If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
—Winston Churchill
In the previous chapter I touched upon the importance of relationships. “Relationships,” as the director of our library will almost daily remind me, “are everything.” I have both witnessed and experienced the power of relationships to transform experience, nurture collaboration, and then sustain those collaborative efforts. As librarians, we have traditionally “played in our own backyard,” not particularly feeling as though we were wanted (or needed) anywhere but the building we were housed in—ready and waiting when and if we were called upon for our expertise.
Much has been written about the different worlds in which librarians and faculty reside, with both librarians and teaching faculty weighing in on the divide. Traditionally, faculty have not seen librarians as equals, and have, in fact, seen them strictly in the sense of being in a position to offer “support,” if they gave any thought to what their actual role happened to be in the first place. Librarians have often felt themselves to be in a subordinate and submissive position, figuratively, not only speaking when spoken to, but harboring both secret frustrations and desires for more recognition and more expanded roles, particularly involving collaboration and teaching. One of the problems seems to have been, and indeed, in some sectors, still is, that faculty do not seem to perceive a problem with their professional relationships with librarians. In fact, it has been observed that not only do faculty not perceive serious issues of any kind with librarians, but as well, they feel no particular deficit in this lack of connection.1 But librarians have a different perception. And this perception can often stand in the way of initiating collaboration with teaching faculty. It is essential for embedded librarians to have good relationships with faculty for their initiatives to be successful. This, however, is often easier said than done. How can we, as librarians, begin to take the necessary steps toward good relationships with our faculty given our shared, albeit separate, history?
A bit of background into the traditional relationship of librarians and faculty may shed light on how best to navigate new territory. It helps to identify and understand the philosophical underpinnings that have been the barriers to collaboration. While any academic librarian could quite conceivably fill volumes with anecdotes of perceived slights and blatant, if not necessarily intentional, “dissing” at the hands of faculty, I remember one incident in my own career that, for weeks, made me feel as though I might consider a career change. I had been in my office when a faculty member called. She was in a building just a few yards from the library. She was having trouble printing and was going to “pitch a real fit” if someone didn’t help her. She needed me. Now. I told her that as soon as I had a work study student available, I would send one over. She persisted in saying that she needed immediate help and asked me what was preventing me from coming over at that very instant. I should have known better, but my anger felt overwhelming, and so did my embarrassment. The incident, in my mind, seemed to mock not only all of the hard work that I and my colleagues were continuously engaged in, but also the many initiatives we were consistently putting forth that attempted to include faculty. We had been trying hard to dispel the notion that we just sat around waiting for something to do, waiting for someone to serve. In fact, that is exactly what it looked like, as faculty, when they did come into the library, would always glance over at the reference desk and find one of us there. We were seen as passive. Helpful, perhaps, but passive. In my own mind it was a bit of a turning point, and though I fully understood the stereotype we labored under, I found it hard to accept. There are misconceptions and mistaken perceptions galore.
Melanie Boyd, academic liaison librarian for collaborations in teaching and research at the University of Guelph Library, identifies two main perceptions, held by librarians and faculty members alike, that serve as a barrier to healthy working relationships and collaborations, and which can become further entrenched if librarians do not actively work to dispel them.
The first perception that Boyd points out is that librarians are not trained as teachers. Boyd is particularly astute in pointing out that neither are most faculty. I would also add that the library science degree is not seen as a particularly academic one, either. But Boyd points out that what we do share is “the challenge of translating a deep, unique area of knowledge and expertise to students—most often without the benefit of rigorous pedagogical training.”
The second perception Boyd identifies is that of the librarian as service provider. She suggests “easing out of our lexicon as a defining characteristic that distinguishes us from faculty.” Aptly, she points out why the notion of service is a perception: faculty provide service, too, as it applies to students. Librarians are often seen as in service to faculty (supporting their research, etc.), but the converse is simply not true. And because it is not true, there is an inequality in the minds of faculty.
