It seems to be common knowledge among library professionals that the duties of a librarian are diverse and numerous. What is not clear is how many different jobs a single librarian might be expected to perform. In the spring of 2008 I conducted a study to examine job posting on ALA JobList to see how many positions required various standard librarian tasks (reference, instruction, and collection development). I closely examined the science and technology librarian positions to count the number of responsibilities each position entailed. I found a range of between 10 and 28 separate responsibilities per job with an average of 16 different tasks per librarian. This was done by coding each job description using a consistent scheme that would quantify the various terminologies in each job posting.
I will be revisiting this study in the spring of 2009 to expand the data set and to see changes over one year. I believe it will again reflect the large number of tasks that an individual librarian is required to perform in a single job. It may also show a seeming increase in the number of responsibilities felt by many professionals in the field. This issue is very relevant to current and new professionals, who must evaluate and manage each new task they are assigned, and also to administrators in these areas, who must define job parameters and balance new services against shrinking budgets.
Presented by Charles Hillen, Head of Acquisitions & Serials and Glenn Johnson-Grau, Head of Collection Development, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Promoting Open Access and Open Educational Resources to FacultyNASIG
Heather Crozier, presenter
Student debt is a compelling issue and many institutions are investigating solutions to ease the financial burdens of their students. Increasing the use of open educational resources benefits students by reducing course costs. Adopting OER in the classroom allows faculty more freedom in choosing instructional tools. Faculty also benefit from open access publishing by increasing their exposure. However, on the campus of a small, private institution, attendance at workshops to spread awareness and increase the use of these materials was minimal. Faculty had the perception that free resources could not be the same quality as traditional resources. In order to dispel this myth, the Electronic Resources Librarian and Educational Technology Manager collaborated to create custom one hour sessions for individual departments, leveraging library/faculty liaison relationships and the expertise of the office of educational technology. In the session, faculty learn more about open access publishing options, the value of open educational resources, the quality of many open educational resources, and where to find these resources. The session uses the course management system to both disseminate the information shared in the session and create a forum for departments to share resources with each other. Through the CMS, faculty gain access to vetted resources. All attendants have editing privileges within the site after the workshop, allowing them to curate course-specific lists for sharing and future reference. Pilot sessions have been well received and wider implementation is planned for the next academic year.
Understanding the Depth of Google Scholar and its Implication for Webometrics...Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari
A presentation on Google Scholar, webometrics ranking of higher institutions and Open Access to research publications. The presentation details the parameters Google scholar uses for indexing research publications and the implication of that for the visibility of scholars, their institutions and their webometrics rank.
Presented by Charles Hillen, Head of Acquisitions & Serials and Glenn Johnson-Grau, Head of Collection Development, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
Promoting Open Access and Open Educational Resources to FacultyNASIG
Heather Crozier, presenter
Student debt is a compelling issue and many institutions are investigating solutions to ease the financial burdens of their students. Increasing the use of open educational resources benefits students by reducing course costs. Adopting OER in the classroom allows faculty more freedom in choosing instructional tools. Faculty also benefit from open access publishing by increasing their exposure. However, on the campus of a small, private institution, attendance at workshops to spread awareness and increase the use of these materials was minimal. Faculty had the perception that free resources could not be the same quality as traditional resources. In order to dispel this myth, the Electronic Resources Librarian and Educational Technology Manager collaborated to create custom one hour sessions for individual departments, leveraging library/faculty liaison relationships and the expertise of the office of educational technology. In the session, faculty learn more about open access publishing options, the value of open educational resources, the quality of many open educational resources, and where to find these resources. The session uses the course management system to both disseminate the information shared in the session and create a forum for departments to share resources with each other. Through the CMS, faculty gain access to vetted resources. All attendants have editing privileges within the site after the workshop, allowing them to curate course-specific lists for sharing and future reference. Pilot sessions have been well received and wider implementation is planned for the next academic year.
Understanding the Depth of Google Scholar and its Implication for Webometrics...Idowu Adegbilero-Iwari
A presentation on Google Scholar, webometrics ranking of higher institutions and Open Access to research publications. The presentation details the parameters Google scholar uses for indexing research publications and the implication of that for the visibility of scholars, their institutions and their webometrics rank.
