Can We Stop Preaching to the Choir and Expand Our Base?

ByInnocent Awasom

Texas Tech University Libraries

Preaching to the choir or telling our stories within and without?

• My story – Zoologist / Environmental Scientist – Mix of Biological and LIS conferences ( before 2004)

• Post 2006 has been exclusively LIS related conferences

• February 2014 Publication Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sponsored 30 Science Librarians to its annual conference in Chicago

• AAAS preaches to the public - Family open/citizen science day and exhibit

• What about the LIS community? Any non library world attendees here?

They saw it coming !

• In 2000 Denise Davis et al, of the ALA Office of Research and Statistics sounded an alarm on the effect of impending retirement of baby boomers to the LIS profession

• In 2005 Stephen Tordello corroborated the above at the SLA Annual conference opining that the greatest retirement wave would occur between 2010 and 2020, creating a potential deficit of LIS grads between 2015 and 2020

• In 2006 a Special Issue of Science and Technology Libraries was dedicated to Recruitment and retention of STEM Librarians

Retirement by Decade among Credentialed Librarians

Decade Retirees1980 – 1990 11,400

1990 – 2000 15,000

2000-2010 14,800

2010-2020 28,200

(Source ALA Office of Research and Statistics 2000)

STEM Librarians affected the most?

• Stem job adverts always add academic background in the sciences preferred or experience in an academic library equally desirable

• STEM Librarian Search committees not having it easy.

Where do we go from here: Fire on the mountain ….

• Catch them young – Science majors working as student assistants

• Where do we Publish our works ? LIS publications only and why?

• Marketing and outreach through our stories, our narratives

• Attracting feral librarians – our narratives too may certainly help

• STEM librarian advocacy “Librocacy / Libravocacy”

• Advocate for competitive remuneration to keep STEM librarians from migrating to greener pastures

Catch them Young ACRL Brochure 2006/07!

Science Majors Needed

Great careers await

@ A Science Library

Near You

Publish or Perish but where ?

• In exclusively LIS Publications ? Certainly Not. Let us diversify and publish in all STEM journals to bring more visibility to our works and efforts.

• Let our various faculty see what we can do for them in Information Literacy, Collection development, bibliometrics, embedded in research teams etc.

• Collaborate and publish with Faculty members in journals specific to their disciplines thus bringing visibility and recognition to STEM Librarians

Marketing and outreach through our stories – our narratives

• Narratives are non fictional personal stories about matters relevant to STEM librarianship such as our experiences in helping faculty and grad students draft their data management plans, use a bibliographic software to manage citations or review literature or search for that lost book or elusive article

• We tell stories around and through the products and services we offer such as Bonnie Swagger and John Dupuis who blog about science Librarianship (the undergraduate science librarian and confessions of a science librarian respectively)

• We provide metrics for scholarly productivity of our institution to the VP for Research

Attracting Feral Librarians into the STEM Librarianship

• There are quite a number of people with post graduates science degrees who are post docs and not getting faculty positions out there?

• Some institutions are offering Project Management certificates/degrees that they are enrolling into. What about a fellowship or library residency with PM certificate as a perk and who knows how many may end up staying as the tenure process is what it is

• Our colleague from Baylor gave us tips on how to work with Feral Librarians.

Library Advocacy – Libravocacy/Librocacy ?

• Advocate for competitive remuneration to keep STEM Librarians especially Bioinformaticians, Engineers and Computer scientists from migrating to greener pastures.

• Promotion and Tenure ranked journal list – LIS journals only ?

Parting Thoughts on question to the list serve

• A science degree doesn’t necessarily make you a good science librarian!

• May help to get a job (chemistry as few of them in the market).. Helps to speak their language, nomenclature, structures etc and grabs questions quickly.

• Outreach is the key. Embedded, active on curriculum committees, research teams, reinventing/shifting our expertize to scholarly communications, OAI, tenure metrics, data curation, Information literacy etc. (Ben Wagner)

Thank You

•Questions ?