Reentering Librarianship After a Career Break: Returners’ Experiences, Barriers, and Professional Support Needs

The goal of the Library Reentry Patterns and Attitudes Study was to understand librarians’ motivations for and experiences of reentering librarianship after a break of at least six months from the profession. To explore this topic, we used a mixed methods strategy to learn more about the experiences of librarians who returned, chose not to, or were not able to reenter the profession. We analyzed the qualitative data using reflexive thematic analysis to develop themes, which included feeling called to librarianship, experiencing mismatches between expectations and realities, navigating challenging hiring processes, facing uneven access to support networks, and coping with various constraints. This study shows that challenges reentering librarianship are not only personal in nature, but also related to structural elements of the profession, such as slow growth and high competition, opaque hiring processes, and limited support for reentrants. This study fills a gap in the literature by further contextualizing library employees’ experiences as they try to reenter the profession.