Beyond the Job Ad: Employers and Library Instruction

Russell A. Hall is a Reference Librarian in John M. Lilley Library at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College; e-mail: [email protected]. © 2013 Russell A. Hall, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC Many content analyses of job ads have revealed the skills and experience needed in academic library jobs and show that library instruction is an important job duty. This study moves beyond the content of the job ads and surveys the employers themselves (in the person of the supervisor). The survey revealed that supervisors highly value library instruction. Other findings relate to the types of instruction duties the new employee will engage in and the ways that these employees learn how to do library instruction, as well as how much time the employee spends on instruction-related duties.