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This chapter discusses hurdles posed to a medium-sized public university library in the Midwest when they were asked by their Dean to create a faculty workload worksheet, rationale, and ultimately a set of guidelines. Faculty in other departments compute their loads using formulas based on course loads. How many hours they spend in the classroom, and how many hours they spend preparing for that time in the classroom are factored into the course loads expected for a full teaching load, with release granted in course load equivalents for research and/or service. Because librarian work does not typically involve teaching credit-bearing courses, a major challenge to constructing guidelines is equating library work with course loads. Calculating faculty workload for librarians commensurate with other faculty on campus is often complicated. To all of these challenges add the unique issues that are faced by the technical services (TS) librarian. TS work supports instruction and research but may involve little classroom contact with students, so it has even less resemblance to classroom instruction than other librarian work has. TS librarians spend their time in a wide variety of tasks. Exactly how to formulate this time in accordance with the rules for other departmental faculty is a challenge. The specific situation at this university added more complications as there was also a campus-wide mandate to ensure all workload policies are consistent and equitable.

Faculty unionization is growing, and library faculty members are included in many collective bargaining units. Yet there is a dearth of information on how well collective bargaining contracts address the sometimes unique nature of library faculty work. This article explores contracts in a number of Ohio universities and from selective institutions around the country to see how well they accommodate the professional and work-related needs of librarians. Major contractual issues addressed include governance, academic freedom, workload, salary, and the retention, tenure, and promotion (RTP) of faculty, among others.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the composite influence of perceived work relationship, work load and physical work environment on the job satisfaction of librarians in South-West, Nigeria.

The study adopted a descriptive survey design. A multi-stage sampling technique was used for this study. The instrument used for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire, and a total of 102 academic librarians responded to the questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis.

The results indicate that there is a significant linear relationship among work relationship, workload, work environment and job satisfaction. Among the variables examined, workload is not a statistically significant predictor of the job satisfaction of librarians, but work relationship and work environment have a statistically significant relative effect on the job satisfaction of librarians.

Further studies should evaluate the causal link between work relationships, work load and work environment on job satisfaction using randomized control.

The important result in this study is that there is a significant linear relationship among work relationship, workload, work environment and job satisfaction; therefore, if these factors are adequately taken care of, there will be increased employee motivation, reduced staff turnover and increased job satisfaction among librarians in Nigerian universities. The university library management could take advantage of workshops and seminars on how to build and maintain work relationship and work environment (hygiene factors) to improve employees’ job satisfaction. The seminars and workshop will increase the knowledge of university library management on how to develop coherent friendly co-workers policy practices and workload policy practices to enhance the job satisfaction of librarians in public universities in Nigeria. Librarians should be assigned tasks that are moderately demanding because both overload and under load could lead to job dissatisfaction. Regarding research, this study offered a basis for a continuing debate on work relationship, organizational relationships, work environment, work load and job satisfaction.

Despite the growing global concern for workers well-being in organizations, not much attention has been given to the influence of workplace relationship, work load and work environment on the job satisfaction of librarians in Nigeria. Thus, the results of this research contribute to the body of knowledge regarding job satisfaction among librarians and provide significant evidence on the influence of work relationship, work load and work environment on the job satisfaction of librarians.

Library buildings are routinely reimagined, remodeled, or built new to meet the changing needs of their community. The move from collection-centric to user-centric service models has generated numerous writings about the library as place and space. The one concept lacking in the scholarly discourse is the changing roles of librarians to meet the needs of these new spaces and places. How do librarians fit in the new equation? When addressing the professional identity of librarians, which aspect of their work will need to evolve and which will need to be let go? A critical facet of sustaining services in new spaces is the need to develop the sustainable librarian – to remove the stigma of the librarian as “jack of all trades, master of none.” In order to realize this new mindset of mastering our domain we need to begin reimagining our work. Some ways, this can be accomplished by writing increased flexibility into position descriptions and creating organizational structures to better support librarians within the new spaces. With these new developments to our professional identities, librarians may learn to employ entrepreneurial skills in order to continuously anticipate services and develop skill sets to aid the library’s ability to fulfill its purpose. The authors provide a literature review to discuss the changing role of the academic librarian to meet the evolution of the library building and services. We will provide an example through findings and practices of Grand Valley State University and how it reimagined roles in the early 2000s and continues to reimagine roles in a new building and a renovated branch library. The change of spaces and places in academic libraries to accommodate user needs and perceptions has impacted how academic librarians work in these spaces and places. Library administrators need to rethink workflows, and organizational charts by examining flexible workloads, cross-training initiatives, professional development around new skills, and the letting go of obsolete practices.

