Tell me about your path to librarianship:
Like many librarians, I didn’t actually plan to become a librarian even though I come from a family of librarians. My grandfather was a library director at Salt Lake City and the Ramapo Catskill Library System, my uncle is currently the Director of the Newburgh Public Library, yet I had no expectations to become a librarian. I have an undergraduate degree in Italian Literature and European Studies (from the University of Delaware) and I thought maybe I’d be a translator. I had very vague ideas.
I was in my senior year in college and my best friend’s mother, the director of the Kent County Library System, learned that I had no idea what I wanted to do. She asked if I had considered being a librarian and I replied that it had never crossed my mind. I drove home for spring break right past Rutgers, stopped, met the faculty there, filled out an application, and by the time I got home, I had applied to grad school and basically decided to become a librarian. Serendipity!
What do you most enjoy about your current position?
Officially, my title is Electronic and Instructional Services Librarian. It took some time to come up with that title, since “Library Ninja” is apparently not a professional title! I do a lot of things. It’s a small school and a small library. There are only five of us, so there’s not one person who does only one thing. Our cataloging librarian helps out with instruction when I’m overloaded. I’m responsible for all the undergraduate instruction. Even if I don’t teach it myself, I design what we’re doing. I maintain all of our online resources (databases and journals) and also buy all of our print journals. And I designed the library website and maintain it. I do a little bit of everything.
I’m very lucky that I have a boss and colleagues who, when I say I want to do something that sounds a little crazy, they say “Let’s try it” rather than “no.” I’m very fortunate.
In some ways it’s nice being at such a small school because if I want to learn about cataloging, I can go to our cataloguer and offer to help out. At a big school you wouldn’t get the chance to do that. On the other hand, at a big school you probably aren’t trying to teach everything. I taught fifty sessions last spring while trying to maintain everything and set up authentication systems. And I designed the new website over the summer, so I need to try to do all of that at the same time.
These are difficult times for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism and protesting – there are so many people in real turmoil – and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?
One of the things that drew me to DelVal was that the founder of the school was a Jewish Rabbi who really was a social reformer and very ahead of his time. Back in 1896 he created this school because he wanted anyone to be able to get an education regardless of their race or gender. The school has gotten a little bit away from that mission, but they are trying to get back to it. Like many agriculture schools, there has been tension on campus at times, although things are really great now. We have a new President, Dr. Gallo, our first woman President and that has really changed the character of the campus for the better.
Before the pandemic, we had really been focusing on LGBTQ+ students, who didn’t necessarily get as much support before. The Library got a big donation of resources and changed some washrooms to become gender neutral. We had been trying to really connect with those students. But now we’re just trying to get through the year and doing what needs to be done to support the students to get through the year. We have these great initiatives and I hope we can go back to them when we have a little more time to put a little more effort into them. The donation we got was from an alum who graduated about 30 years ago. He was a gay man on this campus in the middle of rural Pennsylvania and this library was a haven for him. So that’s why he’s been reaching out to us and trying to connect and trying to support the students who are in the position he remembers being in.
We LOVE being that haven. We want to be that place and we can’t do that now and it’s so hard to wrap your head around. When you’re used to welcoming people in and sharing with them and building this community and suddenly that’s all taken away from you – it’s hard. The building is essentially closed. All of our wings are serving as classrooms. There is nowhere for students to study in the library. They can come into the lobby and pick up a book and leave. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that – how I can connect with them when I can’t see them or talk to them. So, lots of zoom calls, online reference, tutorials, anything we can think of to reach out and say “Hey, we’re still here.” It’s tough for everybody.
Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?
Being in a pandemic has thrown my world into a loop trying to work at home while having a toddler, while my husband is upstairs in his office on conference calls all day. I’m lucky that I have flexibility in my work, but it also means that it’s harder to make sure that my work is a priority.
So, there’s this really great comic called “You Should Have Asked” by Emma. It’s about women generally and their partners, and even if their partners are trying to step up, there’s this mental load that typically women carry keeping a house running, keeping a family running – just keeping everything going, remembering everything that needs to be done and watching a toddler for the thirteen hours he’s awake and then he goes to bed and then I have to go to work for however many hours I can manage… It’s been tough. The first time I saw it, I cried a little. It’s like I had never seen it put into words. I knew that’s what I had been doing. My Mom was a stay-at-home Mom and I’m sure she must have felt similarly, trying to do everything.
There’s also “How Not to Hate Your Husband After Having Kids” which sounds meaner than it is! It’s a very positive book. It helped to be reminded that I have to ask for help, that I’m not expected to do all this myself. Reminding myself – especially in a pandemic – that the house does not have to be immaculate – if the laundry doesn’t get done today, it will get done tomorrow. That’s ok. We have food, we have what we need and I have to let my standards go a little bit, ask for help and not correct when things are not done exactly the way I’m liking. It’s tough! I would have folded the napkins differently! But does it matter? No – they’re napkins.
With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?
Part of it is that ACRL DVC makes me feel like a small fish in a big pond, but in a good way. I get to see what these schools that have much more funding and many more resources are doing and then I can find ways to adapt it and make it fit my little corner. I wouldn’t think “we need to reconsider how to catalog things” because a lot of what I do is just trying to get through the day. And so to have these bigger conversations, I can say “hey, that’s something that I can do and I can talk to my cataloger about.” There are things we can actually implement and we can make a difference for students.
In my position, I don’t really influence the direction of ACRL DVC that much. I manage the website, but I like to think that by having a website that’s navigable, it’s more welcoming to people who might be more interested in looking into it and reaching out and joining because they’re finding stuff. That’s my little way of giving back. Plus it’s fun for me – I like website design – it’s my creative little tinkering.
What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?
I’ve been working on a series of online tutorials. It’s part of my mission for how to connect to students. So I’m making them in response to all these questions we get regularly and trying to make them engaging. So many times we want to teach students something, and it’s really well intentioned, but it doesn’t connect with them. And not that I have the answer to that, but I’m trying to figure out how to get students to understand “searching as exploration.” How do I get them to understand that the concept might actually make a difference. So that’s been my immediate project.
And then I’m actually going to work on a second master’s degree. I was supposed to start this fall, but I pushed it off until the spring because who knows if daycare will be open? And the thought of trying to do my job and another degree and take care of another human being is a bit too much. The degree is in Management and Organizational Leadership, because maybe I’d like to become a Director someday? I don’t know! It’s in the family, right? We’ll see. It’s sort of a way to explore that, because with so few staff, how else do you learn about that?
What about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests:
My birthday was in March and I signed up for bread making classes and pottery classes. I was excited about those. Those were going to be my things. But I do watercolors and I’ve taken up needlepoint, like half the people in quarantine. I’m not very good, but it’s fun – it’s very soothing and methodical to make one stitch after another. It’s something that helps me focus my brain.