Narratives of Academic Librarians: Chapter 5: Disruption

Chapter 5: Disruption

Disruption. Yeah, definitely.

When COVID shut us down, it took us out of in-person stuff,

At that time I was in a [faculty leadership position]- super busy doing that.

They were doing just the same stuff in the library.

The [institution-wide improvement plan], was over.

Another disruption - I got moved out of the department that I had been in.

I've been in the [library] department for some time working with the subject librarians doing that role.

Then we created a new library department. 

It was a [technology department].

We used to have another library-related department that did all of the servers, machines, computer labs, etc. – also anything staff needed support of our ILS or library software.

They were all supportive, and the institution decided to consolidate all of IT. 

In response to that our administration of the library decided to create a new [library department] and I was involved.

I had a boss and they kind of said “we're going to do this and we're going to move you over here and this person's going to be your boss” and I said, 

“Okay, so what's different? What is this new thing that you have in mind?”

And they said, “oh, well, no, you just keep doing what you're doing. Your role isn't changing. You're just going to do it over here.”

This was confusing. 

I was involved in another [library department] also.

I had been doing that in the context of working with reference librarians and having that also be instructional support. 

Then I moved into this other department, I lost a lot of the connection I had with all the instructional librarians.

Not all at once, but eventually.

It wasn't going to their meetings anymore. 

I don't know what's going on. 

They didn't know what I was doing and trying to stay in communication, but it was just a real different thing being organizationally removed.

No one had any direction for what this new department was going to be like, what it was supposed to do, what roles our department had. 

Again, they said, “hey, no, just keep doing what you're doing.”

I'm just over here. I was doing that, but I felt very unsure about what this meant.

I fought it too when they decided to move me. 

I told them I wasn't sure I was interested in that, but I was assured that I would be fine. So that happened, then COVID happened. I’m not sure if I've thought about exactly how that's affected me and my work at the same time. 

We also had some administrators, who had been here for the whole time I had worked here.

After 15, 20 years or whatever- they left, and we got new leadership. 

So [we got] COVID and new library leadership.

I'm in a new department. 

So with that whole coming back to campus and figuring out what the library looks like post COVID, what do I do? 

I was probably doing even less library work than ever.

This was a completely different feeling- like everything has changed.

Nothing is the same, I don't do any of the same stuff I used to do, I don't work with the same people I used to work with.

I was very much focused on the faculty government side of things, the stuff that was going on in the library I really probably wasn't paying attention to.

I guess I could have also titled this Chapter sort of Disconnection too, along with Disruption.

It felt in this very different time period that I was not kind of the same person that I was before, workwise. After I was done with [Faculty leadership position], it was a limited year term, I came back to my regular library job and had to figure out what it is that I was doing. 

And I think that leads me into the last chapter.