Lecture presented by Rhea Rowena U. Apolinario at PAARL's Summer Conference on the theme "Library Analytics: Data-driven Library Management, held at Pearl Hotel, Manila on 20-22 April 2016
Bibliometrics, Webometrics, Altmetrics, Alternative metrics.Andrea Scharnhorst
A. Scharnhorst (2016) Bibliometrics, Webometrics, Altmetrics, Alternative metrics. Presentation given at the COST Action TD1210 Knowescape Workshop “Alternative metrics or tailored metrics: Science dynamics for science policy”, November 9-10, 2016 Warsaw
Data in The Classroom: It's Not Just for Nerds Anymore!ICPSR
These slides provide resources for real, interactive, and fun data faculty can bring into the classroom for great discussions and paper assignments designed to get students thinking critically. You don't need to be a numbers guru to do it! These slides also emphasize the value of data and numbers to students in getting great jobs and in understanding the world around them.
Serach, Serendipity & the Researcher ExperienceNASIG
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When considering academic researchers’ information-seeking and retrieval needs, we often focus on search – optimizing for search, Google-like search for libraries, user preferences for one-box quick-search tools, and so on. But what about unplanned instances of discovery? Are new technologies, such as text mining and natural language processing, enabling new pathways that lead researchers to relevant material, perhaps even leading to surprising new connections across disciplines? Conversely, with the prevalence of satisficing, does serendipity even play a role when searching for information about a scholarly topic?_x000D_
Through a study of undergraduate students and their faculty members, as well as a survey of publisher and website offerings, this talk will summarize common user pathways and how today’s students and faculty use content recommendation tools with recommendations for how libraries and the scholarly communications community might respond.
Serendipity in Digital Collections: Enhancing Discovery with Linked Data Anna L. Creech, Head, Resource Acquisition and Delivery, Boatwright Memorial Library, University of Richmond
A presentation on enhancing the usability of libraries delivered at the Ark Group's recent conference, "Management Strategies for Library and Information Service Centres", Sydney, 19-21 September 2007.
Research Data Services Vision(s):An Analysis of North American Research Libr...Inna Kouper
A presentation from the IASSIST 2015 conference in Minneapolis that describes preliminary results of research on research data services visions and implementations. Authors: Inna Kouper, Kathleen Fear, Mayu Ishida, Christine Kollen and Sarah Williams.
Lecture presented by Rhea Rowena U. Apolinario at PAARL's Summer Conference on the theme "Library Analytics: Data-driven Library Management, held at Pearl Hotel, Manila on 20-22 April 2016
Bibliometrics, Webometrics, Altmetrics, Alternative metrics.Andrea Scharnhorst
A. Scharnhorst (2016) Bibliometrics, Webometrics, Altmetrics, Alternative metrics. Presentation given at the COST Action TD1210 Knowescape Workshop “Alternative metrics or tailored metrics: Science dynamics for science policy”, November 9-10, 2016 Warsaw
Data in The Classroom: It's Not Just for Nerds Anymore!ICPSR
These slides provide resources for real, interactive, and fun data faculty can bring into the classroom for great discussions and paper assignments designed to get students thinking critically. You don't need to be a numbers guru to do it! These slides also emphasize the value of data and numbers to students in getting great jobs and in understanding the world around them.
Serach, Serendipity & the Researcher ExperienceNASIG
Presenter: Lettie Conrad, Executive Program Manager, Discovery & Product Analysis, SAGE Publishing
When considering academic researchers’ information-seeking and retrieval needs, we often focus on search – optimizing for search, Google-like search for libraries, user preferences for one-box quick-search tools, and so on. But what about unplanned instances of discovery? Are new technologies, such as text mining and natural language processing, enabling new pathways that lead researchers to relevant material, perhaps even leading to surprising new connections across disciplines? Conversely, with the prevalence of satisficing, does serendipity even play a role when searching for information about a scholarly topic?_x000D_
Through a study of undergraduate students and their faculty members, as well as a survey of publisher and website offerings, this talk will summarize common user pathways and how today’s students and faculty use content recommendation tools with recommendations for how libraries and the scholarly communications community might respond.
