In 2022, I served as interim executive director for my tiny 20-person public library when our previous director took a new job. This was not something I had on my bingo card for that year, but the director approached me directly about taking the interim role, as well as applying for the permanent director position, and who was I to pass up such an explicit career opportunity?
The short version of this story is that I served as interim director for five months, applied and was rejected for the permanent director position, and went back to my role as Circulation & Reference Manager. The longer version of this story is that these were the most stressful five months of my entire career, and while I learned a lot, I also realized that I needed to rethink my career plans. Prior to this, I had had vague notions of pursuing a director position much later in my career, but now I’ve realized that upward mobility isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.
I recently came across this article from Justin Hoenke (aka Justin the Librarian) about his complicated experiences as a library director, and it got me thinking again about what I learned from my own time as a library director. Here are some of the biggest things I took away from that experience, and why I ultimately decided that being a director is not for me.
You Can Only Wear So Many Hats
By their nature, small libraries require everyone to wear a lot of hats, but during these five months, I wasn’t just the director: I was the Business Manager, the Facilities Manager, the Executive Assistant, and HR. (Oh, and I was still the Circulation & Reference Manager as well.) This was such a large number of hats that I almost collapsed under the weight of them. I felt more like a plate spinner or a superhuman juggler, trying to keep everything from crashing down. I had assistance from other organizations (we contracted with a third-party HR company, for example), but a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities still fell to me.
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This would have been challenging enough on its own, but the universe has a twisted sense of humor and dropped a number of significant problems in my lap. Our library received its first-ever official book challenge on my literal first day as director. Half of the building’s toilets backed up while I was on vacation. We had an incident involving inappropriate content being viewed on a public computer, which ended up becoming a minor incident on social media and led to several emergency board meetings before the turmoil died down.
Now, not every director position is going to be that overwhelming, but our profession as a whole has a real problem with mission creep, vocational awe, and the idea that libraries have to be everything for everybody, so being a director means you’ll need to recognize this and decide how you’re going to manage that for yourself and for your organization.
You Need to Have Confidence in Your Decisions
I’ve always had a hard time trusting myself (especially when someone else disagrees with me), but as director, I was responsible for the Library’s operations. I had to educate myself on the fly, make quick decisions, and stand by my choices, even if the anxious voice in my head was screaming that every decision I made was wrong.
In some ways, this experience taught me that many of my professional instincts are solid and worth trusting. In other ways, it highlighted all the things I didn’t know and made me realize that I didn’t like being the person who had to make all the decisions. This was hard for me to accept at first, because what sort of over-achiever says that they don’t want more responsibility? But it’s a question you need to ask yourself if you’re considering a director-level role. How comfortable are you being the decision maker? The face of the organization? The person at fault if something goes wrong?
You Will Be Separated From Daily Library Work
For me, one of the best parts of working in a library is the day-to-day work of engaging with patrons and collaborating with my coworkers. As a director, you are managing library operations at a strategic level and making critical decisions about budgets, staffing, and community engagement. These are crucial elements of library work, but I felt more separated from the library as the director than at any other point in my career.
I think this is what made me realize that I’m happiest as a mid-level manager. I have the authority to mentor staff and shape library services, but I still have my hands in the day-to-day work that I enjoy so much. I can cover the desk if we’re short-staffed. I can collaborate with my team on improving department procedures. I can develop relationships with patrons and get input on what the community wants. And if someone brings a big problem to me, I can potentially look at the problem and say, “You know what? I think this needs to be passed on to the director.”