Michelle C. Lee: Reviving the Library Staff Committee
Michelle C. Lee
Michelle C. Lee (she/her/hers) is a Library Assistant in Interlibrary Loan at Georgia State University's Atlanta campus Library. Her research interests include accessibility, diversity, inclusion, and resource sharing. Follow her on Twitter @McleeMLIS.
*Note: For the purposes of this article, staff is defined as library employees who do not hold faculty status. Faculty status includes librarians, senior administrators, and other instructors employed by the Georgia State University libraries.*
I started working at the Georgia State University Library in 2015. I was thrilled to be working in a library again, especially since it was my first job where I wasn’t a student assistant. Everything seemed wonderful at first. But, as time passed and I took stock of my surroundings, the initial glamour began to wear away. Many staff members felt apathetic and defeated due to the culture within the library. For years their opinions and concerns were not considered or even heard by the library’s administration. Although library administration is composed of both faculty and staff, many staff members felt that the administration was more responsive to the needs and requests of the faculty. These feelings only intensified when Georgia State University consolidated with Georgia Perimeter College a couple of years later. The university went from having a single library to six - and almost double the number of staff and faculty members.
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A year after the consolidation, library administration created a task force whose focus was to better understand the organizational culture within the library. The new Dean of the Library formed this task force in order to gain a better understanding of the library’s organizational culture overall. It also served as a way to gauge employee perceptions of the consolidation process across the six libraries. The task force’s research study and report indicated a number of issues including high levels of staff apathy, a lack of inclusivity and diversity felt by library faculty and staff, and numerous communication problems. Staff member responses showed varying degrees of frustration with the library’s culture.
Library staff members viewed the consolidation process as rushed. They also saw it as exacerbating long-standing issues and creating new ones. This was particularly true for staff members from the Perimeter campuses who had previously enjoyed a degree of autonomy but were now forced to work within the bureaucratic hierarchy of Georgia State University. This loss of freedom coupled with the substantial change in the various libraries’ hierarchies and organization cultures made siloing worse among departments and the six campus libraries. The impact of which resulted in a fragmented and at times nonexistent group identity.
“This loss of freedom coupled with the substantial change in the various libraries’ hierarchies and organization cultures made siloing worse among departments and the six campus libraries. The impact of which resulted in a fragmented and at times nonexistent group identity. ”
As a member of this task force, I was disheartened by the results of the survey and the comments made by my coworkers. It was obvious to myself and many other staff members on the task force that change needed to occur, however we were unsure about how to create meaningful and lasting change given the current environment. Some of us agreed that fostering an open dialogue with our fellow staff members could help us figure out where to begin.
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Each year the library sets aside one day for all library employees to come together referred to as LEDD or Library Employee Development Day. It gives library faculty and staff members a chance to connect with each other and learn about the work being done by different groups across the libraries. At this time, a staff only session was held to review the task force’s report and provide a space for open dialogue. The purpose of this session was to provide these staff members with an opportunity to learn more about the task force’s work, ask questions, and offer commentary on the report’s findings. This conversation allowed staff members to openly talk about their experiences and present ideas about how to improve the newly formed library organization’s culture moving forward. Ideas borne out of these conversations included the creation of a staff group, improved communication practices, and more non-faculty focused professional development opportunities.
In response to this dialogue, Jennifer Brown, one of the staff members responsible for organizing the staff only session began looking into creating a staff advocacy group. Through her research, she learned there had been a staff committee in the past however it had been inactive for several years. Jennifer was promoted to a faculty position while researching the process for reactivating this committee. Although it was a great professional move for her, it meant she could no longer work on restarting the committee because only staff members, not faculty, could serve on the committee.
This was disappointing and Jennifer knew that this committee needed to be formed, even if she was no longer able to participate in it. She decided to contact a few staff members (including me), that expressed interest in restarting this committee. She provided us with the information she had gathered and possible next steps for restarting the committee. Jennifer asked if any of us wanted to take the lead on this project. Many of us were comfortable supporting the project, but not leading it. I knew reviving this committee could be extremely helpful for staff members and create positive change within the library. I was concerned about my lack of experience leading an initiative of this magnitude, but it was less intimidating knowing that there were other staff members willing to support me as well as the project.
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Restarting the committee was slow going at first. My fellow staff members nor I had very much experience working on committees, let alone restarting one. We struggled to figure out what steps we needed to undertake. We researched library staff committees at other institutions that might be able to provide some guidance as to how we should proceed. As luck would have it, the University of Georgia Libraries had a staff advocacy group and one of the co-chairs was also enrolled in my MLIS program.
I reached out to ask how their group had formed and the sort of projects they undertook. She was happy to provide me with as much information as she could, and much of the information she shared ended up guiding our actions and initiatives. We also wanted to make sure we continued the dialogue from the staff-only session at LEDD. To accomplish this, we held open town hall meetings. In these meetings, interested staff members could hear firsthand about our initial goals for the committee as well as have an opportunity to voice their own ideas and opinions. Our group also created and distributed a brief survey asking staff members what types of projects and goals they wanted to see the staff committee focus on once it was reinstated.
In spite of all our research, it was still unclear to us what procedural steps were necessary to officially get the committee going. It was uncommon for a committee to restart after being inactive for several years. The library administration also wanted to be conscious about the degree of assistance they provided in the process since most of them held faculty status. Months went by, but we were finally able to meet with a member of library administration that informed us of the next steps to take. We were required to call a meeting of all non-faculty staff members, hold nominations for the committee membership, and elect committee members.
A year after the first staff session at LEDD, we held another session where we officially announced the restart of the library staff committee and opened up nominations for committee membership. I was nominated for one of the co-chair positions and many of the staff members who helped to restart the committee were also nominated for various positions.
“A year after the first staff session at LEDD, we held another session where we officially announced the restart of the library staff committee and opened up nominations for committee membership. I was nominated for one of the co-chair positions and many of the staff members who helped to restart the committee were also nominated for various positions.”
Our first year was productive, we were able to complete several of the projects staff said they were interested in such as creating an online comment form, improving communication between staff and library administration, starting a staff newsletter, and sharing professional development opportunities with staff. The response from staff members has been overwhelmingly positive and it’s been great to see my colleagues using the resources and services the committee provides. I’m now in the midst of my second term serving as co-chair for the Library Staff Committee. It can be a lot of work, but, I'm happy I took the time and initiative to get this committee restarted. It’s exciting to imagine a future in which this committee helps to turn some of the staff’s dreams into reality, re-imagining the library’s culture for everyone.
“ It can be a lot of work, but, I’m happy I took the time and initiative to get this committee restarted. It’s exciting to imagine a future in which this committee helps to turn some of the staff’s dreams into reality, re-imagining the library’s culture for everyone. ”