Serendipity in Digital Collections: Enhancing Discovery with Linked Data Anna L. Creech, Head, Resource Acquisition and Delivery, Boatwright Memorial Library, University of Richmond
A presentation on enhancing the usability of libraries delivered at the Ark Group's recent conference, "Management Strategies for Library and Information Service Centres", Sydney, 19-21 September 2007.
Research Data Services Vision(s):An Analysis of North American Research Libr...Inna Kouper
A presentation from the IASSIST 2015 conference in Minneapolis that describes preliminary results of research on research data services visions and implementations. Authors: Inna Kouper, Kathleen Fear, Mayu Ishida, Christine Kollen and Sarah Williams.
This presentation was provided by Joan Lippincott of The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), during Session Eight of the NISO training series "Assessment Practices and Metrics in a 21st Century Pandemic," held on November 6, 2020.
Librarian building blocks; or, how to make the ideal librarianDom Bortruex
"Librarian building blocks" will explore recent changes and needs in librarianship, introduce strategies for learning new skills, and inspire participants to implement these skills. This presentation is for a general audience and will cover skills for all libraries. To build the ideal librarian, we determined what skills and knowledge a contemporary librarian needs to succeed. Since job postings and MLIS curriculum reflect current, popular trends in librarianship, we developed a data harvesting Python script that gathered the data for more than 600 librarian job postings and MLIS curriculum content. Based on this data, we will present which skills are being taught and which skills need to be taught. The presentation will explore what these changes in technology and librarianship mean for current librarians and how they can stay up to date in the continuously evolving field of librarianship.
Web traffic and campus trends: a multi-institution analysisRobin Paynter
Ordinarily, it is difficult to generalize operational research conducted at one library to the environment of another. Different survey instruments, user populations, and sampling techniques make direct comparisons difficult. Despite these clear differences, libraries continue to use this literature to plan new services. There is a clear need to establish a baseline for comparison. The use of web server log statistical reports and other web analytics may offer this baseline. Such reports are now available to most libraries, and offer a rich, and consistent, look at library user behavior. This data tells a rich story about library use, and offers a valid point of comparison between institutions. The Orbis-Cascade Alliance Research Interest Group presents these initial results as our first collaborative effort. We argue that differences between institutional environments that have long been assumed are now clearly visible in simple metrics such as most-viewed pages, point-of-entry, and peak hours. These points of comparison are analyzed for three types of Alliance libraries: a public and a private four year residential campus, and an urban commuter university. The analysis offers empirical evidence of the commonalities and differences between these member libraries.
This presentation, by Tito Sierra, was given as part of the Program on Information Science brown bag series.
This study investigates how research libraries are staffing for the future by examining their planned investment in new professional positions. The data for this study are vacancy announcements for full-time professional positions advertised by ARL member university libraries throughout the 2011 calendar year. This yearlong survey of ARL hiring provides insight into current research library staffing priorities, and evidence of emerging job specializations in the research library field.
IR Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Institutional ...OCLC Research
A view of the research support landscape and RLG partnership activities to help academic librarians provide better services. Given at the Spring CNI briefing in Minneapolis April 6, 2009.
By Ricky Erway, OCLC Research
Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to ResearchLynn Connaway
Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, William Harvey, Vanessa Kitzie, and Stephanie Mikitish. 2017. “Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research.” Presented at the Update on Value of Academic Libraries Initiative (ACRL) at the ALA Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, June 25.
Similar to One Person, Many Responsibilities: An Analysis of Science and Technology Library Job Descriptions (20)
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This presentation provides an overview of copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Patents are explained in detail, and strategies for effective prior art patent searches are explained.
Workshop for Global Entreprenuership Week on advanced tools and topics for patent searching including Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and international patents. Classification searching is covered in depth.
Information Literacy for Engineering StudentsJohn Meier
This presentation was developed for a Senior design course in Electrical Engineering as part of the ABET accreditation requirements for engineering graduates. It attempts to teach information literacy concepts and relate them to the engineering curriculum and profession.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
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Dear Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg,
The US House of Representatives is deeply concerned by ongoing and pervasive acts of antisemitic
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2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...
