Violet Fox

Supporting Library Workers Who Have Lost Their Jobs

If you haven’t had the experience of losing your job suddenly, of being laid off or fired, it might be difficult to imagine what it’s like.

The person who has lost their job is probably going through some form of grief. They’re losing financial security, their professional identity, their expectations of a stable future. Much of the same advice applies about things you’d say (or not say) to people grieving the loss of a loved one. Telling people who have been laid off things like “It’s for the best” or “It will all work out” or “One day you’ll look back and be glad this happened” aren’t actually helpful.

Immediately upon losing your job, you’re dumped into a world of unfamiliar paperwork and panic. Trying to make doctor’s appointments before your insurance runs out. Trying to determine who exactly is supposed to be able to afford COBRA coverage. Trying to get your head around the convoluted unemployment process. Trying to figure out how to roll over your 401K. Trying to parse what your severance agreement contract language actually means. Trying to scramble to save things like email contacts, pay stubs, performance records, and all those documents on your institutional Google Drive or SharePoint, before you lose access forever (or maybe they cut off your access immediately, so there’s no possibility of saving these things).

Looking for jobs, especially academic jobs, takes time. When other academic librarians started asking me if I had any interviews lined up just a few weeks after I was laid off, I wondered if they actually remembered how long the academic job search takes. It also takes an immense amount of energy and trust to put yourself out there and be judged by strangers in job applications and full-day interviews.

Because of all of the above, your colleague who has lost their job may not be as communicative as you’d expect. I had people send me well wishes months ago that I still haven’t replied to, because there’ve been times when I only had the capacity to apply/interview for jobs and pretty much nothing else. But it still meant a lot to see that people were thinking about me.

If you’re looking for ways to support a colleague who has lost their job, here are a few places to start.

Offer to meet up with them, in person or online. It’s isolating to no longer have a job to go to. It’s distressing to have coworkers who used to make gestures of caring about your well being, then no longer hear from them when you don’t see them at the office every day. Send a care package or a card. Set a calendar reminder to check in in a month or two, once the initial shock has worn off, and the well wishers have moved on. Stay in touch, even when you’re not sure what to say.
Offer to be a job reference. If you’re coworkers or have worked on projects together, offer to step up as one of their references.
Offer to share job openings. Check in first about what kinds of jobs they’re looking for and where they’re looking.
Offer to write a short endorsement on LinkedIn. These aren’t super important in academic librarianship, but if someone is looking outside academia, they can set a candidate apart.
Offer to look over resumes or cover letters, or to practice interviewing, or to attend networking events with them.
Offer to connect them with people you know. Are there other people you know who have gone through a similar job loss? Are there people in your network who have changed career paths? Are there people you know who the person who lost their job might benefit from talking with? Are they looking for partners for a “funemployment” project or a buddy to take a class to develop new skills? Is there a Discord community that might help them stay in touch with the profession?
Offer to talk about or do something together that’s not related to the job search. Job searching is an absolute drag. Check in to see if they want to vent about it all, or if they’d like a distraction by talking about pets, TV shows, sports—anything but the job search.
Offer reminders of why you appreciate them as an individual. The process of losing your job and looking for another is dehumanizing, and it can be hard to remember what value you have when you’re rejected from multiple jobs. When you check in, tell them exactly why you liked working with them, what they brought to the office or to the profession, what you miss now that they’re not there. Be specific and make it personal, because human resource departments are sending them emails that make them feel like a cog in a machine.
Offer money. If you can afford it, offer to buy them a meal or throw some funds at their Venmo or PayPal. There was a time when it would’ve been considered gauche to offer money to a colleague who had fallen on hard times. Those days are now behind us.
Offer to start a crowdfund campaign. Especially for single people or those with kids, losing your job can mean a lot of fear about how you’ll pay rent or afford health insurance. It can be especially helpful to get a crowdfunding campaign rolling soon after the layoffs, when people are most likely to give, but that’s exactly the time when a person who’s lost their job might not have the capacity to make it happen.

Other actions you might be able to take:

Campaign against layoffs. Are multiple people being laid off? Do they have advance notice? Raise a ruckus!! When four tenured librarians were laid off from St. Cloud State University in 2019, the Minnesota academic library community rallied to support them, creating a Twitter hashtag #SaveSCSU_Library, wearing blue in solidarity, and spreading the word about the St. Cloud State University administration’s actions. At the Minnesota Library Association conference that year, I carried a sign with the hashtag and later another sign reading “Ask me about the St. Cloud State layoffs”—many librarians had no idea they were happening.

