Mid-Career Library and Information Professionals

15

New in town: leadership betwixt and between

Herman A. Peterson

I was a library director for nine years at two small academic libraries serving different seminaries. I supervised, at most, two other professional librarians, three paraprofessionals, and the usual cadre of students. The collections were each around 200,000 volumes and were of research depth as they served mostly graduate-level educational programs. Desiring a mid-life career shift, I landed a job as the Head of Reference and Instruction at a medium-sized public university with an impressive library that belongs to the Association of Research Libraries. In this new position I would be supervising nine faculty librarians, the compensation was better, and the collection was almost ...