One Person, Many Responsibilities: An Analysis of Science and Technology Library Job Descriptions
1. One Person, Many Responsibilities An Analysis of Science and Technology Library Job Descriptions John J Meier Science Librarian Pennsylvania State University
3. An Analysis of Science and Technology Library Job Descriptions Background Literature Review Methodology Results Conclusions Future Study Bibliography
4. Background Hired into a new position Redefined to include more, broad responsibilities Change in job responsibilities Temporary role as administrator during sabbatical Study in 2008 of ALA JobLIST postings Poster for ALA Annual Poster Session in Anaheim One year later Change in results? Trend? New venue to present
5. Literature Review Many content analysis studies of library jobs Most focused on frequency of certain responsibilities, some on salary or job titles Did not focus on total number of tasks White, Gary W. “Academic Subject Specialist Positions in the United States: A Content Analysis of Announcements from 1990 through 1998” Lynch, Beverly P., Smith, Kimberley Robles “The Changing Nature of Work in Academic Libraries” Beile, Penny M., Adams, Megan M. “Other Duties as Assigned: Emerging Trends in the Academic Library Job Market”
6. Reference and Instruction Librarian - Reference Level I Provides general and virtual information, research and reference services. Plans, teaches and assesses information literarcy instruction in collaboration with faculty and/or Department Head. Develops web and print based materials. Serves as liaison to academic departments. Locates and creates digital content to support academic instruction; Explores, evaluates and encourages deployment of emergent technologies into library programs and services.
7. Methodology Population of all jobs on ALA JobLIST Selected all Science and Technology Librarians Must have liaison or collection development responsibility for a science or technology department Used content analysis to code number of tasks General rule: select action verbs Exception: when more than one direct object to a verb, select direct objects of the verb instead Exception: remove duplicates and only count audiences once Exception: count tenure expectation as at least three
9. Reference and Instruction Librarian - Reference Level I Provides general and virtual information, research and reference services. Plans, teaches and assesses information literacy instruction in collaboration with faculty and/or Department Head. Develops web and print based materials. Serves as liaison to academic departments. Locates and creates digital content to support academic instruction; Explores, evaluates and encourages deployment of emergent technologies into library programs and services.
10. Reference and Instruction Librarian - Reference Level I Provides general and virtual information, research and reference services. Plans, teaches and assesses information literacy instruction in collaboration with faculty and/or Department Head. Develops web and print based materials. Serves as liaison to academic departments. Locates and creates digital content to support academic instruction; Explores, evaluates and encourages deployment of emergent technologies into library programs and services. 15
11. Results 2008 JobLIST has total of 368 jobs Sample of 30 jobs Average 16 Median 14 Minimum 10 Maximum 28 2009 JobLIST has total of 173 jobs Sample of 25 jobs Average 17 Median 16 Minimum 7 Maximum 29
13. Conclusions Number of total jobs down significantly Corresponding number of Science and Technology related library jobs down less Total number of job tasks up slightly Number of tasks per job slightly higher than ACRL standard definition
14. Future Study Historic analysis for true detection of trends Larger data set Print job ads Mapping of archaic terminology to new vocabulary (ex: Automation = Computer Skillz?) Coding scheme by type of activity Discover changing nature of job in more detail Consistency of coding easier to track
15. Bibliography ACRL works with CUPA-HR to update academic library position descriptions http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/issues/personnel/ ALA JobLIST http://joblist.ala.org/ White, Gary W. “Academic Subject Specialist Positions in the United States: A Content Analysis of Announcements from 1990 through 1998” Lynch, Beverly P., Smith, Kimberley Robles “The Changing Nature of Work in Academic Libraries” Beile, Penny M., Adams, Megan M. “Other Duties as Assigned: Emerging Trends in the Academic Library Job Market”
16. Questions? John J Meier Science Librarian Pennsylvania State University meier@psu.edu johnmeier1 – Twitter, Gmail, etc http://www.personal.psu.edu/jjm38/blogs/meier
Editor's Notes
This is just a quick look at a visualization of the presentation title. This was my 2008 poster presentation I will mention later. I tried to visually represent the percentage of time I spend on tasks by scaling each copy of myself in proportion.
This is the order my presentation will follow. Starting with the background of my study, a literature review of other research in the area, my methodology, some of the results including conclusions, then suggestions for future study. I will leave time at the end for questions.