2019 tweet from @DebTorres54 reading — Tweet from St. Kate’s Assistant MLIS Program Director Deb Torres (1954–2022), a dearly remembered friend. (source)

Screenshot of a 2019 tweet from @violetbfox reading: New sign today! Please ask me about the SaveSCSU_Library efforts, we'll be discussing strategy today at 1 pm at the @ARLD_MLA division meeting: all are welcome! The tweet's image shows a sign reading Ask me about the SCSU layoffs. class= — Tweet posted during the 2019 Minnesota Library Association conference encouraging collaboration on ways to help the laid off St. Cloud State University librarians. (source)

When all nine librarians (eight of them tenured/tenure track) were laid off from Western Illinois University in 2024, a Save WIU Librarians campaign developed at SaveWIULibrarians.org. More than 10,000 people signed the petition and sent letters to the WIU administration, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) published a Statement on the Importance of Librarians in Academic Libraries , and they received local and national press coverage (Truthout, Vox, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education).

These actions didn’t save their jobs. But they were still worth doing. It’s vital to support our colleagues. It’s crucial to share the word about the value of what we do in librarianship. It’s important to let the next employer who considers laying off their librarians know that that action will result in a lot of pushback and a damaged reputation.

Start a support fund. During the initial wave of Covid, many library workers were laid off, especially public library workers and paraprofessional staff. The EveryLibrary Institute started the HALO (Help A Library Worker Out) fund, raising over $88,000 in funding from individuals along with corporate and nonprofit organizations.

When university staff have been laid off, employees who weren’t impacted can start a fund to provide assistance. Yes, sometimes it feels like we’re all Venmoing each other the same twenty dollars. But it means something to try to help, both to the person helping and the person being helped.

Organize your workplace. With a union, you may be able to fight against layoffs. You can also press for contracts that ensure laid off workers have enough time to prepare for the consequences of job loss.

I’ve now written a series of posts about being laid off (Laid Off, Again; The High Cost of Being Laid Off; Making the Academic Librarian Interview Less Painful); this will be the last one I write about the topic. I don’t have a job offer lined up, but I don’t want to be pigeonholed by writing too much about my experience as someone without a job. It’s also emotionally draining to write about these painful and personal experiences, although I appreciate the kind responses I’ve gotten from readers.

To others who have suddenly lost their jobs in libraries: I see you. I’m rooting for you. If you need to talk to someone who understands, I’m here to listen.

Making the Academic Librarian Interview Less Painful

To be unexpectedly unemployed in the U.S. is to be in a state of desperation. If you haven’t been out of work lately, it’s a particularly challenging time. The labor market is cooling, and people are struggling to find work, especially younger workers and people of color. There has been a sharp increase in the number of “ghost jobs,” job listings that never result in a hiring, and the rise in the use of AI means a human may never see your job application.

Since being laid off last August, I’ve gone through fourteen interviews for eight positions at academic libraries. It’s been a mixed bag—at times, it’s felt as though employers didn’t recognize how their actions impacted me. I’d like to share my experience in the hopes that it gets hiring committees to take another look at their process and make some small but meaningful changes.

Some things that made my interview experiences harder than they had to be:

They didn’t tell me how many questions they were asking. If employers don’t provide the questions in advance, sometimes they just start asking questions without letting me know how many questions they have. That means I have to interrupt the speaker to ask, because I have to gauge how much time I have for each answer. Do you have six questions? Do you have twenty questions? Help candidates manage their time well by providing this info up front (preferably in advance).
They didn’t know how many people this position supervised. During two separate interviews, I stumped the hiring committee when I asked how many people I’d be supervising. This seems like something that should be in the job description, to be honest, but if not, the hiring committee should know the answer.
They contacted my references before the interview. I’ve applied for dozens of jobs, so I’m asking for a lot of effort from my references. When employers contact references before I’ve had a chance to decide whether I want that job, that’s wasted time and energy, not only for my references but for the employers as well.
They asked me to travel on Thanksgiving week. Why would you ask a candidate to fly across the country during the busiest travel week of the year? I already had plans to see family.
They expected me to pay hundreds of dollars for a flight and to wait months to wait to receive reimbursement. This is a significant expense for unemployed candidates. At the very least, being clear about when candidates might expect reimbursement is helpful.
They expected me to drive 375 miles in the dark after a full day interview. Interview days are grueling, and this request seemed unsafe to me.
They chose a restaurant without asking about dietary restrictions. This is a basic thing that sometimes gets overlooked.
They booked my travel through a system that automatically signs me up for spam emails. The employer probably doesn’t even know this happens, but it was frustrating nonetheless.
They didn’t ask whether I had accessibility concerns. Honestly, no employers are doing well on this metric. No employer asked about captioning for Zoom meetings. No employer asked about on-site accommodations I might need, whether that’s wayfaring or travel to different campus buildings. I feel very bad for my fellow candidates who need accessibility accommodations and have to make difficult choices about whether they’re seen as “a problem” for asking for them. Why not show that you’re aware that people have different needs by asking what candidates need up front?