And so identified is what I call the “great divide.”
Librarians embedding themselves in the departments and collaborating in the classroom are ways in which that divide is bridged. And in fact, Boyd has a simple, what she calls a radical idea for enacting change. Simply be where the faculty are. Can we do that? Can we place ourselves among, with, and beside the faculty and, like the concept of an arranged marriage—the love, eventually, with patience and maturity, will come? Or do we work on building the relationship(s) first? This is an age-old “chicken and egg” dilemma perhaps.
A bit of both, perhaps?
In my own experience, I worked assiduously to make connections that would help to build relationships with the faculty in the English department, one of my liaison areas. My uneasy and tentative approach was no doubt instrumental in placing distance between the very people I sought desperately to reach, as well as affirming in their minds that I was perhaps no more valuable than what they were consistently asking me to do: order a specific journal, come to a class to “teach them how to do research” (usually when they themselves could not be there), or do any number of things that were, to be sure, the duty of a liaison, but in no way invited true collaboration. My voice was softer when I spoke to faculty; I looked down a lot. My credentials and theirs were uneven. These points are not small ones. I barely made a ripple in my attempts, at first, to build relationships with faculty, let alone the idea of pursuing something I desperately wanted to do: become embedded in the English senior thesis course.
When a new director was appointed at the library, she told us that our relationship with faculty would have to change, something we knew, but none of us knew exactly how. She herself was in possession of a doctorate and having held high-level administrative positions as well as faculty positions in her long career, she saw us for what we were: bright, determined, but scared. She’d both observed and witnessed our difficulties with faculty, including the fact that all five of us were unequal in our various attempts at relationship building with faculty. Some of us had met with (limited) success, and some with failure. None of us had yet to achieve what we all imagined to be a true collegial or collaborative relationship. She told us that perhaps the way in which we referred to ourselves might shift the faculty’s perception a bit. At least, she felt, it couldn’t hurt. She suggested that from that point on we would call ourselves faculty librarians, a term a few of my colleagues, if not totally against, were a bit confused by. One exclaimed, “That sounds like we serve faculty—not that we are on a par with them!” Still, our director, an extremely wise and strategic woman, insisted that we begin using the term—and that in her conversations with administrators and faculty alike on campus she would refer to us this way.
A word, indeed, shaped the faculty perception of our reality. We had bedrock, a firm place, from which to stand. And not in name only. We knew our value, but we also knew that others probably didn’t—but now we had a name that placed us among faculty. In fact, we were already faculty (albeit, at the time, for purposes of governance only) but were barely, if ever, recognized as such.
This seemingly small step was a personal turning point for me. That place from which to stand felt firm underneath my feet and I was determined to go ahead, sometimes wincing, as much as I hate to admit it, and just work on my liaison department, one person at a time. The old stories librarians have been telling ourselves for so long, the old stereotypes we never tire of railing against and all of the righteous indignation, though I would never deny there is not a reason for it, felt stagnant. I needed, in fact we all needed, a new paradigm.
Kempke suggests operating from a position of strength and confidence. Using Sun Tzu’s The Art of War as his guide, he advises librarians to be intentional and targeted:
My advice is to find a niche, to infiltrate a soft spot in the battlement—one that provides the best area to devote resources and is the most likely theater for success. Whatever post you station, communicate its importance and defend it aggressively. Identify the right leaders to follow or befriend. Target those in your way.2
While some may roll their eyes or wonder at his metaphor—war—it would be good to remember that some still believe that collaboration, indeed, relationship building with faculty is akin to going into battle. Badke, for instance, would rather see a librarian’s time and energy better spent in the development of our own instruction sessions per discipline, rather than have to waste time on building relationships and attempting to collaborate with faculty. He goes as far as to say that “effective collaboration is not the norm.”3 I, and no doubt many others would agree, but surely cultures change, and even though faculty culture is seemingly stubborn, it too can change.
