Jean M. Holcomb
Law Librarian and Director
King County Law Library
Seattle, WA
Life at Midcareer: An Opportunity to Reflect
Law Library Journal Fall, 2001
When the e-mail arrived offering me the opportunity to share my thoughts as a midcareer law librarian about the challenges and opportunities available at this point in my working life, I couldn't resist a chuckle. The author of the e-mail obviously hadn't met me in person before issuing the invitation to participate in this exercise.
Some would suggest that there's little to laugh about at being pegged as midcareer. I disagree wholeheartedly. An unrepentant optimist, I choose to define my placement in this midcareer set as a compliment.
My first library position and my first job began more than fifty years ago as a preteen working in the summer for my next-door neighbor, the local school superintendent. That summer and each year until I graduated from high school, I processed the new books that had been ordered by the faculty for the school library. The excitement of discovery as I opened each box of books remains one of my fondest memories of that time in my life.
It would be decades before I next found library employment.
I accepted my first law library position as a reference librarian at the University of Alabama Law School Library in 1985. After two years, our family moved to Norfolk, Virginia. The local bar association had just completed the transfer of its century-old proprietary library to a nonprofit organization whose mission would be to provide public law library service. The initial library board hired me as its first librarian. I spent five exciting years as the director of the Norfolk Law Library. In that position, I had the opportunity to meet and develop professional and personal friendships with many amazing individuals who became my mentors and role models.
In 1992, our family moved to Seattle when I became the director of the King County Law Library. The library board, my bosses, encourage my participation in AALL activities. They recognize the value that exposure to a wider community of law library professionals brings to our library's efforts to create and sustain a new operating service model. They also recognize the deep sense of personal satisfaction I derive from the opportunities membership brings for individual growth and development.
A recent New York Times article profiled a series of eighty- and ninety-year-olds hard at work and filled with excitement for what they do.1 The story highlights changing attitudes about retirement. We are living longer, healthier lives. Whether out of economic necessity or intellectual curiosity, labor force participation by those over the age of seventy-five is accelerating. If, as the article suggests, I am at the mid-point of a work span that extends for decades, what do I envision for myself in the future?
I envision a life of work that will always contain a core of similar elements. The presence of these core elements makes my current position exciting and rewarding. They will frame the boundaries of my future work path.
I expect that the map of my path to a happy life of work will include the following elements:
- An environment where it's possible to say "I have an idea," and an opportunity to ask "what if?"
- An environment that will provide an opportunity to collaborate with others to translate "what if" into action.
- An environment that encourages personal growth.
- An environment that celebrates individual and collective achievement.
- An environment that offers the opportunity to be of service to others.
These core values may be found in any number of settings. Identifying and applying lessons from those around me to ensure that my life at work will reflect these same values will be challenging. Work will continue to provide the opportunity for passionate involvement in the world around me.
If a life at work is a lifetime path, then I'm truly at the midpoint and right in step with others of my generation who will be testing the boundaries of what it means to have a productive and rewarding work life.
1. Douglas Smith, To Be Old, Gifted and Employed Is No Longer Rare, N.Y. Times, Jan. 14, 2001, Bus. Sec., at 1.
For More Information About Law Librarianship or the AALL Recruitment Committee, contact committee chair Sarah Mauldin.