I pushed back on some of the requests I received because I thought they were unreasonable. But it’s not kind to expect candidates to push back when they may desperately need this job.

Some things that made my interviews less painful:

They provided the questions in advance. Honestly, this is the easiest thing you can do to not only make candidates more comfortable and successful in sharing their experience, but to equal the playing field. Unless the job duties in the positions I’m interviewing for require being good at on-the-spot responses, there’s no reason not to provide questions in advance.
They shared with me in advance who would be at each meeting. That information means I’m able to research people and tailor my answers for the audience I’m speaking to.
They provided a campus tour and information about the students at their school. It makes a big difference when employers provide opportunities for me to learn more about the environment I’m considering joining.
They let me know by phone call when I didn’t get a job. I appreciated the consideration.
They invited me to meet with them to get feedback on my candidacy when I didn’t get the job. I was grateful to get the chance to meet with the library dean to hear the reasons they didn’t select me; it means I have a better chance at finding a successful fit in the future.

So much of interviewing is about building trust and understanding—that old chestnut that we’re interviewing each other to ensure a good fit is true, but employers don’t always acknowledge that. The job search is inherently demoralizing and difficult; consider making changes in your workplace processes that make it less dehumanizing.

View from an airplane, showing downtown Chicago skyscrapers in the distance. — Returning to Chicago after an interview.

The High Cost of Being Laid Off

As I mentioned in my last post, I was laid off from my job as a librarian at Northwestern University in July, along with 200 other employees.

I’d like to take the opportunity to write about the costs of being laid off, from an employee perspective. Northwestern hadn’t discussed the possibility of layoffs after the Trump administration withheld federal funding, and I didn’t imagine I’d be laid off from a university without warning. The emotional costs are just as difficult as you’d expect, but the financial costs may not be as clear to those who haven’t gone through this experience.

My insurance coverage ended in September. I straight up wouldn’t have been able to afford COBRA to continue my job’s insurance policy; it would’ve cost me over $800 a month. Luckily, my spouse has been able to pick up the significant extra cost of insurance coverage for me.

A new insurer means new hassles in getting my prescriptions. A prior authorization request for the antidepressant that keeps me alive meant a week of being stuck in prescription drug limbo, calling my pharmacy, then the insurance company, then the prescriber, then back to the pharmacy, and the prescriber again, and the pharmacy again, and the prescriber again, and finally a last trip to the pharmacy. At last I was able to pick up my prescription! Unfortunately, my spouse’s insurance isn’t as good as what I had before, so my payment for 30 days of this drug is $383.96.

Adding to the financial stress is that I’m in an unusual situation, in that I live 500 miles apart from my spouse. That has its ups and downs. While I’d much prefer to live with him, we struggle with the two-body problem, in that it’s difficult to find two cataloging librarian jobs in the same city. I’ve lived in Chicago for three years now, and I’m not sure whether I should stay in Chicago and try to find a job here, or move back in with him in Minnesota until I find something. While I make a few hundred dollars each week through unemployment and my part-time adjunct job, it’s not enough to cover rent. But it would be a $2,500 penalty fee to break my lease, which isn’t up until May. Should I wait until I find a job that might pay my moving expenses? Moving once is expensive enough, but moving back to Minnesota and then to another state for a job would double the costs. The unknowns are maddening, and the combination of despair and uncertainty makes it hard to make decisions.

I’ve heard at other universities there was a crowdfunding effort to support those who’d been laid off. That didn’t happen for me or the other Northwestern employees I was laid off with. Everyone of good heart here in Chicago is discouraged and anxious about the relentless kidnapping of our immigrant neighbors off our streets. My experience is just one of the many people hurting because of political choices made by those with power. This is living in the U.S. in 2025, and there are more nightmares to come.

