ALIA-NLS7 Paper
Name: Courtney E. Moran
Organisation: University of the Sunshine Coast
Position: Faculty Librarian-Business and USC SouthBank
Email: cmoran@usc.edu.au
Early career librarian at an Australian regional university
My name is Courtney and I am the Business Librarian for the University of the Sunshine
Coast. I am here to tell my story of working as a librarian for a regional Australian
university in response to a question posed to me back in December 2013. Why is it
difficult to recruit new graduates and early career librarians to regional university
libraries? Let me begin with the scene in which the question was posed. At the time,
my supervisor, my manager and I were having a conversation about possible
conference paper ideas when the both of them asked the question. Given that I am the
second youngest of the librarian team, I should have twigged that may be the reason
the majority of my small team are over forty and were a fair way into their careers
before starting at the Sunshine Coast was because there were not many younger ones
interested in applying. Is it really a case that early career librarians are just not
applying for regional positions, or is there not enough to compete with the end of
careers? Is it the available positions themselves or is the picture far broader taking in
work-life balance, lifestyle options, the distance to the nearest city, and/or level of
services such as health and education? May be it has something to do with the lack of
appeal regional centres have compared to places like Australia capital cities or other
major cities from around the world? There seems to be no answer forthcoming to
those asking the question and for a moment I was curious.
I thought nothing further of the question when I ran out of time to write the
paper. It was not until mid-2014 when I was asked if I was interested in collaborating
on an InCite article that my curiosity on the matter began to stir. The collaboration
with two other regionally based librarians was published in the November/December
2014 issue. While the article was taking shape I took a deeper look into the topic by
conducting a literature review to find out more. To date, I have not found evidence
that discusses new graduates and regional workplaces to the point this question is
answered. This is why I am searching for answers like the Queensland Universities
Libraries Office of Cooperation (QULOC) Staffing Issues Working Party who established
a webpage with testimonies on the benefits of working in a regional university. I will
return to QULOC’s view of the subject, but first I should tell my story of how I got here
in the hope others will inspired to consider regional service.
My story did not begin with that fateful conversation back in December 2013,
but rather many years earlier. My Mother’s advice to me in my Senior Year at high
school was to consider library work, for I was already employed as a casual shelver at
the local library. I remember saying I did not want to be a librarian. My Mother
suggested that I consider making it a back up plan just in case my dreams of directing
and scriptwriting fell through. That piece of advice came in handy when I returned to
my home city of Brisbane after five years of living in the Northern New South Wales
town of Armidale. For three months I had to look for work and I came across a parttime shelving position at the University of Queensland. It was a challenge to live on the
much lower income; however, I kept with it in the hopes of securing a full-time
position. I found my full-time position with the same employer two years later and my
career as a librarian was born.
So how did I end up as librarian at the University of the Sunshine Coast eight
years later at the age of 32? When I graduated with my Masters in library management
I was desperate to become a librarian. After all, the reason I studied the degree was so
I could secure a faculty librarian position after locking my sights on it two years into my
employment at the University of Queensland. I applied for eight librarian positions
across six institutions in a space of about six months; most of them at the faculty level.
Only two of the eight applications resulted in interviews. Only one of the six
institutions was regional. It would later turn out there were a few other former
University of Queensland staff that had taken up postings at the University of the
Sunshine Coast over the years before I started. Were they all seeking a seachange, a
change of workplace, or something else?
What I have achieved in the past four years has convinced me there is
something about starting out in regional university libraries that can be advantageous.
Within my first six months as a Reference Librarian I was engaged in such projects as
reviewing the guidelines around High Use items and reviewing literature on webdiscovery tools. About two months later I was working on a literature review for the
2012 Deputy Vice Chancellor’s Commissioned Learning and Teaching Grants. This then
led me to conducting a literature review and citation count of samples in the
Australian Government’s Office of Learning and Teaching 2012 Academic Secondment
Project. This opportunity came about after the Secondee was impressed by my work
for the Deputy Vice Chancellor’s program. The head of the steering committee for the
2012 Academic Secondment Project was the Sunshine Coast Vice-Chancellor; whom I
was told was impressed by the presentation of the literature findings. I do not recall
what the actual outcome of the secondee project was, but my supervisor and I did pull
together an OLT grant application in response to my finding that the OLT projects
website needed work, and that it may explain why there was a lack of evidence in the
dissemination of the samples in the secondee project.
We were unsuccessful;
however, I did create a goal to one day apply for a research grant into teaching and
learning practices.
For eight weeks in the lead up to my first anniversary at the University of the
Sunshine Coast I filled in for the vacated Learning Support Librarian position. This
position’s central role is to locate and create blending learning tool for use in teaching
and learning. They also liaise with our Centre for the Support of Advancing Learning
and Teaching. Despite being tech savvy, those weeks were enough for me to conclude
that I had no passion to pursue the position. It was a positive experience in the sense I
learnt a few new technical skills, gained appreciation for the position, while at the
same time was grateful for an opportunity to work out what exactly I wanted to do
with my career. Had I managed to land a librarian position with a city-based institution
I am not entirely sure I would have had such an opportunity.
What my library studies did not prepare me for was the development and
delivery of general information literacy tutorials in the library for the first four weeks
of semester. Nor did I feel I received adequate training in addressing a lecture theatre
of a few hundred on the topic of resources to help them with their assessment and the
services the library offers to them. I am normally a shy person and struggle with social
settings, but when I am in my librarian persona I feel comfortable talking in lectures
and library classes.
