Academic Librarians and Getting Published

When I was in a MLIS program, I was only vaguely aware of the fact that some academic librarians are appointed as faculty while some are not.  Now that I work at a library where librarians are considered to be faculty (no tenure-track), publishing has become an issue of my interests lately.  So I attended a session designed for folks just like me at 2009 ALA annual. The name of the session was ACRL New Members Discussion Group: “The Publication Process: Getting Published in LIS Journals.”

The session was designed for those librarians who are new at research and publishing in LIS journals.  In order to promote participation in discussion, the presentations were given verbally with/without a handout in a small room.  Partially, this was because of the lack of funding for discussion groups.  But the informal setting and a small number of people around the table made the session much more informative and interesting to both presenters and attendees.  The session provided a wonderful opportunity to gather practical tips and to find encouragement. (In addition, I really loved the fact that in a discussion group there are no committees, no annual membership dues, no officers, and no formality.)

The session consisted of three 10-minute presentations and discussion.

• Writing to Write: Kickstarting the Publication Process by Emily Drabinski
• Best Practices for Beginners: Getting Published-From Inspiration to Publication by Lisa Carlucci Thomas & Karen Sobel
• Targeting Teaching Faculty for Collaborative Publications by Linda Hofschire

Here are a few take-aways from the session I wrote down:

• To get movitated, use deadlines, generate good ideas, write them down right away, set aside time to write–get up 30 min. early everyday.
• To become good at writing, write everyday a certain amount in whatever form.
• To overcome the fear of being published, begin with book reviews and conference proposals and look out for call for proposals.
• To find topics to write, look at research papers and check out the topics for further study.
• Network and collaborate with other colleagues.
• Try to incorporate research into daily work duties sucah as instruction, digitizing, cataloging, etc.
• You can use data sets used for other research.
• Bear in mind the tension between topics of your interests and topics that are more easily published.
• Work with teaching faculty and suggest writing a certain section of a paper such as research method if you gathered and analyzed data.
• Have a particular journal in mind.
• Don’t despair if rejected. Revise and send to a different journal.