Dear colleague,

Are you 18 years of age or older, earned a graduate degree in Library and Information Science (LIS) from an institution in the United States during the academic years 2009/2010 – 2018/2019 while living in the U.S. (including U.S. territories), and have applied for librarian positions in academic or research libraries? We would love to hear about your job search pathway whether or not your search has so far resulted in an academic librarian position.

I am Aubrey Iglesias, Assistant Professor at New Mexico State University Library in Las Cruces, NM. I finished my LIS degree at the end of 2008 during the Great Recession. It took me 8 years and relocating my family several times to transition into my first academic librarian position. I know some of the challenges LIS graduates face in finding academic jobs. This is why I, along with my colleague, are conducting this study on the academic and pre-professional experiences of recent LIS graduates to better understand what variables may significantly influence either an unsuccessful or successful job search outcome in order to help colleagues navigate entry into academic librarianship.

We need your help! We ask that you please take our survey (link provided below), which takes approximately 10 – 15 minutes to complete and includes demographic as well as multiple choice questions with options to write in additional information. All study participants will remain anonymous. We would also like to ask you to please distribute the link to this survey widely: https://survey.nmsu.edu/surveys/?s=KE7RA3W97M

By participating in this survey, you can enter into a drawing for a chance to be randomly selected to receive one of five Amazon gift cards worth $25 each. We are also looking for interview participants for the second part of this study, which is focused on graduates who had a mentor during their LIS studies. This would be another chance to receive a $25 Amazon gift card. (Note: per NMSU policy, employees of NMSU in addition to people who were born outside the U.S. and are not considered permanent residents of the U.S. are ineligible to be awarded a gift card. Also, multiple gift cards should not be given to the same individual.)

This study has been approved through NMSU’s IRB approval (#21263), and we anticipate publishing the aggregated study results in an open access academic journal. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at aiglesia@nmsu.edu. Thank you for your time!

With much appreciation,
Aubrey Iglesias, MA, MLS
Assistant Professor/Cataloging Librarian
New Mexico State University
aiglesia@nmsu.edu

Tiffany Schirmer, MLS
Library Specialist, Sr.
New Mexico State University
tschirm@nmsu.edu