Writing about this very personal topic isn’t easy. I’d rather be writing about cataloging, or —hell, even writing about AI, which if you know my thoughts on AI, is really saying something. Honestly, I’d rather just lay low and not talk to anyone until I get a new job, although I’m sincerely worried that will take a long time. Some days I’d rather just disappear altogether. But I’m writing about it here, in this space, because I think layoffs are going to become a more prevalent experience for academic librarians. As always, we need to cultivate solidarity with each other to survive. If you’re reading this after going through something similar, now or in the future, I encourage you to reach out, I’d be happy to talk.

Laid Off, Again

On July 29th, I was enjoying a week of vacation, spending time with my spouse’s family in South Dakota. I got an out-of-the-blue text message asking me to join a meeting with my library’s director and human resources. Having been in this situation before, I knew what was coming—I was being laid off.

The Story Behind the Layoffs

More than 200 of my coworkers at Northwestern University were laid off that day. Ten percent of my library’s staff were laid off. In April, the Trump administration froze $790 million in federal grants to Northwestern, because they claim Northwestern violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in not providing a harassment-free environment for Jewish students. To be clear, the Trump administration doesn’t care about Jewish students—if they did, they wouldn’t have appointed people who spout antisemitic rhetoric to positions within the administration.

The White House continues to extort universities by freezing their federal funding and demanding campus reforms including government oversight of academic decisions and punishing fines. Weaponizing claims of antisemitism by universities with prominent protests over the Gaza genocide is a convenient tool for an administration that seeks to undermine academia. At the same time, it hurts the Jewish community by exploiting their very legitimate concerns about rising antisemitism from the right.

John Oliver’s most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, “Trump vs. Higher Education,” does a good job of laying out the issues, as well as correctly identifying Columbia as “the little bitch university” for immediately giving into the Trump administration’s demands (which did not stop additional demands for more government control over admissions and academic departments). Northwestern didn’t cave in quite the same way, but did take the administration’s claims of antisemitism at face value, implementing new policies (such as requiring students to remove face masks when requested) and new mandatory antisemitism training.

Northwestern’s federal funding is still frozen. Is it reasonable to think that my layoff is part of standing up to the administration? I’d like to think it means something, instead of just being arbitrarily cruel. But Northwestern certainly isn’t framing it that way, saying that the layoffs are “in response to more than just the federal research funding freeze. These include rapidly rising healthcare expenses, litigation, labor contracts, employee benefits, compliance requirements and a suite of federal changes, such as potential constraints on our ability to enroll international students, as well as likely reductions in research Facilities and Administration reimbursements and in overall federal research funding.”

Once Again, Into the Breach

This is my third time being laid off. The first was in 2008, while I was working for Bank of America, as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. My department’s last six months included training our replacements in India. In October 2020, I was laid off from OCLC, due to their fears about the impacts of COVID on higher education (their largest clients). I’d tell you more about how terrible that situation was, but OCLC required me to sign a non-disparagement contract in order to get any severance pay. In 2023, the National Labor Relations Board ruled the inclusion of non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements was no longer permitted, but who knows what will change under this administration.

Now, in 2025, I’ve been laid off again. I’m devastated, of course. I liked my job, and I was good at it, with three years of “excelling” performance reviews. I received four weeks of severance pay, and I’m adjuncting, so I have a little money coming in (about $400 a week). Unemployment will supplement that for a while, with an extra $200 a week. I’ll get a deferment on my student loans, which, as I shared in my last post, were about to rise to a monthly payment of $1,242, but my progress towards loan forgiveness now grinds to a halt, again. And the job search begins anew.

I still think of myself as one of the lucky ones, since I’m married and I’ll be able to join my spouse’s insurance after my Northwestern insurance runs out this month. I know that I’m lucky to have had a decade to build my experience; I don’t envy the new MLIS graduates who are looking for increasingly harder-to-find jobs in higher education. I’m extremely grateful for the support of many people in the profession.

But I have to admit—I’m afraid. And I wish this suffering meant something, other than just being the latest in a series of things getting worse, for me and for everyone I care about.

On Owing $93,605 in Student Loans; or, A Profession Built on Debt

I don’t know the right metaphor to make you understand how this much debt physically feels. What it actually feels like is a pressure on my chest and shoulders, but maybe that’s not evocative enough. What if I describe it as an anchor trailing behind me? Or being covered in molasses, trapping my energy and restricting my movement? Perhaps as a ghost, haunting me continuously since I took out my first student loan in 1995.

