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Abstract: So, What Exactly Do You Do? Using Statistics to Tell Your Story as a Subject Librarian
I am well into the third decade of my library career, and I have been asked many times what I do. For most of that time, I have performed the functions of a subject librarian in academic libraries. I define subject librarian as a librarian with specialized education, knowledge and/or experience to provide information literacy instruction and research services, select library materials, and serve as an intermediary between the library and its users (namely, students and faculty) in one or more specific subject areas, academic departments, and/or academic disciplines or subdisciplines. (I modified this definition from Palumbo, L., Bussmann, J., & Kern, B. (2021). The Value of Subject Specialization and the Future of Science Liaison Librarianship. College & Research Libraries, 82(4), 584. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.82.4.584)
Despite the comprehensiveness of this definition, I often reply concisely to the question, “So, what exactly do you do?” with “I help students and faculty with their research.” This brief answer satisfies most inquiries in casual conversation, but it and my more complete definition do not reveal the intricacies and nuances of my day-to-day activities. Also, neither my definition nor my cursory cocktail-party response satisfy the demonstrative demands of the Data Age, which requires more measurable evidence of job performance.
So, how can I measure what I do? How can I give numerical meaning to a job that is service-oriented, primarily relational in practice, and is often described using only anecdotal examples? My paper will attempt to quantify my job duties and qualitatively analyze what it means to be a subject librarian at a large public university. I will locate relevant statistics related to my job responsibilities using tools within the LibApps (LibAnswers, LibCal, LibGuides); the web pages of my subject areas (i.e., academic departments and programs), my university registrars’ schedule of classes, my universities’ undergraduate and graduate catalogs; my annual workload agreement, official position description, and curriculum vitae; and, perhaps unexpectedly, I will use thank you notes to me from students and faculty that add value to what I do.
I hope my paper will help inform and encourage subject librarians to advocate for themselves by demonstrating value in what they do through quantitative and qualitative evidence-based statistics. Telling our stories as subject librarians through statistics is not the whole story of what we do, but using statistics to enhance our stories is a worthwhile exercise. Librarians are often unnecessarily modest about their professional value and overly humble about their substantial workloads. Discovering statistical evidence about what we do can be remarkably self-impressive. Recognizing through statistics the amount of work librarians do can be revitalizing and empowering. Demonstrating what we do and how much we do through statistics and their visual representations to our superiors can be valuable evidence regarding promotion, arguing against potential jobs cuts, and protection against the adding of “just one more thing” to our robust workloads. Most likely, we already do enough, if not more than enough, and that can be shown through statistics.
Despite the comprehensiveness of this definition, I often reply concisely to the question, “So, what exactly do you do?” with “I help students and faculty with their research.” This brief answer satisfies most inquiries in casual conversation, but it and my more complete definition do not reveal the intricacies and nuances of my day-to-day activities. Also, neither my definition nor my cursory cocktail-party response satisfy the demonstrative demands of the Data Age, which requires more measurable evidence of job performance.
So, how can I measure what I do? How can I give numerical meaning to a job that is service-oriented, primarily relational in practice, and is often described using only anecdotal examples? My paper will attempt to quantify my job duties and qualitatively analyze what it means to be a subject librarian at a large public university. I will locate relevant statistics related to my job responsibilities using tools within the LibApps (LibAnswers, LibCal, LibGuides); the web pages of my subject areas (i.e., academic departments and programs), my university registrars’ schedule of classes, my universities’ undergraduate and graduate catalogs; my annual workload agreement, official position description, and curriculum vitae; and, perhaps unexpectedly, I will use thank you notes to me from students and faculty that add value to what I do.
I hope my paper will help inform and encourage subject librarians to advocate for themselves by demonstrating value in what they do through quantitative and qualitative evidence-based statistics. Telling our stories as subject librarians through statistics is not the whole story of what we do, but using statistics to enhance our stories is a worthwhile exercise. Librarians are often unnecessarily modest about their professional value and overly humble about their substantial workloads. Discovering statistical evidence about what we do can be remarkably self-impressive. Recognizing through statistics the amount of work librarians do can be revitalizing and empowering. Demonstrating what we do and how much we do through statistics and their visual representations to our superiors can be valuable evidence regarding promotion, arguing against potential jobs cuts, and protection against the adding of “just one more thing” to our robust workloads. Most likely, we already do enough, if not more than enough, and that can be shown through statistics.