I’ve missed my once-a-month goal for writing posts several times this year. This is partially for good reasons, as I’ve been busy supporting students and faculty with coursework and projects, and have been supervising the excellent work of my own students in the lab. We’ve made great progress, releasing a spatial database for Rhode Island mapping projects, writing new tutorials, inventorying thousands of USGS topo maps, and supporting hundreds of students and faculty with their geospatial and demographic research.

But in order to effectively support the work of others, academic librarians need to have a research agenda of their own; to keep up with evolving technology and scholarship to remain effective, and to sustain your own intellectual interests as a professional. Which brings us to the bad reasons behind my posting inactivity. My professional development has come to a screeching halt since I began my new position three years ago. My employer is adverse to supporting scholarly activities for professional librarians (although they gladly share credit if you do the work on evenings, weekends, and vacation time), and a heavy workload makes it impossible to find time for professional development. There are many reasons behind this for which I can’t go into detail – I’ll generally say that bad management and an over-sized library managerial caste are the primary culprits.

Unfortunately this is all too common in academic librarianship. Some high-profile articles have discussed this recently, surveys show that morale is low, and there’s a small but budding branch of scholarship that focuses on library dysfunction. It’s a shame, because both traditional “core-research” librarians and data services-oriented librarians play vital roles within higher ed, and there is no shortage of students and professors who remind me of this on a regular basis. In my opinion, while many students and professors understand and value the work of librarians, many library administrators do not. They dismiss traditional subject librarians as legacy service providers, and they completely do not understand the work of data librarians.

I’ve heard several depressing stories from colleagues at other schools who have been undermined, shuffled around, and in some cases put out of business by incompetent leadership within their library. Within GIS and data librarianship I know several folks who have given up, leaving higher ed for the private sector or independent consulting.

Towards the end of the semester, as I was finishing an hour-long GIS consultation with a grateful undergrad, he asked me what research projects I was currently working on, and what kind of research I do. I was embarrassed to admit that I haven’t been working on anything of my own. After having written a book and publishing several well-received reports, I’m doing nothing more than the intellectual equivalent of shoveling snow. I can’t help but think that I’ve taken a wrong turn, and as the new year begins it’s time to consider the options: focus more sharply on the positive aspects of my position while minimizing the negatives? And somehow, carve out time to do work that I’m interested in? Or, consider moving on, being mindful to avoid exchanging one set of bad circumstances with another? For the latter, this may mean leaving academic librarianship behind.

I am most fortunate in that I don’t have to return to work until the second week of January, and it’s good to have this time to recuperate and reflect. Best wishes to you in the coming new year – Frank