Many people working in U.S. libraries are impacted by student debt. Many of those working in academic libraries are working towards paying off their student debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which allows people working in government and non-profit institutions (like most colleges and universities) to have the remainder of their balance forgiven after making ten years of payments (that is, 120 monthly payments). I’m sharing my experience as an example of what’s happening now to someone who has a good paying job and has been lucky and privileged in many ways.

PSLF Problems

Over the past year, the repayment plan I’m on, SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education) plan, was blocked by a U.S. appeals court, which ruled that Biden did not have the authority to implement the plan. That has meant that I have been unable to make progress on paying off my student loans—more precisely, if I made payments, they would not count towards my goal of 120 payments for student loan forgiveness.

This week I attended a webinar hosted by Public Service Promise, an organization founded in 2019 that helps eligible public servants achieve student loan forgiveness. If you’re working through the PSLF program, I encourage you to check out their resources and their free webinars providing updates about recent developments. During the webinar, I learned that some of the backlog in processing requests to move to a different payment plan has been reduced, so it might be a good time to resubmit my request to move to a different payment plan, before interest begins reaccumulating on August 1st. I submitted a request and learned that my new student loan monthly payment will be $1,242.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually have an extra $1,242 lying around, so that’s going to be a real struggle to come up with every month—that’s nearly as much as I pay in rent for my 300-square-foot studio apartment. Under the SAVE plan, I was paying around $450 each month.

I currently have 95 PSLF-eligible payments toward the 120 necessary for forgiveness of my $93,605 balance. I expected to be further along in this process; the 12 months I’ve been stuck in limbo because of the Republican-led lawsuits against the SAVE plan have set me back. It’s possible that I’ll be allowed to use the PSLF Buyback program, which, once I have 120 months of qualifying employment, will allow me the opportunity to make a lump sum payment of around $14,000 to retroactively make those 12 months PSLF eligible. If I can come up with $14,000 all at once (I’m lucky enough to have family members I can borrow from), I might reach that 120 payment mark and apply to have my loans forgiven in September 2026.

Potential Political Interference with PSLF Eligibility

A potential snag is that the One Big Bullshit Bill allows for the possibility of institutions to be cut off from PSLF eligibility if their activities have “substantial illegal purpose,” as defined by the Trump administration (read more about this “negotiated rulemaking” provision). The Department of Education (or what’s left of it) is now working on a set of rules to be implemented by July 1, 2026 that may declare universities to be no longer PSLF eligible if they, for example, provide gender-affirming health care to transgender youth, or provide services to undocumented immigrants. My employer is one of many that have been targeted by this administration’s attacks on higher education. So it’s possible my student loan payments will no longer be deemed PSLF eligible just before I reach the magic number of 120 payments. And, in a nightmare scenario I’m refusing to let myself consider, the Department of Education may decide that all my former payments from my employer are no longer PSLF eligible.

Since PSLF was created by an act of Congress, and statutes define PSLF-eligible organizations as every federally-defined nonprofit organization, it would seem as though the Department of Education doesn’t actually have the legal authority to exclude organizations that are doing things the presidential administration doesn’t like. So there will be legal challenges to these rules, if they are implemented. But as we’ve seen, the judicial branch has struggled to keep up with the actions of this administration.

Student Loan Restrictions for New Students

If this is the scenario for people who already have loans, what’s the situation for new students? As you might imagine, the Republicans’ spending and tax bill isn’t good news for folks who are coming into school after July 2026, with tighter borrowing limits and dramatically reduced repayment options. Graduate students will be capped to borrowing $20,500 a year. I went to grad school twelve years ago, and even then, working several part-time jobs at a time while attending school, I couldn’t have paid both tuition and rent on that amount of money. LIS students who don’t come from a solidly upper- or upper-middle-class background will either need to take out expensive private loans or will just not be able to attend grad school.

So what now? I don’t know. I know that some library workers have banded together to create scholarships to help defray the cost of attending library school (“Texas Exes iSchool Alumni Scholarship for BIPOC Students”). There are also organizations that are looking to create mass movements to push politicians to cancel student debt, such as the Debt Collective.

As for me and the student debt that’s been haunting me for thirty years, I’ll be fine—as I said, I’m one of the lucky ones. I share my story with worry for our colleagues, present and future, who are not so lucky.