Special & Other
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1.Why did you want to become a Librarian? I worked in the library at St. John's University in NYC as an undergraduate student worker (20 hours/week). After graduating with a B.S. in Communication Arts and working as a commercial editor for 10 years, when I went back to St. John's for a seminar on graduate programs it looked like librarianship was the only one that I could qualify for. After taking the GMAT and filing all the necessary papers (within 3 weeks) not only was I accepted but I was able to obtain a graduate assistantship. 2. What is your job in the Library now? Now I am the cataloger, but I also do a lot of acquisitions work. A. What type of library do you work in? Federal Government Library main office. We handle 180 judges and 7 libraries. B. Main Duties? Cataloging: copy and some original (for our Sirsi system only - we just add our holdings to OCLC for the copied items). Updating item status as they are ordered, arrive and are processed; catalog maintenance. Acquisitions work: produce purchase orders for our renewal items; create and process requests and purchase orders for new items; acquisitions maintenance.
Craig
1.Why did you want to become a Librarian? I found a certificate from the Encyclopedia Americana that I was a member of the Look it up Club in elementary school. However, I remember making the decision in college to become a law librarian because it seemed so interesting and esoteric. 2. What is your job in the Library now? I am the Library Director in a military library. A. What type of library do you work in? Air Force General Library B. Main Duties? Management and supervision.
Kathleen
1.Why
did you want to become a Librarian? I went back to college at the age
of 36. I wanted to be in a career that helped people, but also one that
offered me a sense of satisfaction. I got a degree in social work and worked
in the field for a couple years when I began to look into library science
for my masters degree. I don't know why I didn't consider library science
right off the bat. I had worked in bookstores and had always loved libraries.
For some reason, I didn't think of it as a career, which may be a statement
as to the visibility and perceived value of librarians as a whole, unfortunately.
I have found that being a librarian is a lot like social work, especially
in my setting. I used to help people find social service and financial resources,
and now I help them find information resources. There is a very strong customer
service component to library work, which I enjoy. 2.
What is your job in the Library now? I work as both a medical librarian
and a consumer health librarian in a medium-sized non-profit hospital. A
medical library is considered to be a special library. Our consumer health
library is part of a consortium with public libraries in the community,
so most of our patrons are from the community. Main Duties? As a
medical librarian, I do research requests from both employees and physicians
of the hospital. My research may be for patient care, for professional development,
or for policy or program design or revision. I also teach classes on searching
the Internet and evaluation of websites to interested staff members. I am
involved with collection development to a certain degree. I do some basic
clerical tasks also, when needed, such as copying of articles for ILLs and
displaying the new journals as they come in.
I am the librarian liaison for a small library that exists in support of
a certified school which is housed within our inpatient youth behavioral
unit. I make book suggestions, catalog the books as they come in, and train
the young teens that take care of the library clerical tasks, such as shelving
books, as part of their community service hours. Right now, I am working
to catalog their staff collection which has never been "controlled"
before.
When I am working as a consumer health librarian, I am basically doing the
job of a public librarian. Collection development, readers' advisory, bibliographic
instruction- including how to use our medical databases-, circulation, shelf-reading
and shelving, sending out overdue notices--just about all aspects of the
work. The other librarian I work with in the consumer health library goes
out and visits the support groups at the hospital, telling them about our
resources, and she also speaks to other groups in the community.
My director wrote a proposal and was awarded a grant through the National
Network of Libraries of Medicine last spring. Our program will seek to improve
access to health information for seniors in northern Idaho. Through our
research and grant funding, we will redesign some of our most commonly used
patient discharge instructions, create a senior-friendly website based on
focus group recommendations, and provide basic computer skills training
at local senior centers for interested seniors. I am the principal investigator
for the research and about a quarter of my time is spent on this right now.
Beth
1.Why
did you want to become a Librarian?At
first, it was sort of like a fall-back position from what I'd originally
intended in College. I had decided that I wanted to teach (secondary)
math when I was just in the 3rd grade. And up until my junior year in
College, that was where I thought I was going. However, the summer after
my junior year I did my first student teaching and discovered that I perhaps
did not have the gifts to be a good teacher. Also, I was struggling with
the mathematics curriculum by that time, and didn't know if I would be
able to graduate with my major in mathematics (in addition to my other
major of English). So the spring of my senior year, I switched to Computer
Science/Mathematical Sciences as my major (still in addition to my English
major) and stayed in college an extra 3 semesters to complete my degree
requirements.
