Are you still a librarian if you don't work in a library?

 

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I'm not sure who did this, so I can't credit them, but it's brilliant.

It's been five years since I've worked in a library. In that time I have had one contract position and then four regular positions at the same company I was a librarian for 20 years.  I also have moved seven times in five years as they've tried to get the right mix of office layout.  For three floors, it's pretty mobile.

I was laid off for six weeks before they asked me to come back.  My library gig was always part-time, first at 35 hours a week, then 20, and I eventually got a data entry position entering medical charges that made $10 less an hour, but I was finally able to stop taking extra jobs such as working at the gas station (I did that for five years, standing for hours through tendinitis and plantar fasciitis issues and worrying about being robbed).  I was finally full-time for the first time in my life anywhere.  I'd worked for 10 years in a 'real' job to finally get that.  All because we started taking insurance to reduce the draw on our endowment.

But those charges weren't going to be needed once we were an outpatient medical centre rather than an inpatient hospital, and the library wasn't going. So I was laid off.

Six weeks later the manager of patient access called me asking if I'd come back as a consultant as their numbers were through the roof now that we were getting paediatric fractures follow-ups from the University of Kentucky and other referrals for orthopaedic issues in numbers we hadn't had before.  When I'd been a data entry clerk, I'd helped out with patient access when three women went on maternity leave at once.  So I didn't have to be trained as much as a temporary worker, and they'd have more faith in giving me access to the electronic medical record system (at that time it was Cerner; we recently went to Epic).  I did contract work from May 2017 to October and was hired on again in the job I was performing, check out.  The next spring I was hired as a specialist to do insurance authorisations of office visits and schedule offsite imaging such as ultrasounds and MRIs.  Two weeks later the lady training me's husband got the best job offer he'd ever had, one tailored and created for him in a very small niche area, and they had two weeks to go to another state.  So I wound up getting her job, which was basically the same, although authorising surgeries, as we have an ambulatory surgical centre as well as medical and rehabilitation clinics, although it was a higher grade.  Eventually, we wound up changing the positions so the coordinator (me) did all the pre-authorisations, and the specialist did both offsite scheduling and their authorisation.  That will become important, as this summer HQ took over all inside authorisations, i.e., what I was doing, but my boss (who is great) argued that they keep me on in another position that had opened up, back in checkout.  Although it is technically a lower grade, they kept it a lateral move so I wasn't demoted or taking a pay cut.  For which I'm grateful.  HR and my boss really went to bat for me.

I had a panic attack shortly before transitioning to the new position, because when I'd done it before I was largely alone, handling up to 200 patients some days, as well as the phones and e-mails.  We have a second person in checkout now and a scheduler who handles most of the rest, letting us focus on checking out and scheduling new appointments, getting calls when we can and acting as a backup when she's out.  So it's much better, and despite being an introvert, I've discovered I enjoy making a difference directly with patients and their families rather than doing it on the back end by wrestling with insurance companies.

But that isn't the point of this post.  It's that I have been doing other things outside of librarianship. Am I still a librarian? Yes, I'm trained, I have a piece of paper that says I am, and I worked 20 years in a professional position beyond work-study and graduate-assistant jobs.  I am still very interested in the library world and books, censorship, publishing, and other library-related topics.  Have I tried to get another library job lately? No. I did when I was laid off, and I did during my return at first, but I discovered three things (in addition to the long-known issue that I live in a city with a school of library and information science that puts out scores of new librarians three times a year, and you almost have to wait for someone to retire or die to get a library job).

1. I was a solo librarian all the time I was in my position. I did all aspects of library work.  That's great, right? But no one wants to give me an entry-level job because of my experience and won't give me a mid-career job because I've never supervised anyone except some students over the years.
2. Of the libraries in my area, most (except for the University of Kentucky and the Lexington Public Library) pay less for master's-level library salaries than I make at checkout at my current job.
3. No one I've seen has had the level of health coverage that I have. I have an HMO that doesn't require referrals, never have had problems with them covering any of the doctors I have across multiple systems, has a deductible of only $150 (which I've already met for this year) and an out-of-pocket maximum of $1500. That, along with a flexible spending account, means that I have money on January 1st to cover my out-of-pocket max that hits quickly with my medications (I'm diabetic, on insulin, among other things).  I usually put a little more on the card for contacts and maybe some dental work.  The money is taken out of my pay pre-tax in instalments over 26 paycheques.  Considering most of the places I've looked at have a minimum of $3000 deductibles, I can't beat that, really.  (Our workplace also offers a high-deductible plan for those who don't need the breadth of healthcare coverage I do, such as occasional trips to the doctor or maybe one or two medicines, that are lower in cost per paycheque). Although mine's not bad, either.  Essentially, I work mostly for my healthcare.

So my plan, if I can, is to retire from here. For one, I love my co-workers and what I do.  But I have twelve more years before I can retire fully.  Sixty-two isn't really an option, due to needing healthcare.  Sixty-five might be, so I could go on Medicare, and that's ten years away.  I'd make a little less for the rest of my life, but 1) my health is not the best, so I don't want to push it out too far so I can actually enjoy some of my retirement and 2) I have one of those rare things, nowadays, a pension, that could make up the shortfall.  I don't know if social security will even be a thing by then, but hopefully, it will.  Gods, it bothers me that I'm Gen X and I'm already looking at how my retirement will go.

Sometimes I regret not working in a library anymore. I derived a lot of validation in my identity as a librarian, and I found the work very rewarding. As a medical librarian, I helped with research, education, and clinical care that made a difference in evidence-based outcomes.  I was a member of various local, state, and national groups and served on committees, and chaired a couple, including a national awards jury. I was my state representative to the Midwest region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine for five years, going annually to represent the Commonwealth in Chicago, except for the year I was laid up a few months due to being hit by a car right before the trip.  So I gained a lot of experience.  I published a book chapter, two chapters in a major medical collection development guide, spent over a decade working on Doody's collection development tool for Orthopaedics and Paediatric Nursing and wrote one article and numerous book reviews.  I think I have a total of 43 publications, all but one as a medical librarian (as an intern at the Kentucky state archives, I did a finding aid under my former name). It was a good run.

So, I will always be a librarian to the core, and the Rabid Librarian at that.