Did we think we’d still be at this stage, now? With Delta still raging and Omicron striking fear and dread into many hearts? I worked from home until September 2021, then moved to a hybrid work-pattern (two days on campus, three at home) to add to my already hybrid 70% librarian, 30% researcher existence.
If I thought I’d done well in terms of visible, quantifiable outputs last year, this year has been far less successful. This is not a triumphant declaration of how much I have achieved, and anyone reading this can console themselves that they’ve probably done better!
THE UPS AND THE DOWNS
I should add to my annual round-up, the fact that changes to my role as church organist also caused me an enormous amount of stress this year. So, in terms of achievements, the fact that I struggled, resigned, and have recently found another happier organist post counts as a significant achievement in that area of my life. It will undoubtedly improve my mental health to play in a different environment. The other position was slowly breaking me. It took me many months to take the decisive step of resigning.
GRANT APPLICATIONS AND INVISIBLE WORK
I spent many hours writing and submitting a research grant application in the first half of 2021. Nearly one in three was successful. I was amongst the unsuccessful majority.
I’ve since spent as many hours again writing and submitting a second research grant application to a different body, but I won’t hear anything for a good few months yet. Since it was even more ambitious, I’m not raising my hopes.
Grant applications are soul-destroying. All the effort is completely unseen. To the outside eye, you have done nothing; and if you fail, you have achieved nothing apart from clarifying to yourself what you would have like to have done!
PUBLICATIONS & THE INVISIBLE WORK BEHIND THEM
I spent innumerable hours working on a chapter about Scottish music subscribers in the late 18th to early 19th centuries, for a book which is due to appear at the end of 2021 or early 2022. I also published a book review in Brio – and more recently penned a mini-review of another book for a fellow alumna’s publishing house.
I have now drafted an introduction and two chapters for my next monograph, written an extensive literature review, and submitted the book proposal to a publisher towards the end of this year. Ah, the suspense, as I wait to hear if they’d like to publish it!
And I’ve written a fairly lengthy article for my professional journal – I’ve just sourced some great illustrations, and sent it to the editor the other day. It’ll probably be published next summer.
But if you’re looking for a list of actual publications, all I can offer is this pitiful list:-
- James Porter, Beyond Fingal’s Cave: Ossian in the Musical Imagination (University of Rochester Press, 2019), reviewed in Brio Autumn/Winter 2020, Vol.57, no.2, pp.74-6
- ‘Strathspeys, Reels and Instrumental Airs: a National Product’, Chapter 10 (pp.177-197) in Music by Subscription: Composers and their Networks in the British Music-Publishing Trade, 1676–1820, ed. Simon D.I. Fleming, Martin Perkins (Routledge, 2022)
PRESENTATIONS – SOMEWHAT VISIBLE
Leaving aside all the user education presentations, and a couple of guest lectures at my own institution, I haven’t much else to record. I did participate and present input in a IAML(UK & Irl) discussion about equality, diversity and inclusion in music libraries. But I haven’t been anywhere or spoken at any other conferences.
SOCIAL MEDIA – TOO VISIBLE!
I’ve written blogposts and Facebook page posts about my research. I’ve also rescinded a number of blogposts, when I realised I was sharing free research which I would later want to include in formal pieces of research output. My librarian-self believes strongly in sharing information. My research-self is beginning to learn that sharing is good, but over-sharing is counterproductive.
FORTHCOMING
- The article I’ve just submitted for Brio;
- An article is to be published out of a presentation about song-collector Alexander Campbell, which was given in 2020 (I just need to check it for footnote details etc);
- A substantial essay reviewing four books;
- A completely new conference paper about a somewhat unusual Scottish song collection;
- Possibly chairing a conference session at a different conference;
- I have submitted a proposal for yet another conference paper, this time about women’s compositions in libraries and reader development work on that subject, possibly also leading to a published article;
- Continued work on the monograph.
At the end of the day, my output is pathetic in terms of a full-time academic – but I am not a full-time academic. What I achieve, research-wise, is done in 1.5 days a week. My research outputs are unusually significant for a librarian, though they go unnoticed in my library existence, where they don’t attract pats on the head!
It’s all my own fault. I walked away from a research career in 1984 when I abandoned my first PhD. I walked back into it in 2004 when I began research in my ‘spare time’ (in other words, time not spent doing a full-time job, being a parent, and being a church organist) for the PhD that I actually completed in 2009.
To anyone thinking of walking away from a PhD – stop, think! Ask yourself if there is any way you could somehow manage to finish it? I should have taken a part-time job and knuckled down to get that PhD done. Instead, I did a year as a graduate trainee in a university library, then trotted off to library school for a postgraduate diploma in librarianship. It was crazy to start another qualification in another discipline before finishing the doctorate. In my own defence, I wanted an occupational pension plan. And everyone (male – I hardly knew any women academics) said it was hard to get a job in academia. In the early eighties. (Aw, bless! How could it have been harder than it is today?)
Ask yourself if your future self might regret what you’re contemplating. I’m fiercely proud of what I have achieved in research terms, but I know I have underachieved compared to what I might have done in other circumstances. I think that what frustrates me is that I can’t put back what I didn’t do in those two missing decades. I really haven’t much to show for a career in librarianship – I might be a Fellow of my professional association, but I never climbed the career ladder in the slightest. I’ve selected good stock. I’ve done vast amounts of accurate cataloguing, helped with countless queries, and instructed hundreds if not thousands of students. Librarians are generally as invisible as pharmacists, quietly preparing the materials that their more high-profile academic/scientific colleagues depend on. And in a pandemic, we librarians become even more invisible!
Yes, I’m disappointed in myself. It becomes more depressing, the closer I get to retirement, because that will signify a time when I have to concede that for all I did, it hasn’t been enough.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 