The Small and Large of It: Leading a Team in Times of Disruption by Erin Gallagher (E-Resources Librarian, University of Florida) <gallaghere@ufl.edu> and David Isaak (Director of Collection Services, Reed College) <isaakd@reed.edu>
Author Introduction Hello, Readers. We crafted this article based on a series of conversations with one another spanning June to September, 2020, right in the thick of one hot mess of a year. Our initial intent, to unravel and document the realities of leading teams through the disruptive change brought about due to COVID-19, evolved during that time due to the anti-racism uprisings around the country and in our own two cities. We were compelled to discuss the ways we, our libraries, and our institutions responded to global upheaval and how this progressed over a four-month period. We acknowledge the limitations of our individual perspectives and the ongoing work we must do. Erin: Hi, David. Tell me a bit about your institution and your library system in general. David: Sure. I work at Reed College, a small, private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. We have 1,400, mostly undergraduate, students. We have one large library and one satellite library for the performing arts. My department is called Collection Services, which is a combination of technical services and collection development. We have an Electronic Resources Librarian, a Systems Librarian, and three specialists who do cataloging, electronic resources support, and acquisitions and serials. Most of the people are physically located in the central “bullpen” behind the circulation desk of the library. But not everyone actually fits there, so there are some people in farther flung parts of the library. Erin, can you tell me about your library system? Erin: University of Florida is a very large, public, Research 1 University in Gainesville, Florida. We have around 50,000 students and that includes undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral. We support pretty much every degree program and area of research that you could dream up, everything from dance to law to veterinary medicine. With the exception of Law, the library system is under the umbrella of the George A. Smathers Libraries, but we’re very spread out geographically across campus. We have seven physical branch libraries and also high-density offsite storage facilities. Within my realm of work, I manage the Electronic Resources Unit, which is one of three units in the Acquisitions and Collections Services Department. I lead a team of four staff specialists, three who are Electronic Resources Specialists and one of whom is a Metadata Specialist. We’re very close spatially. Our offices are either directly across from or directly next to each other. We’re all on the same floor of the lovely Smathers Library building, which is the oldest library building on campus. David, can you walk me through the logistics of your team’s transition from on-campus to remote work environments? Against the Grain / December 2020 - January 2021
David: It was chaotic because the directions coming down from administration were changing frequently. We would get one set of directives and start planning and then, sometimes just hours later, be told that’s not what we’re doing. The electronic resources team and the Systems Librarian felt comfortable immediately going to remote work. It was more complicated for acquisitions, print serials, and cataloging. We were in the middle of a number of projects that had to do with our physical collection, so we couldn’t just close up shop. As the head of the department, I was the middleman hearing things from both ends. The decisions from the upper administration were not getting communicated clearly to people on the ground level and I had to do a lot of that translating myself. Once the campus started to close ... that was like a snowball rolling downhill very quickly. I think a lot of schools went through this: there was this idea that maybe we’ll close for two weeks ... Erin: ... I definitely thought the same thing! David: The Sunday night before spring break, we started getting emails. For the students it was: you need to leave and not come back this academic year. For the library: you will be closing and going to remote work. It was all very sudden. As a department, we had to decide what was essential. For us that was ordering ebooks, scanning parts of print reserves that were not available as ebooks, and invoicing. Once the library was closed to patrons, the library staff who needed to come into the building didn’t have many concerns about the virus. The building was empty; no one’s touching the public spaces anymore. A few of us have been coming in one day a week, on any given day there are probably four people in the library during working hours. Erin: Wow, thanks. I can relate to a lot of this. David: So, same question for you. What happened on the ground in the transition to remote work? Erin: I was in Austin, Texas at the ER&L Conference when I heard from some colleagues that we might start working remotely. I felt really disconnected that week. The week of March 17th we received a university-wide email from administrators pretty much saying we don’t know what’s going to happen, but if you can do your job remotely, we strongly encourage you to go home and start. We got that message before we heard anything about whether or not the libraries were going to close. And you know what’s interesting, David, is that I had the same thought that you expressed, which was “I’m probably going to be home for a couple weeks.” All I brought home was my laptop and a few notebooks thinking this was going to be very temporary. Then we got the message from our library administration saying we’re closing the libraries. Everyone except essential staff are going to be working from home. I was in a fortunate situation because I have a continued on page 18
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