I first became interested in this research when I was hired into a new job, which was formerly the mathematics librarian. It was expanded to include outreach to scientific institutes on campus and patent depository responsibilities. After one year the head of my library took a six month sabbatical leave, which added a number of temporary administrative responsibilities as well as subject liaison areas. It was during this time that I did a preliminary study of job postings, exploring what percentage of library jobs required administrative responsibilities, reference desk work, or instruction. During this study for the ALA general poster session I also took a close look at smaller sample, science librarians, to count number of tasks per job. With this research forum as another opportunity, I focused completely on science librarians and looked for trends and changes with a formalized method.
There are many studies of library job postings, but all of them focus on which responsibilities are required or salaries. For example, Gary White found in a study of announcements from 1990 through 1998 that "Science reference or science reference bibliographer" was the most common title for a science or engineering liaison librarian. He also discovered the distribution of salaries and how frequently requirements appeared. This theme runs through dozens of other studies from the 1950s to today.
One resource that proved useful was the ACRL CUPA-HR (College and University Professional Association for Human Resources) recommended "Position Descriptions for Academic Librarians" used for the 2008-9 Administrative Compensation Survey. The suggested use of this document is during the review of an academic library position when library administrators meet with human resources staff. This document is recommended "in order to assure that the position and duties selected for consideration match up with these ACRL accepted titles and descriptions." Thus it is could be considered a professional standard in the field.
For my methodology, one day each year I took a snapshot of all the job listings available through ALA Joblist. I then selected those with a liaison or collection development responsibility in a science or technology subject area. This could be explicitly defined or mentioned as a potential or negotiable requirement. My content analysis rules were defined in an attempt to capture the number of tasks despite dramatically heterogeneous and sometimes verbose descriptions. My general rule was to count all non-duplicative action verbs. I had to make a number of exceptions to account for compound sentences, prepositional phrases, and lists. If there were distinct objects of the verb, I would count those instead, for example "collect books and journals" would be two not one. Yet I would avoid duplication, especially in audience, since it was difficult to determine the impact across different jobs. One position might only list "chemistry", while another would list "science". Tenure was also a difficulty "responsibility" to quantify equally across job postings, many of which referred to other documents, so it was counted as at least three tasks (service, scholarship, professional activities).
Here is the ALA Joblist website showing a result that extends further down the screen. Postings can vary in detail and length, and they can also link to more complete job postings. I used more complete job postings when available, but not other addenda such as benefits or tenure documentation.
As a baseline, I applied my methodology to the ACRL "Reference and Instruction Librarian" position. Note that each type of reference service mode is counted, tasks under information literacy instruction are next followed by development of materials. Liaison is counted once then collection development and online creation of content. Finally technology related responsibilities for services and programs (note when there are multiple verbs AND multiple direct objects, the verbs are preferred) This position does not include tenure track responsibilities.
So the total here is 15.
My results from both applications of my methodology, both at the end of May of each year, are displayed here side-by-side. As you can clearly see, the total number of jobs has dropped considerably from 368 to 173, over a 50% decrease. The number of jobs that I could use in my sample also dropped, although to a lesser degree. The average and median number of tasks has risen somewhat and is slightly higher than the ACRL definition. The maximum and minimum show the wide variance of the job postings. A distribution of the data is shown below helps to visualize the shift of the median and the change in distribution.
Here are those distributions overlayed for a closer comparison.
We can draw some conclusions from the data, many of which were easy to see from the results. Overall it seems that responsibilities are increasing and the number of jobs is decreasing, a correlation that should not surprise anyone familiar with the state of the economy. Librarians have always been considered generalists and multitaskers, but surely there must be a limit to how many tasks one person can manage effectively.
There are a number of related studies or improvements that could be made. First a historic analysis could detect true trends over time. A larger data set would be available and the print job ads involved would have greater stability (often web ads are simply deleted when the search is over) A requirement would be the mapping of old terminology to new in order to correctly weigh tasks. This could be accomplished by applying a more rigorous coding scheme to the data, in order to map tasks to a type of work (reference, instruction, collections). This has the added benefits of revealing the change in focus of librarian jobs, perhaps an increased teaching/instruction component, and also make the application of coding more consistent. It would be less reliant on the language used by the ad alone.
Here are the resources I used to conduct my research.