5 years

Today in the LSW Meebo room, Steve and Laura were talking about birthdays and Steve mentioned his blog was turning 3 this month. It made me remember I had started this blog sometime in August, so I went back and looked it up. Yep, Monday, August 11, 2003. This blog turned five, this past Monday, August 11, 2008. Not as ancient as Librarian.net or Whatever, but pretty darn old in terms of blog lifetimes.

In addition to this website being 5 years old, so is my LIS degree. In the mail today, I received a survey from my alma mater sent out to everyone who graduated in 2003 asking about the perceived value of their degrees. As if I needed yet another reminder of how quickly the time is passing. Five years tends to be a magic cut off in libraryland. If you've been working fairly steadily since you got your degree, you're probably over-qualified for many entry level positions, but if you're like me, you may not have the supervisory experience needed to move up in the ranks. Five years flies by like you wouldn't believe, and while you may expect to have some supervisory responsibilities by this point, it's not likely unless you've done some job hopping or you got really lucky (if supervising is what you want to do). This has an impact on my career planning, and the five years of experience and what that experience is in is a major cog in any plans for my future.

I've been thinking about the last five years a lot lately. Much of it in reference to this blog being for and about issues relating to young librarians. After five years in the field, I no longer feel all that "young". I've barely kept this blog updated for the last two years, and I think that's even more indicative of me no longer feeling that young.

I've been on the fence about retiring both the YL blog and YL site. Part of it is that I've built up a professional identity using "younglibrarian" on Gmail, Twitter, FriendFeed and a number of other services so I'm not ready to give up the moniker. The other part of me knows that I'm no longer contributing much to the original mission of the blog and site. I have other outlets where I let my creative energy fly free and I'd rather post in those venues.

What it comes down to is I'm recognizing that I'm in a period of professional maturation, and this part of my life may need to be placed on indefinite hiatus.

Achieving success

With the recent posts by Joy Weese Moll and Michelle Boule, I got to thinking about what success means for me. First, though, I’d like to ruminate on what the meaning of success is.

Is there a universal yardstick for success? I think not. Michelle’s comment perfectly describes my viewpoint: “I define my own success, it does not look like yours, and I am ok with that.” From the outsider’s perspective, Michelle would certainly be considered successful. She is asked to speak on topics at conferences, referenced by other “marquee name” bloggers, and helped develop and deliver a unique and groundbreaking continuing education model. I’m not as familiar with Joy’s ouvre, but her blog feed that I subscribe to in Bloglines has over 200 subscribers. These are women who can be a force to be reckoned with. Each is working on redeveloping her sense of success, however.

Michelle’s post immediately reminded me of my post last year on why I was not blogging as frequently as others. That post, in essence, was about me finding a balance in my life. I’ve been in my current position for a little over three months. I’m already thinking about what my next career step will be. Am I being presumptuous? No. I have long term goals for myself, and I think my position is best served by having new blood every few years. I’ve already talked with my boss about my long term goals, and she had some suggestions of things to think about. She’s been fairly open with me also as to what her general career plans are. We are each working off of what we personally term success.

Defining success for yourself will help you formulate career plans and goals. When you get hit with the dreaded “where do you see yourself in five years” question in an interview, you will have an idea of where you do want to be. It will help you in determining what positions to apply for in the first place. If you even want to be working full time. Joy decided that success for her included not working at a “9 to 5” job.

I enjoy my position a lot. It’s varied, I get to explore a lot of different topics, and I get to work in an environment different from the traditional library. As a substitute librarian with one of the local public libraries, I get to keep my skills as a reference librarian up to date, but my schedule there is on my own terms. I still think my ideal job would be as a sole librarian, or manager of, a reader’s advisory/popular fiction department in a large-ish public library. But that’s more from a personal interest/strength point of view. Within the library world, I didn’t have a clear view of what success meant for me other than having a full-time position when I graduated from library school. As I’ve reflected on my personal indicators of success, this comment from Meredith struck a chord:

I think I’ve taken on so much because I want to achieve some impossible measure of success; and I keep raising the bar higher and higher every day. Two years ago, I would have never thought I’d write a book, and now it doesn’t feel like enough. It’s like I’m looking for some sort of magical approval that never comes and I don’t exactly know why, but I have to get over it, because I’m beginning to suspect that there will never be an “enough.”

I’m guilty of taking on too much. I hate it when I have to say no to an interesting project. At the same time, I remind myself of my current definition of personal success. Is the project I’ve been offered going to help me achieve that success? Having that definition in place has made it easier for me to say no. I’m not rude about saying no, just “thanks for thinking of me. I’ve just got too much on my plate at the moment.” People are very understanding creatures, especially the people of Libraryland.

In the wider view of Libraryland, I think I’m fairly successful. I told Walt Crawford today that I still squee when he comments here. I’ve contributed to a book on Readers’ Advisory, have been asked to consider participating in a proposed book series, asked to supply a bibliography for a program at ALA Annual and am currently serving on the RUSA CODES Reading List Council. Outside my RA passion, I’ve had an essay published in Public Libraries, served as a Director to the New Members Round Table, and I have over 130 subscribers to one of my feeds according to Bloglines. Not bad for someone who’s still surprised when people she hasn’t met before recognize her name without prompting.

I’ve never hidden the fact I also write fiction for publication. How I define my personal success is increasingly influenced by this pursuit. There may become a point in time where I cut back from full time work in Libraryland to facilitate my success in writing fiction. I believe in keeping your options open. Definitions of success need to be flexible because your life circumstances are constantly changing. Success may be a more balanced life which requires you to cut back in activities. It may be as simple as getting a pay raise as a result of your next evaluation.

The long and short of it is: achieving success is dependent upon how you define success.

I'm #1! I'm #1!

Kind of :) A Day in the Life: Career Options in Library & Information Science edited by Priscilla K. Shontz and Richard A. Murray is now available. The chapter I wrote is Chapter 1: Adult Services Librarian. A funny aside to this is that when I sent the chapter to Priscilla, I had no idea what my chapter number would be and without thinking, I put the title as "Chapter XXX: Adult Services Librarian". I was oblivious about it until Priscilla pointed it out to me. Anyway, this is a great book for library school students still trying to figure out exactly what jobs to pursue and those interested in potentially becoming librarians. Those who have become bored or unchallenged in the positions they're currently in should also check it out to see if there are other specialties they may be interested in.