Choosing Academic Librarianship: An Examination of Characteristics and Selection Criteria

Oliver, Astrid; Prosser, Eric

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2017.08.009

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Previous literature (Gremmels, 2013;Simpson, 2013;Zhu, 2012) about library professionals without graduate library degrees has tended to highlight non-MLS or paraprofessional job responsibilities and staffing trends among a wide range of libraries. This research article builds upon a prior study by the authors (Oliver & Prosser, 2017) and remedies a gap in the literature by examining the motivations of individuals pursuing specific positions within academic libraries that do not require a library graduate degree. The authors, however, do not provide a clear purpose or motivation for conducting such a study, which raises concerns regarding the study's significance.…”

Section: Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey Respondents Suggest that Some Academic Library Professionals without a Graduate Degree in Librarianship Have Prior Library Experience and Do Not Plan to Pursue a Library Degree

Opuda¹

2020

EBLIP

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A Review of: Oliver, A., & Prosser, E. (2018). Academic librarianship without the degree: Examining the characteristics and motivations of academic library professionals. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 44(5), 613-619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2018.07.006 Abstract Objective – To examine the motivations and career paths of professionals outside the field of library science who work in academic library settings, including their reasons for not pursuing a graduate degree in librarianship. Design – Multiple-choice survey questionnaire. Setting – Not clearly stated. Subjects – 193 adults without graduate degrees in librarianship employed in professional positions in academic libraries. Methods – A nineteen-item multiple-choice questionnaire hosted on Select Survey and a previous study by the same authors. Filtering excluded survey respondents who did not currently work in academic libraries, who had graduate degrees in librarianship, or who do not identify as an academic library professional. Main Results – Most of the survey respondents (n=115, 59.9%) had positions in a library prior to pursuing a professional academic library career. Of those with prior library experience, most (n=98, 85.2%) had gained experience in academic library settings. The two top reasons cited for becoming an academic library professional were an interest in employment in academic library settings (n=59, 52.2%) and meeting position requirements (n=54, 47.8%). A fifth of respondents both met the requirements for their position and had an interest in working in academic libraries (n=23, 20.4%). Most respondents had less than five years’ experience (n=41, 36.6%) or six to ten years’ experience (n=43, 38.4%) in an academic library. Less than half of respondents had became academic library professionals after applying as an external candidate (n=83, 44.6%) and a number of respondents had applied as an internal candidate (n=52, 28%). Several respondents had become academic library professionals because they were promoted, appointed, or recruited within their academic libraries (n=35, 18.8%). Few respondents were actively working on a graduate librarianship degree (n=21, 11.3%) and most expressed that they did not need such a degree (n=112, 67.9%). Those who were pursuing a graduate degree in librarianship did so because of their desire to advance their careers (n=17, 81%). Respondents’ current positions were mostly categorized in areas such as administration (n=77, 31.2%), scholarly communications (n=34, 13.8%), technical services (n=27, 10.9%), and information technology (n=20, 8.1%). Conclusion – Having prior experience working in an academic library served as a notable motivating factor for entry into the position of academic library professional. Two main pathways towards obtaining such positions included positions without graduate library degree requirements and the transition of paraprofessionals into professional-level jobs. Most survey respondents noted their lack of interest in pursuing an advanced degree in librarianship, as they did not see the significance of having one. These findings may help library education programs to better understand growing needs in librarian education and prepare the future library workforce to meet these new demands.

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Section: Commentarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey Respondents Suggest that Some Academic Library Professionals without a Graduate Degree in Librarianship Have Prior Library Experience and Do Not Plan to Pursue a Library Degree

Opuda¹

2020

EBLIP

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“…The propensity for engineers to consult departmental colleagues and search engines for their information needs (Zhang 2015;Wellings & Casselden 2017) leaves librarians detached from most engineering faculty's research programs. Furthermore, the vast majority of librarians hold undergraduate degrees in the humanities or social sciences (Oliver & Prosser 2017), and therefore lack fluency in applied science subjects and vocabulary. Academic librarians of all disciplines face a learning curve in understanding their liaison areas, but this curve is especially steep in science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) fields, due to the highly technical nature of the curriculum and research literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixing Digital Humanities and Applied Science Librarianship

Hendrigan¹

2019

ISTL

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Awareness of faculty research interests is an important aspect of a subject librarian's responsibilities. This paper illustrates the potential of Voyant Tools, an application in wide use among digital humanities researchers, to reveal word patterns in the research output of applied science faculty. A corpus of recent article citations from Web of Science from two engineering departments was obtained, and the articles' title field was extracted and uploaded to the application. The exercise indicated that articles on fuel cells dominates the research output of one department, and articles on optical coherence tomography dominates the other. Both the corpus of citations and its visualizations in Voyant Tools contribute to librarians' knowledge of their departments and historical spending patterns on specialized resources. This knowledge can be used in professional practice, including collection development and instruction. As academic subject areas become increasingly complex and multidisciplinary, this paper encourages librarians to engage with Voyant Tools to better understand the specialized language and concepts of these evolving fields.

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Academic Librarianship Without the Degree: Examining the Characteristics and Motivations of Academic Library Professionals

Oliver

Prosser

2018

The Journal of Academic Librarianship

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Choosing Academic Librarianship: An Examination of Characteristics and Selection Criteria

Cited by 4 publications

References 8 publications

Survey Respondents Suggest that Some Academic Library Professionals without a Graduate Degree in Librarianship Have Prior Library Experience and Do Not Plan to Pursue a Library Degree

Survey Respondents Suggest that Some Academic Library Professionals without a Graduate Degree in Librarianship Have Prior Library Experience and Do Not Plan to Pursue a Library Degree

Mixing Digital Humanities and Applied Science Librarianship

Academic Librarianship Without the Degree: Examining the Characteristics and Motivations of Academic Library Professionals

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