Purpose & Goals

Libraries are often one of the largest employers of undergraduate students on any college campus, with opportunities for students to gain experience in many areas, including public services, technical services, collection management, and the use of advanced technologies, including those associated with library services and those associated with digital scholarship. Depending on the size of the library, there may also be opportunities for students to find work related to financial management, facilities management, web development, marketing and strategic communications, and more. We all employ student workers, but how well do we articulate and promote awareness of the wide array of transferrable skills that a student employee may develop through library employment? Moreover, how effectively have we designed student employment opportunities to take advantage of the idea of on-campus employment as a “high-impact practice” promoting student success and to what degree are we highlighting student employment in libraries as an opportunity to build “career readiness” among our students? While previous studies have explored the idea of library employment as a high-impact practice in undergraduate education, the current study will pursue this idea further by casting future thinking about library student employment within the framework of the National Association of College and Employers (NACE) Career Readiness Competencies, which are employed across the California State University system as a feature of our commitment to building career readiness among our highly diverse undergraduate student population, as well as the State of California’s Learning-Aligned Employment Program.

Design & Methodology

This study draws on the results of independent, but complementary, inquiries made at individual California State University campuses. Each has drawn on the literature of high-impact practices in undergraduate student employment, especially recent studies applying the HIP framework to library student employment [e.g., Mitola, Rinto, & Pattni (2018); Rinto, Mitola, and Otto (2019)], as well as resources related to the NACE Career Readiness Competencies (2020). This study will report conclusions drawn from multimodal inquiry, including content analysis, survey research, focus group research, and analysis of post-graduate employment outcomes. Participants in one or more phases of this study include current library student employees, former library student employees, and library student employee supervisors.

Conclusions

While these studies are still in an early stage, and, thus, not suitable for any suggestion of conclusions to be drawn, among the questions being posed through the individual studies are: 1) how do traditional approaches to the design of library student employment experience map to best practices for high-impact student employment; 2) how do library student employment experiences compare with other campus employment experiences in regard to the identification and assessment of transferrable skills; 3) in what ways may library student employment experiences demonstrate the impact on the “college to career” discussion in ways similar to other campus exployment experiences, e.g., within the NACE framework; 4) what opportunities are available for imagining new library student employment experiences that might offer greater potential for high-impact practice and impact on undergraduate student career readiness; and, 5) to what degree to current and former library student employees perceive the value of their undergraduate library student employment experience to their entry into the workplace?

Implications & Value

“Career readiness” has become a hallmark of the increasingly contentious debate across the United States regarding the value of higher education, especially as perceived by students, families, donors, campus leaders, and legislators increasingly interested in oversight of the educational enterprise. As Hora (2023) wrote: “The notion that the nation’s colleges and universities are failing to prepare their students for the world of work appears to no longer be a matter of debate: it has become conventional wisdom.” While it is clear that all within institutions of higher education must respond to this “conventional wisdom,” it is unclear how best to do so, especially within the existing framework for meaningful educational opportunities inside and outside the classroom. As one of the largest employers of undergraduate students on most college campuses, and with direct access to a post-graduate future for interested student employees both to advanced education in a number of fields and/or to a robust employment sector in the cultural heritage community, academic libraries are in a strong position to enhance the manner in which they present the value of libraries to their local communities and decision-makers by designing student employment experiences informed not only by past practice in the field, but by broader frameworks in higher education, including the AAC&U High Impact Practices and the NACE Career Competencies. Re-imagining library student employment within broader frameworks will also promote opportunities for collaboration with campus partners, including academic internship programs, service learning programs, undergraduate research programs, career services offices, and alumni affairs. Employing these frameworks also promises to expand our approach to the assessment of a key library service (student employment) and to better integrate library assessment activities into institutional approaches to assessing career readiness and end of program student learning outcomes.