Part-time academic

I’m conscious that my blog posts in recent months have been on several recurring themes. Since they reflect my preoccupations over this period, I don’t regret this focus. However, this week feels a bit like a turning point. (One giant turning point for the country, as it turns out, but also an unrelated turning point for one recently retired small librarian.)

So, following the maxim at the head of this post, now is a time for looking forward rather than back.

• My librarianship career was sandwiched between two periods of doctoral study – the one I didn’t complete before proceeding to librarianship training, and the one I worked for part-time in my spare time, a quarter of a century later. That led to the long-term partial secondment to Research and Knowledge Exchange. I have often blogged both about my own expectations of myself; about other people’s expectations and perceptions; and about the perils of making comparisons with other people.
• I was an academic librarian throughout my whole career, but since 2012, I combined librarianship with postdoctoral research. Many of my blog posts have mused on the challenges of combining two roles.
• I have blogged about looking back over this double-stranded career, my achievements and disappointments.
• I’ve blogged about things I’ve discovered during my research.
• I’ve blogged about practical processes – like working on a monograph, using Zotero, researching using databases, and instructing students in library-based research methodology.
• I’ve blogged about fellowships and other forms of recognition.
• I’ve also blogged about library initiatives, such as my work in diversifying the library collection to include more music by women composers and composers of colour.

All Change!

But I’m not a librarian any more. I’m semi-retired. I need to stop defining myself as a ‘librarian who also does research’, and redefine myself as a part-time academic.

I now have a single role: my contract as a part-time post doctoral research fellow. It means I have a lot more ‘spare’ time, so I can spend some of that on research, too, as need requires.

I must get out of the habit of unequal comparisons.

I can also visit Dundee more often, in connection with the Friends of Wighton – where I’m honorary librarian, a completely different role to being an academic librarian in a Higher Education institution.

And I need to spend more time looking forward, and less looking back. The future holds opportunities:-

• My forthcoming monograph, which I’m currently indexing, and a book launch in connection with that.
• A chapter in an essay collection.
• A conference paper next week, at the annual Print Networks conference, ‘Unfinished Business: Progress, Stasis and New Directions in the study of the Book Trade since Peter Isaac’.
• the Heritage Collections fellowship at IASH (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities) at the University of Edinburgh, between January and June next year. I’ll be researching a particular archive in the University Library there.
• New research ideas.
• Outside of my research role, in my ordinary life, I look forward to more organ practice, more composition, and probably more reading and needlework!

It is very, very tempting to look around for ‘things to do’. For groups to join, and possibly opportunities to volunteer for. At the same time, I realise that there’s a risk of taking on too much, too soon. There’s also something very appealing about just waiting for new opportunities to present themselves in their own good time. One might already have done so – time will tell.

People have asked if I’ve got a holiday planned at all. I’m sure this would be a sensible thing to think about, especially considering that last summer’s annual leave was spent finishing the first draft of a book! But I need to know that the finalised book, edited and indexed and all, is on its way to the printers before I can take off on vacation. So – no, nothing planned as yet. August, maybe!