However,
by the time I was finished, I realized that I couldn't really program
efficiently and probably would not be able to find a good job because
of my skills. I had been working as a student assistant (workstudy) at
the Circulation Desk at my college library, and enjoyed it. My boss, who
had only recently obtained her library degree, began to urge me to consider
librarianship. I did enjoy my work at the library; I had contributed to
the department, and had taken it upon myself to learn how to answer reference
questions that came to us on the weekends when a librarian wasn't available.
As a teenager, I had even volunteered in our public library branch in
the summers, working with the summer reading program or shelving books.
So I applied and was accepted to library school and found my "niche"
as it were. No more floundering around for my life's work... this was
it! 2.
What is your job in the Library now? I am Senior Catalog Librarian
at a standalone (independent of any university) law College library in
downtown Houston. Currently I am the only professional cataloger, but
in the past I have served under another cataloger and have supervised
another professional cataloger. I currently supervise one support staff
person and do 4 hours of Reference Desk duty/week in addition to my cataloging
duties. My staff handles the
monographic copycataloging for the most part. I handle everything else:
serials, non-print, original cataloging, foreign (Spanish primarily) language
materials, electronic, etc. I am also our integrated library system coordinator.
My
job description requires me to be active in our professional associations.
I have served as newsletter editor/publications chair for over 10 years
for our local law librarian association, and am currently also serving
on a couple of national special interest section (SIS) committees (Academic
Law Libraries SIS Statistics Committee, and Online Bibliographic SIS Nominations
Commmittee).
You can see our library layout maps on our website http://www.stcl.edu/library/LibraryMaps.html
The major staff area is on 2nd floor North. My office is at the very bottom
left corner of the map of that part of the floor, with my assistant, acquisitions
and serials assistants in the cubicles just above my office, and the Serials
Librarian in the office to the right of those cubicles.
Barbara
1.Why did you want to become a Librarian? The genteel, intellectual atmosphere of an academic library was inviting. 2. What is your job in the Library now? Reference Librarian A. What type of library do you work in? Law Library (Courthouse & Legislative). B. Main Duties? Provide legal reference and research to the Bench and the Bar, the general public, students, pro se litigants; email reference, virtual reference, committee memberships (Intellectual Property, Automation, Software Licensing Subcommittee of NELLCO); create databases for ready reference, pathfinders etc.
Hilary
1.Why did you want to become a Librarian? I am a medical librarian. I always had an interest in the medical field but was somewhat undecided about a nursing career. I also had an interest in writing so I majored in Communication with the idea that I might go into print journalism. I was working in a hospital as a library technician and discovered that librarianship and communication are closely related and compliment one another. Both focus on published information. In fact, at the University of Buffalo, the Communication dept and the Library school recently merged. Now I took all of those interests (medicine, communication, librarianship) and combined them into the career that I have today. 2. What is your job in the Library now? I am the Library Coordinator (manager) at the Emily Foster Health Sciences Library at the Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo. A. What type of library do you work in? Medical B. Main Duties? Supervision and management, database searching, collection development, reference, end-user training, grant writing projects, newsletter publishing,
Elaine
1.Why
did you want to become a Librarian? Fwiw, I had taught languages and literatures in universities of the
Middle West till I followed my then wife into exile in Babylon on Potomac
when she took a job at a Beltway Bandit. I told my friends
before I left that I'd go out and get rich and powerful -- i.e., take a
non-academic job. But
on arrival I discovered the Library of Congress (not having the cataloging
system I preferred as user was named after an extant physical thing, much
less any more) -- and that employee IDs gave borrowing privileges, and (at
that time) stack access. After
one look, I said "To hell with money and power, I'm going to work _here_!"
And did, for fifteen years, doing mostly what was then called Preliminary
Cataloging, plus a little copyright and a little acquisitions. I even married
a colleague there, after the wife who had dragged me to the fleshpots decided
it was me and not the Deep North she was tired of.
Beartooth