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    Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal: Surviving an Information Science Career Crisis in a Time of Change
    Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal: Surviving an Information Science Career Crisis in a Time of Change
    Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal: Surviving an Information Science Career Crisis in a Time of Change
    Ebook202 pages2 hours

    Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal: Surviving an Information Science Career Crisis in a Time of Change

    By Oliver Cutshaw

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    About this ebook

    This book examines the difficulties confronting information professionals who, due to financial downturns, technological change, or personal crises, are forced to re-evaluate their career options. It is divided between a case study (based on the author’s own experiences) of career dislocation and eventual career renewal, and several sections that offer pragmatic advice on how to recover from job loss, conduct a skills assessment and develop a practical job search strategy. The author, with honesty, confronts the serious and sometimes troubling psychological and professional consequences of layoffs and job burnout. This book presents an overall positive outlook on personal growth and the opportunities our new information environment holds.
    • Provides the tools and resources that will help the reader decide on the best approach to re-start their career
    • Presents first-hand experience about the anxiety, hard work, and excitement that go into career renewal
    • Shines a light on the understanding of the various challenges that come with working in multiple library environments
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateMar 4, 2011
    ISBN9781780632728
    Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal: Surviving an Information Science Career Crisis in a Time of Change
    Author

    Oliver Cutshaw

    Oliver Cutshaw has over 30 years experience as both a para-professional technician and professional librarian; having worked at world-renowned universities, including Harvard University, and small graduate schools he brings a broad and established perspective to the question of career change. The author holds both MA and MLIS degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park. He served as a middle manager and preservation librarian for over a decade at Harvard University and is now the Librarian for Southern California at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, California.

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      Book preview

      Recovery, Reframing, and Renewal - Oliver Cutshaw

      olivercutshaw@yahoo.com

      1

      Introduction to the parameters of career renewal

      Abstract:

      The Introduction describes the changing landscape of information professional employment in the twenty-first century. The author briefly describes his own experiences dealing with this challenging environment. The essential message of the book is a positive one: that, yes, with attention to their mental well-being and a willingness to adapt and change, librarians can indeed thrive in this era of technological transformation and economic stress.

      Key words

      library administration

      career renewal

      psychological well-being

      employment goals

      As I began thinking about this book in the spring of 2009, when the United States was in the midst of its worst recession since World War II, the economic downturn had affected regional economies across the globe, leading to a wave of cutbacks, staff reductions, and leaner and meaner budgets throughout the public and private sectors.

      The library and information science world was hit hard. Public libraries and public universities dependent on tax revenues were especially vulnerable. In my home state of California municipal and county libraries began implementing hiring freezes as early as the fall of 2007. In addition to the lingering economic woes, information professionals are additionally being pressured by two great imperatives for service: the rapid transformation of our information economy from print to digital and the concomitant costs that the addition of new online subscriptions, computer labs, and web resources bring.

      Library administrators are faced with the unenviable task of having to increase as well as migrate services while receiving declining budgetary resources. The response by many administrators of university and public libraries is to reduce staff, outsource work, and in some cases declare long-cherished library features such as bound periodicals, map collections, and reading rooms to be quaint but expendable luxuries. Thus librarians and other information professionals are faced with fears of layoffs, salary stagnation, and being deemed ‘obsolete’ and unnecessary by civic and university leaders. Robert M. Stearns, in his excellent opinion piece on the unsettled picture of library staffing writes, ‘Why should employers bother with attractive salaries when they know how grateful a librarian will be to get hired at all?’ (Stearns, 2009: 44).

      This is not a pretty picture: technological change causing loss of jobs, tight budgets leading to reductions in staff, questions about the essential worth of libraries in a world dominated by the Internet. Yet I would argue that since the modern library emerged in the late nineteenth century, we librarians have been continually facing similar challenges. A profession tied to innovation, scholarly institutions, and service to diverse and changing populations is bound by its very nature to always be in the midst of the turbulent forces of change.

      Change is the focus of my book. Many librarians during these challenging times will have to be willing to adapt to new circumstances, so they will need practical strategies for coping with change; in this case, coping with changes to one’s career. Despite the pessimism (or perhaps realism) depicted so far in my introduction, this book’s message is ultimately positive and I hope uplifting for most readers. While we cannot elude the forces of technological migration, economic recessions, and new institutional priorities, we can make ourselves more alert to opportunities, more agile in our thinking, and perhaps more reasonable and successful in our career expectations. In the process of developing new skills in job searching and career adjustment, we also may learn skills that help us embrace the inevitable fact in our modern life: change will come when you least expect it.

      No matter how safe your job or how wonderful your reputation, job loss or the necessity of job change can occur. Back in the late 1990s, soon after I began working at Harvard University in the internationally renowned Widener Library, one colleague said to me, ‘Don’t worry about job security, no one is ever laid off here.’ But within a decade I would witness several staff members losing their jobs. Some reductions were for efficiency’s sake. The job was no longer required by the organization. Some were because temporary programs had run their course. And some jobs disappeared due to budgetary re-allocations that reflected new university priorities. But for each and every library professional involved in these cutbacks, change had come even to a very stable and storied university.

      Throughout my book, I will lay out some strategies for coping with our contemporary, challenging, information professional employment environment. I want to re-assert that all is not gloom and doom. In many ways change can be liberating. Many people who have unfortunately been laid off will often find, if not a better job, at least a new and exciting opportunity. These times of personal turmoil also give us an opportunity to take stock of what skills we have, what talents we possess, and which of our abilities are perhaps being underused. I have found that many professionals need to reframe their thinking from the negative to the positive. They need to shift their focus from the skills they believe they lack, to the talents and experience they possess.

      The foundation of my book is a case study of my personal experience with career disruption. In 2007, I left my position as Binding Librarian at the Harvard College Library for family reasons. In a story that is all too familiar for many families, my wife and I chose to leave the East Coast to help her mother, who was ill and also suffering from dementia. It was a moving and rewarding chance to help a loved one in need, but it did lead to a huge break in my career. Sometimes change has a dual nature: it is both thrust upon you and you voluntarily decide to alter your life plans in response to those new conditions. In a very real sense, you have choices in how to respond to forces over which you have no

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