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Mid-career librarianship looks different for everyone. Maybe you've worked in libraries for ten years, or you're halfway to retirement. Maybe you've reached the highest level of a hierarchy you care to reach. Most of the literature about mid-career librarianship tends to focus on advancing to leadership or administration, but many of us are more concerned with how to continue to grow professionally without moving upward; how to make decisions about staying in an institution (or the profession); sustaining yourself amid burnout, constant change, wage compression, or even boredom; and navigating cultures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and hierarchy. In four sections, Thriving as a Mid-Career Librarian collects the experiences of mid-career librarians as they grapple with these questions and the roles that marginalized perspectives, intersectionality, and privilege have played in their careers: • Section 1: Staying Engaged in Your Career • Section 2: The Role of Identity in Shaping Mid-career Librarianship • Section 3: Being Your Own Advocate • Section 4: To Lead or Not to Lead? Chapters explore maintaining engagement and avoiding burnout; informal mentorships; the doctorate; union stewardship; addressing incivility; post-tenure fatigue; balancing ambition, personal fulfillment, and life; and much more. It can feel like everything gets harder, more political, and further under-resourced with each passing year. Thriving as a Mid-Career Librarian offers strategies of community, support, and advocacy that can help make it possible for us to thrive and help others to thrive. At mid-career, we may not have the same bright-eyed enthusiasm we possessed as new information professionals, but we have other things: the contributions we make to our communities and the wealth of experience we have built up since those days.

“We exhort you to read this book... It is the first book we have seen that invites LIS practitioner-researchers to tell the stories behind their research findings. —from the Foreword by Kristine R. Brancolini and Marie R. Kennedy A practitioner-researcher is an information professional who may not have formal training in using research methods and is learning how to use these methods during their busy, complex job. Reflections on Practitioner Research: A Practical Guide for Information Professionals can help information professionals build an understanding of the research process as applied to our field and address the challenges of undertaking research as a practitioner, as well offer support and advice for all stages of a research project, from writing the proposal to collecting the data to disseminating the findings. Twenty-five chapters from a blend of novice and experienced practitioner-researchers are divided into three thorough sections: •Section 1: Research Process. Grapples with various aspects of the overall research process, from topic selection to research design to time frame. How do you set a research agenda? What happens when your plans get derailed? How do you approach a topic that may be controversial? •Section 2: Research Methods. How information professionals use specific qualitative and quantitative research methods in their projects. •Section 3: Relationships. Investigates the ways in which relationships form and how they can impact the research process, and strategies that can help make your collaborative efforts successful rather than stressful. Reflections on Practitioner Research attempts to capture the actual experience of doing research and the lessons that can be gained from that experience. Projects and studies are not always as linear or without hiccups as the published literature may lead us to believe, and this book shows and celebrates the complexity of information professionals using a research design by picking up these skills along the way.

With an explosion of accessible information online and students feeling more and more independent in their searching skills and information needs, libraries are shifting to user-centered models. With this shift comes a need for librarians to transform the focus of the library from a great repository of material into a service-centric, one-stop research and learning shop for patrons. These changes are requiring librarians to define the library by the services it can provide, especially innovative ones, such as publishing services, scholarly communications, and project management. Instructional design can help librarians craft and assess these new and innovative services, including teaching information literacy, developing online content, and designing programs and outreach initiatives in a targeted and mindful way. Creative Instructional Design: Practical Applications for Librarians explores the major overarching themes that show why instructional design is so impactful for academic librarians—intentionality, collaboration, and engagement—and provides you with extensive examples of how librarians are applying the theoretical perspectives of instructional design in practical ways. The book examines ways in which librarians are using instructional design principles to inform, construct, or evaluate information literacy initiatives; online library instruction and services; and programming and outreach efforts. Instructional design provides a way for instructors, trainers, and educators to both approach instruction creation systematically, and evaluate how it has been effective and how it can be improved. Regardless of the instructional format, from classes to workshops to videos to worksheets, instructional design strives to ensure that potential learning gains by students are maximized and that the instruction is evaluated for improvement in future iterations.