Career development, or, retooling for a relevant future

Citation

Boese, K.C. (2006), "Career development, or, retooling for a relevant future", The Bottom Line, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2006.17019baa.001

Career development, or, retooling for a relevant future

Recently, my library got the results of a staff satisfaction survey back. In general, the results were very positive. There were, however, a few areas that management found troubling. One of these was in the area of career development. I did not find this surprising. In fact, I was likely among the majority who did not rate this element highly, although I surely did not rate the library as failing.

As librarians often do, the director scheduled meetings to talk about this rating, expressing concern and puzzlement at the less-than-favorable response. In opening the discussion, the director clearly stated that career development was not about money. The discussion further included a proclamation from another attendee that the organization provides the job, but the individual is responsible for career development. I agree and disagree with both of these statements.

While career development is not about money, any discussion about it cannot be divorced from money either. In order to grow in a profession, attend conferences, and get training, it takes money. Sometimes the money will come from the library. Sometimes it must come from the individual. But whatever the source, it needs to be there. More than money, though, there needs to be initiative from the employee – initiative to get training, education, and cutting edge skills.

The assigning of responsibility to develop professionally is also not as cut and dried as some would want it to be. Yes, the library provides the job, and yes, it is the employee’s responsibility to be proactive and pursue development, but these two things are not always separate goals. Sometimes, they are one and the same goal, and when that happens, it is the responsibility of the library to find funding. When the employee’s desire to learn and develop coincides with the library’s long-term goals, then there needs to be a collaboration for a mutually beneficial outcome.

For example, when I was first hired as a paraprofessional, I received funding for training that directly related to my job. When I decided to pursue my MLS, the funding responsibility became my own. The MLS was not necessary for the job I was hired to do, nor was there a guarantee that there would be an available professional job waiting for me on graduation. After graduation, I was able to find a professional job in the same library. It would seem that the stars were aligned. But they were not perfectly aligned.

My library is not funded as well as it could be, although not due to the fault of management. Many libraries are in a similar position. What this means is that when free training is available, employees are encouraged to attend. When money is involved, if available and seen as critical to the library, it is made available. More often, however, money is not available and often must come from the employee if it is an area that is important to them personally, even when it is directly related to their job, and this is where there is a disconnect.

Now, more than ever, librarians are having to reinvent themselves and learn new skills to organize, collection, and deliver information than they had to in the past. If management has a five-year plan to change the jobs people do in order to meet those needs, then they also need to take on the responsibility to fund the training related to those changes. As Glen Holt states in his column, if management does not take on the responsibility to financially support the relevant training, then the staff are going to be far more narrow sighted than they otherwise would be, and tension is going to build between staff and management. In the end, no one will be where they want to be.

What is a hard choice that many directors do not want to make is how active they can be in deciding what the future of libraries should look like. Nearly all directors have ideas on what the future holds, and they all should want to be involved in sorting things out and developing the response to how to organize and provide information in an ever increasing variety of ways. The tough choice, however, is to embrace the level of involvement that the budget permits. If the budget is tight and employees are stretched thin, there probably will not be much activity in developing and adopting new metadata schemes to catalog material.

Holt also notes that no library director, no matter how capable, can make great changes without a stable and healthy budget. To that end, it is management’s responsibility to evaluate the health to the budget, find ways to make it strong if it is weak, and then ensure continued health. Once that is done, they need to evaluate what the staff are working on, and what work they would like them to do in the future. Once that is accomplished, the funding responsibility of the library becomes clear. The library should fund all training that directly relates to current jobs, or that will give staff the ability to perform the jobs that will be critical to the library in five, or even ten years. All training and education beyond that will be the responsibility of the staff.

Fundraising

John Wilson’s Fundraising column this year will try to address some of the questions and concerns that have appeared on the ALADN Listerv. It began with Tom Galyean of the University of Texas in Austin in the last issue and continues with Jennifer Paustenbaugh of Oklahoma State University in this issue. Paustenbaugh’s contribution pays tribute to Gwen Leighty, a colleague, friend, and mentor to many in the library fund-raising community. It is fitting that the tribute be here in The Bottom Line, as Gwen was the first editor of the Fundraising column.

Future columns will be written by Sam Huang, University of Arizona, and Karlene Jennings, College of William and Mary.

Kent C. BoeseGreenberg Traurig, Washington, DC, USA