Getting started

The phrase “managing your brand” has become a buzzword, or perhaps past the buzzword stage. What does that actually mean? At a time when a sense of loyalty between employer and employee is passé, when it is an “everyone for themselves” world and people switch jobs frequently, it means to manage one’s career, but more specifically to learn the skills needed to get a new job or enhance the current one. It also recalls an older, somewhat dated concept, that of guarding one’s reputation. While this seems a little old-fashioned it is worth remembering that there are few ways of measuring a person’s value in the work setting. One is money—for those in sales or product design the amount of money that any one individual or group can bring in is a sign of value.

Those in the public sector, though, can seldom point to a product or financial boost for which they can take credit. In the education field, it is even more difficult. How does one measure the value of work in education? In the K-12 arena standardized tests and other evaluative measures are currently in vogue, though certainly controversial. How does one define a successful teacher? In higher education departments it can be measured by how many students they graduate, how many publications and grants their faculty have, and what happens to their students after graduation—do they find jobs in their field with family sustaining wages? Libraries are even more difficult. Libraries do not graduate students and older measures, such as how many books a library houses are not as relevant in an increasingly digital age. Libraries have little or no control over whether or not students are required to use their resources to complete coursework. Librarians as individuals parse the question down further. What makes a successful librarian? Those two words are seldom used together. This may be why librarians as a group as so interested in their image. Karen G. Schneider wrote an interesting article in American Libraries tracking what personal branding means for librarians and provides a brief history of the term as used in librarianship. She points out that not everyone is comfortable with a high-profile image (Schneider, 2012). In a profession with a larger percentage of introverts, the idea of loud colorful self-promotion can be viewed with skepticism, if not distaste.

However, everyone has a reputation, a brand, over which they have almost sole and absolute control. This is made up of skills, work habits, intelligence and creativity, and also the ability to work well with others, to be a supportive and integral part of an organization, someone others want to be or to be around.

A track record of successful accomplishments is certainly part of that. At a tenure-track institution or an institution that offers the possibility of promotion but not tenure, being considered a likely candidate, navigating that pathway, being tenured or promoted, and then completing the circle by providing structure and support to new colleagues in the system, is a part of the academic life cycle. But the first part, navigating that pathway can be stressful, even at institutions with adequate support and mentoring. In some ways it is like a gothic novel:

“It was a dark and stormy night …” a clichéd beginning if ever there was one. And yet there are dark and stormy nights, metaphorical if not literal. On this dark and stormy night let us imagine a librarian, one whose tenure or promotion packet is due the next week or perhaps the next day, staring at the promotion form on the screen and asking herself, “What have I done the past five years?” Miller et al. plays upon this scenario by starting their article on tenure and promotion for serials librarians:

1.1 Why people will want to read this book

The dark and stormy night described above would truly be a nightmare, worthy of the most-talented horror film director. The tenure or promotion process is nerve-wracking enough at the best of times, with effective mentoring and a firm grasp on the process, but in the absence of either it would be gruesome indeed.

Librarians who are not eligible for tenure or academics who are not librarians still facing similar questions. How to prepare an annual report? How to plan out a career? How to include a family or outside interests? How to avoid common pitfalls? Hopefully more experienced friends and colleagues can answer some of these questions, but perhaps not as fully or as straightforward as one might like. It is also a good idea to consult more than one source, so one might talk with a mentor at one’s own institution, colleagues at other institutions, and perhaps some published material as well. Advice literature abounds in many areas of life and frequently presents more pragmatic views than the friendly co-worker in the office next door. This book will hopefully do just that, provide a wider view and act as a more objective voice than on-site colleagues. To simplify matters, the language here will focus on tenure, but is equally valuable to those who are eligible for promotion without the possibility of tenure, for those who are eligible for continuing contracts (multi-year contracts that are or can be renewed on a regular basis), or those who are simply interested in career planning, including those who might intend to change careers at some point.

Career planning, especially the tenure process, is something that can be managed to a certain degree. There are always external factors coming into play. However, being prepared can remove a great deal of stress. While fortune may, indeed, favor the brave, it also favors the prepared. Many of the steps and strategies that will smooth the path of the newly hired librarian are not easily articulated by others in the profession. Memories dim, especially once one has “passed through the veil” of tenure, and not everyone can put into words the actual things they did that were helpful. Thus, while this book is aimed at the new librarian it will also be useful to those who mentor new librarians, but may have forgotten the anxiety of being a “newbie” and also the ways to alleviate that anxiety.

Having a definitive goal, like getting tenure becomes, as it should, a be all and end all. The problem with that is that once someone has reached that goal there is the inevitable “What do I do now?” There is a “post-tenure slump” that many people feel, and then set about trying to figure out what to do between that point and retirement. There may be a promotion level beyond tenure, similar to the full professor rank. In essence, after taking a year or so to recover from working towards tenure, they start over working towards the next level. Not all individuals want to do that and not all institutions offer that option. Some people might look for new challenges, ways to stretch mental and professional muscles, or reinvent themselves in some way. Some move to another position. Some decide they might wish to go into a new career or have thought about it over the years, but were not sure how to start such a transition or how to set it in motion. They remain in a job that they are no longer passionate about or even satisfied with it and spend years wishing they were elsewhere. There are times when changing jobs is not an option because of other responsibilities. In these cases, a career management plan that includes the nurturance of hobbies and outside interests can add satisfaction and texture to a life that is otherwise duty bound. Being able to reconstruct and adapt a career plan can be very helpful in deciding what future goals to set or how to adjust to circumstances beyond one’s control.

In the past years, librarianship was viewed as more of a safe occupation than others, once someone had a librarian job they were likely to be able to keep it as long as they wanted, unless it was a tenurable position in which case it was more uncertain, at least in the short run. However, things can change. Economic unrest has led to the layoffs of school and public librarians. Some colleges have closed, leaving librarians unemployed. Even tenure does not bring infinite certainty. The commonly held belief that tenure provides lifelong job security is incorrect; it guarantees due process. The fine print of contracts and policy usually include some exceptions. In the case of fiscal malfeasance or a vaguer morals clause, a tenured person can be fired. Some institutions have a process for de-tenuring. More broadly, if an entire department closes the faculty in that department can often be laid off. Librarians tend to be somewhat immune from this scenario, after all, who closes the library? A few years ago, the institution where I worked faced a...