In my own experience, building relationships with my liaison area faculty was difficult and stressful. I knew that if I was going to make inroads into the goals I had for my work with the department in particular and with faculty in general, it was necessary for me to simply forge ahead. Strategies aside (of which there are many and which I will provide some of here), there is no substitute for simply beginning the process—and it is a process, to be sure with the knowledge that every effort will not cause a magical transformation in the perceptions that have probably prevented the relationships to begin with, but maybe more like two steps forward, one step back.
And remember that it is a process, imbued with all of the various pitfalls that prevent that forward and continuous line of progress. I say this not as discouragement, but rather as a realistic caveat—otherwise, one could wrongly perceive failure.
Students definitely benefit from faculty-librarian friendships and collaboration in the classroom based on mutual trust and respect. Librarians and faculty who align educational goals and assess their impact on students are true collaborators. But the opposite scenario is bad for everyone. We have all seen the impact of the professor who is disengaged when the librarian is in the room. The students are confused as to why the librarian is there and why the professor is not delivering the content. If the librarian is not introduced and no context given as to why the librarian is standing in front of a class that the librarian would hesitantly, if ever, call his or her students, then the librarian begins at an immediate deficit. I have had professors look up from the laptops in the corner of a computer lab every so often while I was teaching when I asked them for clarification. Quickly, they would get back to what they were doing. Students witness this. Often, faculty members that engage in this kind of behavior are ones that usually do not know how to use the library at all—and so instead of reinforcing what I am teaching (always a great way for a session or sessions to go) they will leave it to the person standing in front of the room. Librarians then become the “experts” when they, the faculty want us to be—when it is simply convenient for them. When a professor asks me to come to a class, I have learned to first make sure that the professor is going to attend as well.
I have learned to suggest we reschedule the class for a time when the faculty member can be there. This is not always received well, mainly because we are often a “plug-in”—a way to still hold class even if the faculty member has planned to be somewhere else that day. When this has happened in the past, I have experienced great difficulty in engaging students on any level at all. The very appearance of a faculty member in class can help to support the teaching of the librarian, but when the professor was not in the classroom, many of my past sessions turned out to be empty and sad exercises in futility. And students are always wiser. Unfortunately, or fortunately, professors will often call or e-mail me a week or so later to ask me how the session went. They often demand attendance from their students, deeming it a “real” class, but the students deem it otherwise.
Let me use the above example to exemplify the fact that we really do teach others how to treat us. When I made a conscious decision that I was not going to be a convenient step-in for an absent professor, my colleagues were irritated. One of the first comments I heard was, “We just can’t dictate which classes we will go to and under which conditions!” And what I thought was, that is exactly what we must do! We are professionals, after all. And spending an hour or more trying to instruct students who in many cases have no assignment to apply the skills to, and who know that if they really do need help they will just ask someone at the library for help, we can, with all honesty, say that such “interactions” are not worth our professional time—and most certainly do not benefit the students in any real way.
For relationships of any kind to work, it helps if there is common ground, mutual respect, and honesty. I began to think to myself that if I wanted faculty to see me as an equal, what was I doing individually as a librarian, and how were my colleagues and I functioning as a group of librarians that was an impediment to faculty perceiving us as their equals?
For one thing, faculty, who are notorious for not having any extra time whatsoever, particularly during a semester, would scarcely, if ever, deem it worthy of their professional time to do what they often ask us to do: wing it in a classroom of virtually unknown students, with no assignments to attach our lesson to and no “muscle” behind the expectations we have of students. Furthermore, and as another example, faculty are used to seeing librarians sitting at a reference desk, passively, just waiting (and waiting and waiting) for someone to help. Faculty members go home on the weekends and in the evenings if they can. They are not sitting around “just in case.”
