Like most everyone else, my professional philosophy is tied into the experiences I’ve had since childhood. The appeal of librarianship for me is in the values that it builds up, like providing information access for all people, protecting free speech and debate, and encouraging lifelong learning. My experiences have shaped my personality and outlook so that I’m not only compatible with librarianship, I will thrive once I’m given a chance.
When I was in grade school in 1994, I remember one of the highlights of the gifted and talented program was a quick tour of the Internet with the school librarian. While I didn’t know it at the time, the World Wide Web was only a few hundred threads strong, and we were checking out things like Gopher, FTP, and BBS sites. This activity actually got us into the local newspaper! The novelty of connecting to others’ information miles away made the world smaller for me then, and that world-shrinking hasn’t stopped. In librarianship, like in many other fields, this technology has forever altered what the profession looks like. I’m looking forward to being able to engage with those changes.
In ninth grade I was homeschooled, and in my free time I decided I wanted to volunteer at the library. One of the big projects I was tasked with was emptying the card catalogs and sorting them to get uploaded to the computer catalog. It was a little disconcerting to see something I had used regularly and was fond of being phased out, but I was eager to see what the computer could do once it had all that information (I also loved alphabetizing, so it was no chore). My favorite statements about the matter (seen in a few places, in varying forms) is “technology is neither good nor evil, it just is.”
In my undergraduate studies I was a German major, and Peace and Conflict Studies minor. I chose German because I wanted to become as international as possible, and business was not for me. The idea that Americans are the greatest and we have little to nothing to learn from other countries was prevalent at the time (I began school in 2003), but that didn’t sit right with me. Peace and Conflict Studies was an interdisciplinary minor that I picked up, finding that I was taking all the classes for it anyway as they matched my interests. I learned about disenfranchised and oppressed people, and the widespread discrimination that occurs here in the United States as well. Though not a direct path to librarianship, I believe these choices prepared me for the field I am now entering. German and the international mindset I cultivated are significant because librarianship is a truly universal profession and the intersection of organization and language is a fascinating and active area of study. And Peace and Conflict Studies is significant because true librarianship is an egalitarian provision of information for all people, without discrimination.
I only had one job that directly involved my German degree, but it was worthwhile. I worked in a call center translating dental claims for military dependents stationed overseas. While I was able to use my German regularly in translation and speaking with the German dental offices, I also was enjoying being able to resolve conflicts that would sometimes arise between the insured and the offices. One thing I’ve learned through the course of the program is that librarianship is a very people-focused profession, and some of that focus can be on solving their problems. This job built up my ability to listen and understand when people were upset and determine what people were actually looking for when they weren’t explicitly saying it. I believe these customer communication skills will be a necessary part of my repertoire for successful librarianship.
Academic librarianship involves being a key participant in the research of the campus’s academic community. I’m particularly excited about the position that libraries may occupy within the rapidly changing academic landscape, with interdisciplinary thinking taking priority in many respects. Librarianship itself is an interdisciplinary field, but the library itself is the hub of information for the institution, and as such has potential for encouraging interdisciplinary connections across campus. As information providers we hold an important place in the academic process, but as collaboration enablers even more so.
In my Information Literacy Seminar with Dr Michelle Holschuh-Simmons, I was newly inspired to think of academic librarianship as a teaching position as much as anything else. Information literacy is a crucial skill for undergraduate learning and can have long-lasting positive effects, but students are still mostly unprepared. My goal, in everyday librarianship but especially if I’m tasked with student instruction, is to teach and inspire effective information-seeking in others.
Life is information, information is life. 