the formal usability test we’re running, we’ve been asked arrange getting some informal feedback on some mock-ups of new designs for our catalog interface.

• In my role as a media librarian, I am involved with the National Media Market. The meeting takes place at the end of September. A group of media librarians decided to hold a special meeting the day before the market begins to discuss digital video licensing, which is a HUGE issue for us media types. We’ll be meeting with some of the documentary film vendors to figure out a reasonable pricing structure and distribution method. Gary Handman (UC Berkeley) and Lawrence Daressa (California Newsreel) have written a white paper outlining some of the issues central to this discussion. Although the discussion isn’t until September, I read this white paper, partly out of curiosity, partly because I want to dedicate some time this summer to figuring out what our library wants to do with providing online access to videos. If you’re interested, you can find the white paper at the blog that Gary set-up.

• Got word that although our budgets haven’t been loaded into Millennium yet, our ordering department can start taking orders for the new fiscal year. However, I’m still waiting for some items that I ordered last fiscal year to get cataloged and sent down, so I checked my order list against the catalog to see what’s still outstanding. I don’t want to start ordering new titles until last year’s backlog thins out.

• I started looking into flights and hotels for two upcoming conferences I would like to attend: National Media Market in September and Internet Librarian in October.

• I attended LibGuides training and began working on my Film Studies LibGuide.

• I wrote a document recommending changes to those sections of the strategic plan that affect my department.

• I wrote evaluation for My Kid Could Paint That for my work on the Notable Videos for Adults committee and posted it.

• Our multimedia design studio might be moving into a space recently vacated by our document delivery service, so I went over with one of my staff to take a better look at the space and began to plan some specifics. I wrote a proposal for moving to that space a while ago. I haven’t gotten formal approval, but many signs are pointing to use getting that space.

• Wrote an evaluation for Kick Like a Girl for my work on the Notable Videos for Adults committee and posted it.

• Attended a liaisons’ meeting and, among other things, learned our collections budget is not getting an inflation increase, which, in effect, means we have less to spend (boo).

• Got word that the aforementioned move of our design studio has been approved (yeah). Spent time talking with Assistant Dean, Building Manager, Systems Manager, and my staff about plans for the big move.

So, there you have it.  A fairly random assortment of things that happened this week.

Kick Like a Girl is a highly entertaining, blissfully short (25 min) film about a girls’ soccer team whose coach arranges for them to play in a boys’ league because they had gone undefeated in 2 girls’ leagues. For the most part, Kick Like a Girl is very positive and uplifting but hearing some of the parents’ reactions to their sons playing against girls is definitely disheartening.

The girls are very charismatic and interview very well for being so young. The filmmakers interview some of the boys who get beaten, and their views are more open-minded than some of the parents. Some of the boys who went into the games deriding the girls learn to respect their opponents. The girls are shown to work much better as a team, and some of the boys recognize why this teamwork was a key part to the girls’ success.

As much as I like the film, I’m not sure how high it will rank on my list of Notable Videos for Adults. Kick Like a Girl would be an excellent choice for middle school students, but then again, after seeing how some of the parents react in the film, some adults could learn a lot from this title as well.