In light of these examples, I feel it is imperative to assert ourselves professionally, not only placing ourselves among faculty, but more importantly enacting a shift in the culture by realizing that we have standards in our own profession and we are not simply in service to faculty requests without filtering and assessing them through the lens of our own profession. It actually behooves us to do so. When I finally began making alternative suggestions for sessions that were scheduled too soon in the semester or before an actual assignment had been given, I spoke up—from a position of strength with research to back me up. I did not deny the request per se (though I might have if it were insisted upon against my better judgment) but instead made suggestions for another (better) way, by different timing. In more than just a few cases, this led to collaboration by default which, as natural progression would dictate, paved the way for more real collaboration, collaboration that was more intentional rather than a by-product of my simply being wary of what I was asked to do.
When faculty use the library they are more likely to recommend the library and its services to students. Some faculty, it would seem, are averse to the library. In my own library, I do not often see faculty members looking for their own books or doing their own research—many, if not all, have graduate assistants to do the work for them. I will often encourage faculty to use the library space as an antidote to their busy floors, to the ringing phones in their offices, or just for a new place to work that can offer a fresh perspective on whatever it is they are working on. It gets them into our space and has the potential for gradually becoming their space, as well. And it puts them in proximity to us. One of the ways that faculty can begin to know a bit about the culture of our profession is to spend some time in the spaces in which we reside. This is no small point. One can hardly build a relationship when we do not meet one another in a common space.
• Operate from a position of strength. Our expertise is needed but may not be recognized in the way in which we would like it to be. We are in service to both faculty and students, but forget the definition of service as a form of servility. Full faculty, too, are in the service of students. And we create a platform for better relationships when we can bring our expertise to the table and be able to talk about the possibilities in the classroom as collaborative partners. It is human nature to be attracted to those with confidence and self-assuredness.
• Become integrated on campus. This cannot be stressed enough. Opportunities for relationships are everywhere on a college campus. How you are thought of will go far in the endorsement of your value. And your participatory profile on campus should be high—it is an investment in the culture of the campus of which you are a part and affords you the opportunity to meet up with students in non-threatening and potentially fun activities outside of class.
• Speak often and well of your colleagues to others. While building personal relationships with campus faculty and others, do not forget to tout the achievements of your colleagues as well. This serves two purposes: it helps to spread their good reputations, therefore paving the way for better and more frequent collaborations for them as well, and it is also the collegial thing to do.
• Don’t forget to close the circle and then open a new one. Circle back after encounters with other faculty. A simple e-mail stating how nice lunch was and a suggestion that time be made to do it again goes a long way. If you say you will get back with information, make it a priority! It will be appreciated and will inspire confidence.
• Realize that the chemistry may not always be there, but it should not stop you from trying. I have found some fellow faculty members extremely demanding, or difficult to work with in general. I used to feel hurt, offended, but came to the very liberating conclusion that I could build a satisfying work relationship with someone as difficult as possible and letting it go just that far was fine. Pushing a social sort of camaraderie with someone who is resistant probably isn’t wise. Relax. It may happen over time. And if it doesn’t, keep it professional!
All in all, the way we relate to others says a lot about who we are and very little about the other person. Personally, I look at how someone treats others as an indication of how they might treat me. Respect goes a long way in relationship building. You do not always have to like someone (and in many cases, you won’t), but professional and human conventions dictate that whether you do or don’t you still owe that person respect. So much so, that an onlooker would never be able to tell whether a particular person is friend or foe.
NOTES
1. Lars Christiansen, Mindy Stombler, and Lyn Thaxton, “A Report on Librarian-Faculty Relations from a Sociological Perspective,” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 30, no. 2 (2004): 116−21.
2. Ken Kempke, “The Art of War for Librarians: Academic Culture, Curriculum Reform and Wisdom from Sun Tzu,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 2, no. 4 (2002): 529−51.
3. William B. Badke, “Can’t Get No Respect: Helping Faculty to Understand the Educational Power of Information Literacy,” The Reference Librarian 43, no. 89−90 (2005): 63−80.