Colleagues

It’s the end of the year so I thought I’d share some food for thought. Has anyone else read Kevin Seeber’s blog post titled Colleagues? You can find it here, https://kevinseeber.com/blog/.

In the post he reflects on the way that the current model of interaction between librarians and faculty, one-shot instruction sessions, can cause a lot of anxiety and stress for the librarian. As he states in his blog post, many faculty are wonderful to work with but it can be frustrating at times.

I can’t say that I’ve had overtly bad experiences with any faculty that I’ve worked with but I think all of us, can sympathize with the well-meaning faculty member who pipes up mid-session and asks you to demo a database or answer a question about something that you hadn’t planned to cover. It’s stressful to try and pivot to cover that material adequately and then get back on track with your planned instruction. Would faculty so casually interrupt other guest lecturers in their class?

I really like Kevin’s question, “Is this how colleagues treat each other?” as a way to reflect on faculty/librarian relationships. What are ways that we can move away from the service model to a true colleague? I’m open to suggestions!!