{"id":85831,"date":"2014-12-16T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T14:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85831"},"modified":"2014-12-15T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T01:16:14","slug":"what-does-a-librarian-do-academic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85831","title":{"rendered":"What Does a Librarian Do \u2013 Academic"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Rebecca Tischler, Senior Editor, INALJ North Carolina<\/a>, North Dakota<\/a>, Ohio<\/a>, Oklahoma<\/a>, Oregon<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What Does a Librarian Do \u2013 Academic<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"rebeccatischler\"<\/a>I recently wrote an article about what a librarian does, so I thought I would continue that with a series\u00a0of articles exploring what different types of librarians do. Because while all librarians share a central\u00a0duty (information organization), depending on the type of library they work at, their secondary duties\u00a0can create fairly different job focuses. Let\u2019s start with the academic librarian. I previously worked in an\u00a0academic library, but not as a professional (I was a graduate student). However, I never fully grasped\u00a0how much of an academic librarian\u2019s job is focused on research and instruction until I did this article and\u00a0had to really consider the professional duties of the faculty librarians I worked with..<\/p>\n

Academic librarians work in postsecondary education (colleges and universities). The librarian can\u00a0either serve a specific department, or the entire institution, and the bigger the institution, the more\u00a0specialized libraries on the campus. So if you want to handle more subjects, and deal with more general\u00a0reference, either work at the main library, or work at a small institution. If you have very specialized\u00a0interests and want to work in a subject library (known as a niche collection), go to a big institution.<\/p>\n

However, before deciding to work in a niche collection, be aware that you typically need a Master\u2019s\u00a0of Library and Information Science (that is ALA accredited), as well as a second specialized Master\u2019s\u00a0to prepare you for specific subject libraries, such as law, science, education, or history, or humanities.\u00a0Granted, it\u2019s not always a requirement, and some places will accept experience in lieu of a degree, but if\u00a0you know that your desire is to work in an academic library setting, you should be prepared to see lots\u00a0of open jobs asking for 2 degrees.<\/p>\n

However, many people don\u2019t know if they want to put in that much effort for a library job, because they\u00a0have no idea what being an academic librarian actually entails. So what does an academic librarian do?\u00a0Their duties typically revolve around two main purposes: they are there support the research needs\u00a0of its students, faculty, and staff and to assist in supporting the school\u2019s curriculum. Under that rather\u00a0large umbrella includes duties such as: showing students how to use computers and find information\u00a0for their class assignments, helping faculty and staff find information and materials to help teach\u00a0classes or to complete research, create campus-wide literacy programs, deliver classroom instruction to\u00a0teach information literacy skills (this means that some librarians have regular classes that they need to\u00a0prepare for), curate a collection suited to the institution\u2019s learning and research needs, and continuously\u00a0learn about new developments in information technology (they work a lot with electronic databases\u00a0and web site maintenance). Whew! That may sound like a lot, but that\u2019s not all folks! Many librarians\u00a0are considered faculty, and can acquire tenure, which requires the librarian to complete and publish\u00a0professional research. If you want to become an academic librarian, reference and instruction classes\u00a0are going to be your friend. And don\u2019t forget the technology classes, because they will be very useful.<\/p>\n

Now, remember that I only worked in the academic world as an graduate student, so my experience is\u00a0limited and this article was meant as a very basic overview. My research helped fill in a lot of the blanks,\u00a0but I may still be missing what it\u2019s like to really be an academic librarian. So please, in the comments\u00a0below, help explain what being an academic librarian is really like and what it\u2019s really about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Rebecca Tischler, Senior Editor, INALJ North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon What Does a Librarian Do \u2013 Academic I recently wrote an article about what a librarian does, so I thought I would continue that with a series\u00a0of articles exploring what different types of librarians do. Because while all librarians share a central\u00a0duty…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":67857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[1460,69,3592,3627,3662,3642,3634,3601,15,5837,4509,6110],"class_list":["post-85831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-academic-librarian","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-inalj-north-carolina","tag-inalj-north-dakota","tag-inalj-ohio","tag-inalj-oklahoma","tag-inalj-oregon","tag-librarians","tag-rebecca-tischler","tag-what-do-librarians-do","tag-what-librarians-do"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/rebeccatischler.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-mkn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/67857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}