My biggest challenge to date, other than writing this paper, occurred earlier
this year when I was given essentially a week to pull together a librarian service for our
latest campus. For the next nine teaching weeks I spent one day a week working as the
only library staff member at USC SouthBank in inner Brisbane. USC had being teaching
business and social science courses at the SouthBank TAFE campus two years
previously, but in February this year we separated from the TAFE and created a
satellite campus to teach four business degrees. We were presented with the problem
of how do we house a high-demand collection and provide a library service to one
hundred and fifty-two students? Given I had already established a connection with the
staff at USC SouthBank through my role as at the business librarian I was asked to
choose a day during the week to spend on-site. My director wanted Thursday, I chose
Monday as the core subject had its classes then. Having had no experience in setting
up a library service beyond an university assignment, I was making it up as I go. It
eventually reached a point where the service was not sustainable due to the absence
of students seeking help. What did I learn? Setting up an online library service for an
assignment in library studies does not entirely prepare you for the real deal. That, and I
should have figured out how else to gain the students’ attention other than staying
with the library books in the administration office.
I confess that when I first started pursuing librarianship right up until four years
ago I wanted to be a librarian in a metropolitan library. I am a city girl at heart and I
was living in the suburbs of Brisbane for most of my library career to date. I had no
intention of going regional. I dreamt of working for the big institutions for many years
to come. In the end, it was the University of the Sunshine Coast that wanted to take
me on and help me get ahead. My next confession is this is not my first regional
university to work at. For eight months in 2000 at aged 22 I worked temporarily for the
Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of New England to meet my Work for
the Dole requirements. I was also a part-time student there; hence I went from being
in Brisbane to Armidale and back. I lived in Armidale for five years, experiencing its
gorgeous seasons, made plenty of friends, and getting on with life. I left because I grew
tired of not being able to leave town easily and I missed my family. It was not a career
choice, for I did not have one then nor did I have plans to pursue librarianship at that
time either. However, my experience working at the University of New England did
spark an interest in working in universities. Would I consider going back? Yes, if a
position became available at a time other than when I have just accepted a new
posting at my current location.
Since moving to the Sunshine Coast, I have a new appreciation for working in
regional universities and I have the means to get back to visit my family far more
easily. In both Armidale and on the Sunshine Coast I believe I have seen a tight
connection between the universities and the community; something I did not feel as
strongly while working in Brisbane. I feel that through these connections, there are
more opportunities for librarians to do more than serve the information needs of the
staff and students.
Going back to the issue of perceived lack of early career librarians applying for
postings outside Australian cities, a part from contributing to an InCite article I also
added my voice to the Queensland Universities Libraries Office of Cooperation
(QULOC) webpage. It was late 2014 when the QULOC Staffing Issues Working Party
asked member universities if anyone was interested in contributing to the webpage
about the advantages of working in regional locations. After reviewing the responses I
noted most, not all, of the respondents started elsewhere then moved regional in
search of a broader skill set and a change from the city. This observation just adds to
my perception that it seems that a librarian’s career should really start in the city,
rather than the other way around; that regional university libraries only attract middle
to late career librarians.
What my literature review since then has found was that there is not much out
there on new graduates or early career librarians and regional Australian university
libraries as a combined topic being discussed. Separately, there is plenty on new
graduates and regional universities, but there is a noticeable gap in the literature
which begs the question are those raising the issue of the difficulty of recruiting new
graduates and early career librarians to the regions concerned that it exists, or that no
one is really talking about it?
What I did find were a couple of articles that could explain the dominate
number of end of careers taking up positions in regional locations compared to early
careers. In Franks (2012) article the issue of the growing number of older workers in
Australian academic libraries is discussed, with reference to employment data from
2007 and 2011 showing that this age group are “making up the bulk of applications for
advertised positions in many coastal and some rural areas” (p.105) in an effort to leave
the cities. While Larrivee (2014) highlights the issues and anxieties surrounding job
relocation through the application of Maslow’s Theory of Motivation (p.5), whereby
until the primary needs are met the “new librarian” will endure the stress of transition.
Could it be said that although regional areas are having their vacancies filled by end of
careers, the real reason why much younger new graduates are not applying is because
of the factors involved in relocation and change of job?
So my question to soon to be graduates, new graduates, and those within their
first ten years of a library related career is it a case that going regional is not possible
due to commitments and city like access to services? Is it the lifestyle or the desire to
build your career in a city? Or, is there a lack of an attraction to regional university
libraries, especially across Queensland and Northern New South Wales?
In the five years since I graduated with my Masters in Library and Information
Science, I have gone from working in a grand old city university to one of the youngest
Australian universities. So, where to from here? I am happy to continue to explore the
staffing issue identified by QULOC; however, I am also interested in how regional
university libraries contribute to their community’s social capital, and a desire to
develop skills in health librarianship ahead of the new university hospital opening in
late 2016. One thing is for sure my trajectory is locked onto seeing out my career in
regional libraries. Will you lock yours onto a regional library too?
References
Franks, R. (2012). Grey Matter: the ageing librarian workforce, with a focus on public
and academic libraries in Australia and the United States. APLIS, 25(3), 104-110.
Larrivee, A. (2014). Exploring the Stressors of New Librarians. Public Services Quarterly,
10(1), 1-10. doi: 10.1080/15228959.2014.875766