Yesterday I finished writing another external review letter for a business librarian up for tenure. While reviewing the accomplishments of such a candidate, I usually experience one of these two emotional responses, or frequently both:
1. Hey, that’s a pretty good achievement, not quite the level of engagement I currently enjoy or the quantity I accomplish but still not bad good for you.
Or
2. Wow what a great idea why haven’t I ever thought of that or tried that, am I slacking off??
So either mild condescension or a bit of awe.
More seriously, given the amount of documentation provided to the external reviewer, it is always very interesting to examine such a thorough overview of a librarian’s work. The reviewer gets to read the candidate’s philosophy, goals, accomplishments, usage and assessment data (sometimes), scholarly communication, and testimonials from students, faculty, and other librarians.
Bloggers like the Hedgehog Librarian are writing about their experiences (and sometimes their concerns, frustrations, and pain) writing and assembling these large tenure applications over the course of a year. The Promotion and Tenure Committees and external reviewers do look very carefully at all the documentation. (I spent most of Monday reviewing the materials.) So these big portfolios do matter.
Often when experiencing emotional response #2, I come away with a list of new ideas and things to try here at UNCG. That happened yesterday too.
*waves* Hi! Hopefully writing all of what I’m prepping is useful, I’d be interested in hearing more about what you see in external packets. I’m not allowed to have testimonial letters at all in my packet either internal or external, so I know there’s wide variety.
Abigail, this is what I saw in that most recent tenure application:
Candidate’s Statement (on librarianship, scholarly work, & service)
Candidate Dossier
–details on strategies and accomplishments for various aspects of postion description
–data (ex. number of consultations and classes taught) mixed in
–scholarly work: introduction and annotated list of citations
–professional development: annotated list of events attended
–service: introduction and annotated list (library, campus, profession)
Appendixes (which links to documents in DropBox)
–data, links to projects/articles/presentations, feedback/testimonials
I know this is new comment on a relatively old post, but I’ve found a lot of the older blogs that list presentation/publishing opportunities are drying up. I found a couple more, in addition to A Library Writer’s Blog.
http://academicwritinglibrarian.blogspot.com/
and I’m starting one as well –
https://thepublishedlibrarian.wordpress.com/
Josh, good luck on the new blog! Thank you for doing that. –Steve
Absolutely! I appreciate you letting me deviate from the norm an post on something so far in the past. Any suggestions on where else I can get the word out?
Joshua, I would first contact the people behind https://libparlor.com/ . A post there would attract a lot of subscribers to your service.