The librarianship portfolio

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the development of a Librarianship Portfolio for the purposes of permanent status evaluation and rank promotion at a small private university with a unionized faculty. Design/methodology/approach – The Librarianship Portfolio was conceived and based on teaching portfolios and evaluative documents at other colleges and universities and is also a direct result of collective bargaining negotiations. Findings – Interest in outcomes assessment and evaluation is increasing in the educational institutions where academic librarians work. One assessment strategy that has been developed for teaching faculty is the professional teaching portfolio. Librarians have not widely adopted this type of documentation for the purposes of tenure evaluation or work performance assessment. Practical implications – Portfolios such as this one can serve as a basis for collecting documentation and highlighting excellence in job performance at other academic libraries, whether or not librarians are faculty or belong to a union. Originality/value – The Librarianship Portfolio as described here is a unique creation in job performance evaluation.

When ‘Non-Instructional’ Librarians Teach

“…Perhaps unsurprisingly, instructional librarians are most often the subject of extant literature. Most accounts of teaching portfolio creation detailed an approach that embraced the portfolio as process and product oriented, blending formative and summative approaches (Fast and Armstrong 2003;McCallon 2006;Mills 2015;Parker and Hillyer 2008). Academic librarians have been among those early adopters of "course portfolios" for individual course assessment (Fast and Amstrong 2003) and among the first at their institutions to adapt the teaching portfolio to their professional context, a trend the authors believe extends to the activities detailed in this article.…”

“…Existing scholarship is diminutive on the topic of academic librarians and teaching portfolios, with scant accounts of teaching portfolio creation among "noncanadian journal of academic librarianship revue canadienne de bibliothéconomie universitaire instructional" librarians. The authors identified four articles published about noninstructional academic librarian teaching portfolio creation from universities in the United States (McCallon 2006;Mills 2015;Sterling et al 2022;vanDuinkerken, Coker and Anderson 2010). Perhaps unsurprisingly, instructional librarians are most often the subject of extant literature.…”