Originality/value – in this chapter, the authors will discuss how library leaders are charged with translating the new roles of their librarians to meet the needs of their community in these new spaces and how library leaders may look beyond the literature of the profession for ways to facilitate change.

This study takes the position that the vitality of academic libraries is grounded in the working experiences of its librarians. It suggests that a full understanding of problems facing contemporary information professionals in the post-industrial workplace requires an analysis of the labouring aspects as well as the professional nature of their work. The study of changes in the academic library work experience thus depicts the state of the library, and has implications for other intellectual workers in a social environment characterized by expanding information technologies, constricted economic resources, and the globalization of information production. Academic librarians have long recognized that their vocation lies not only in the classical role in information collection, organization, and dissemination, but also in collaboration with faculty in the teaching and research process, and in the contribution to university governance. They are becoming increasingly active in the protection of information access and assurance of information quality in view of information degradation on the Internet and various compromises necessitated by interaction with third party commercial information producers.

Academic libraries are increasingly involved in the support of student entrepreneurship on their campuses, both in programming and the curriculum. As the understanding that librarians are a key component for student success as part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem widens, libraries have been adapting and designating various staffing models in response. This chapter includes a literature review of case studies to examine various types of staffing in academic libraries providing support to entrepreneurship and innovation programs. The chapter highlights best practices for each of several staffing models. Potential models range from entrepreneurial outreach done by business librarians, creation of the entrepreneurship librarian position within an institution, how library-owned innovation/incubator spaces are staffed, and other creative models deployed for providing support to the entrepreneurial student.

The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of racial capitalism in the context of academic libraries.

This paper draws on Leong's (2013) extended theory of racial capitalism and identifies how neoliberalism and racial capitalism are tied as well as how it is manifested in academic libraries through tokenism, racialized tasks, consuming racial trauma, cultural performance demands, workload demands and pay inequity.

The article ends with some suggestions in how to address these problematic practices though dismantling meritocratic systems, critical race theory in LIS education and training, and funding EDI work.

The article explores a concept in the academic library context and points to practices and structures that may commodify racialized identities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive assessment of promotion and tenure for librarians in light of increased scrutiny and expectations by the administration of Idaho State University (ISU). This increased rigour was prompted by a move up in the Carnegie Classification System.

A literature review was performed using library databases, as well as assessing peer institution promotion and tenure documents. Additionally ongoing feedback from University administrators was solicited. The process took for the creation of a new promotion and tenure document for ISU library took two years from the beginning of the project to the final approved document.

The study found a dearth of performance benchmarks in both literature and peer institution policies and required the authors, along with other library faculty, to create evidence based benchmarks for ISU aligned with traditional standards of teaching, research and service.

This paper is an inclusive assessment of the literature on faculty promotion and tenure, the policies of ISU’s peer institutions, and the change of Carnegie Classification’s impact on the ISU policies.

The purpose of this paper is to foster discussion of the role of government information librarians in the design and implementation of information literacy instruction. Increased accessibility to government information through the internet is bringing all librarians into increased contact with government information, thereby becoming ad hoc documents librarians. Through collaboration with experts in government information, shared knowledge results in opportunities for richer and more comprehensive information literacy instruction.

This review examines evidence of commonality and collaboration between librarians through content analysis of both general and specialized library publications.

Collaboration is a common practice in library instruction to share workload and expertise, yet most literature on this practice focuses on librarian‐faculty collaborative efforts. Limited evidence exists for collaboration between librarians and a severely limited body of literature exists when examining instructional design collaboration to include government information in information literacy instruction.

Collaborative instruction proactively addresses resolving perceived barriers and expands instruction resource repertoires and shares workloads.

Examination of the collaborative process between librarians is infrequent. This adds to the body of literature and increases awareness of additional resources in the provision of information literacy instruction.

Libraries still endeavor to achieve diversity in many areas, including collections. Although many barriers to realizing this goal still exist, there are changes that can be made to improve the current situation. This paper aims to examine those barriers and discusses some ways librarians, administrators and publishers can help build inclusive academic library collections.

This paper will discuss the issues that the University of North Florida’s Thomas G. Carpenter Library discovered while trying to find ways to build a racially and ethnically diverse academic collection.

The lack of diversity in academic library collections has many causes, including inadequate institutional collection priorities, librarian bias, heavy workloads and the dearth of diverse voices in the publishing industry.

Diversity, equity and inclusion are key concepts to improving how libraries operate. However, libraries have struggled to realize this vision in many areas. This paper endeavors to identify ways academic librarians and publishers can make collections more diverse.