A. Michael Beaird
Director & Associate Professor
University of Arkansas At Little Rock Pulaski County Law Library
Little Rock, AR
A Matter of Hats: Maintaining Enthusiasm in the Shadows of Your Career
Law Library Journal Fall, 2001
Since I've had a varied career, wandering from librarianship over to legal publishing and then back again,1 I think it's a fair question to ask this old dog: how do you maintain enthusiasm, especially after you've been at it for a while? And how would I advise someone to "stay freshened"?
Here's what I try to do. Mostly, though not always successfully, I think of my work life—no, all my life—as compartmentalized, with me wearing a different hat depending on which compartment I happen to enter. Some days I wear a "Director Hat" in my role as director of an academic (and county) law library. Some days I wear my "Teacher Hat" because another part of my job is teaching legal research to first-year law students. Some days I put on the "Service Hat" since I serve on national law library committees2 and at the regional level I sometimes help organize programs for meetings. Other hats I wear include the husband hat, the father hat, and the citizen hat. In truth, most days I wear all these hats at different times during the course of the day.
The Director Hat occupies a fair amount of my work time (okay, it occupies some of my not-at-work time also). Recently I wore this hat while making decisions about the installation of an upgraded security gate, including much consideration of the divider ropes or ribbons (like the ones in airports) to control access. Another decision involved where to locate the gate. And then there was the time spent dealing with the minor, and sometimes not so minor, leaks from recent heavy rains. Just a few examples of Director Hat duties.
I spend whatever time is required wearing the Director Hat, although fortunately not as much as some of my director colleagues. I had the good fortune to come to a library where the other librarians had been in place for several years. They all know their jobs and do not need me to hold their hands. For a person who does not like having to micro-manage, this works very well.
In addition to also consuming a goodly part of my time, maintaining my enthusiasm is easiest to do when I am wearing the Teacher Hat. For the most part the students are young, and I enjoy being around young people. I've always been a "people person" and all the one-on-one contact with students makes for a younger outlook than one might expect from a "geezer" like me. Oh yes, there are times when I tire of explaining something about CJS for the fifth time in a morning, but I try to remember that this is new to them. The same goes for ALR, Shepards, digests, or any of the other law library mainstays that are so familiar to us but not to them.
A hat I didn't mention earlier is the "Reference Hat." Although it is a two-edged sword, reference work is probably one of the more fun things I do, at least most of the time. I regularly cover only four hours a week in our library's reference rotation, but those are four good hours for me. Sometimes it's hectic but that's good. It helps me remember that many people do need our help. Since we are a county law library as well as an academic one, we have more pro se patrons than many law school libraries. Maybe it stems from my library school days when I worked Saturdays at the King County Law Library in Seattle, but I always have felt good about being able to help someone who needs to know something that I already know. Even if it's just to tell them where the bathroom is located!
In truth, the thing that keeps me enthused most of all is that there are these many different hats for me to wear. There's no monotony if your life consists of doing different things at different times. And so my advice is to enjoy the diversity of the daily routine. Think of the fun you can have in a job when—at any given hour—you may get to put on a different hat and show off your colors.
1. See A. Michael Beaird, My Alternate (or Aberrational Some Might Say) Career! 93 Law Libr. J. 381, 2001 Law Libr. J. 20.
2. Editor's Note: A. Michael Beaird served as a member of AALL's Committee on Relations with Information Vendors, 1999–01. He currently serves as editor of the "AALL Publication Series" published by William S. Hein & Co.
For More Information About Law Librarianship or the AALL Recruitment Committee, contact committee chair Sarah Mauldin.