Tell me about your path to librarianship

So this is kind of a funny and embarrassing story. I was in undergrad studies as an English major and I was about to go out into the world. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my degree. Around that time, my friends and I were playing a role playing game that was similar to Dungeons and Dragons called Mouse Guard. It’s based off the comic and I had to pick a profession for my mouse from a list. I ended up as the archivist and special collections librarian mouse. My role in the game was to find different books and things like that to support our missions. I was like ‘this is actually kind of fun and interesting’ and I started to look into how to become a librarian in real life. I saw you needed to get an MLS, so I started to look at different career paths and I saw the archives and special collections path at Drexel and I enrolled. 

It kind of made sense once I did do it. I was always a fan of reading and just information in general. When I was younger, I loved the encyclopedia. It was my favorite thing. I had my mom read to me all the time and I just loved information and absorbing information and learning things. So once I started on that career path, it just made a lot of sense and kind of fell into place.

These past 20+ months or so have produced a tremendous amount of social, political, and medical upheaval in this country and around the world. These events have created many new challenges to what is an already challenging job working in higher education. How have these challenges affected your work? Have you changed how you approach any of your responsibilities? Has the last year and a half reinforced the work that you were already doing? Both?

I would say that it definitely made me realize what I enjoy doing as a librarian. I was in a weird spot during the pandemic in which I had just resigned my position at the College of Physicians and had taken a new position. I realized fairly quickly, I did not like the position. It just wasn’t for me. I realized a lot about what I just enjoy as a librarian. I’m good at logistics and planning, so I was in charge of reopening the library. That wasn’t necessarily an issue but it definitely made me realize I needed more creativity in my librarianship. Having to staff a desk just wasn’t for me. 

As a manager there, it was very hard to balance what I needed to do for the university as a whole, my own values, and also advocate for my staff and other Librarians. I think that was an issue that a lot of managers had and probably still do right now. It definitely made me realize that you can think you’re the best manager out there and you’re doing everything right but you’re still making these decisions that affect others. And you know someone’s going to be disappointed at the end of the day, whether it’s your staff, the university or just yourself because you’re making decisions that you don’t want to make. 

It also made me realize a lot about equity issues. It was difficult seeing students not be able to take tests, because they didn’t have access to computers, or not being able to get books and supplies. We didn’t do reserves because our students tended to gather around reserves and we just knew it was going to be an issue. That was a hard decision because I knew at that point students weren’t going to be able to get those books and they either had to go and buy them or find someone else on campus or at home. So it definitely made me remember more about the equity issues, and that even if a library can’t provide everything, we as librarians need to think about those things and advocate for them. We need to talk to the administrators and talk to other faculty members about the struggles that students may be facing because the library is not there. And that’s definitely something I’ll continue to do in my work, whereas before I might not have thought about it as much or wouldn’t have thought it was my problem to solve. I definitely feel like now it’s something I should advocate more for.

Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?

Over the summer, I virtually attended the Ephemera Society conference which was my first Ephemera Society conference. I’ve done ALA and things like that, but this was specifically for ephemera and I love ephemera. It was really fun and it did remind me why people enjoy ephemera and why it may spark interest in special collections and archives for people that may not know what ephemera is or what special collections are. 

Also, to be honest, our last program also made a large impact on me. When I mentioned I was looking for a new position, I was flooded with messages, job postings, and support from all these people that didn’t even know me, and that was really admirable. It definitely gave me a boost and it made me remember that our profession is just filled with really great, caring people that, even if they don’t know me at all, and they were trying to support me in some way.

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?

I originally joined the ACRL-DVC programming committee because I felt like I should get involved more in the profession. Once I did, I really liked all the people in it. I really believe in the kind of programming we are doing and the conversations that we have. They’re very thought provoking and not always just about professional development but about personal development, which I really enjoy. I think the best way to gain professional development is when you’re working on yourself. So I felt that it was a good way to make an impact and, on a more selfish level, I would say that I’ve learned so much from the committees and board. As someone that was newer to the profession, I felt a little out of place for a while. But it’s been really great to have these mentors that are really brilliant and caring. They probably don’t even know they’re mentoring me. But so many of them are already so successful and are just good people and it’s been great to learn from them and take that forward.

What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?

I’ve been doing this ephemora blog and I want to obviously continue doing that. But I also did want to start a next phase of it, which involves starting to reach out to people. Up to now, I’ve been kind of working solely on my own ephemora collection. I just kind of thought it was just going to be interesting to people who like ephemera or other Librarians or it was just gonna be me rambling for fun. But people are actually really interested in talking about their own collections, like their own concert tickets or these memories attached to a journal or memories attached to a magazine. So I want to start interacting with people and talk about other people’s collections and how ephemora connects to this kind of human existence that everyone has these things in their lives that they hold on to, for whatever reason. I am interested in exploring that a little more.

What about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests:

For stereotypical Librarian things, I like knitting and I like reading. I also like researching for fun. Aside from the blog, I’ve also done volunteer work with Laurel Hill cemetery doing data accounts or even research for grant projects. We just did some research on some headstones and the people that were buried there for a grant. We actually researched who was buried with these headstones to give them a little more life. 

For reading, I enjoy a lot of nonfiction. I’m particularly drawn to mysteries and accult and cryptid nonfiction. Just kind of like thinking about weird things is definitely my bag. I still play the Sims a lot too because I’m stuck in 2000. 

I love baking and I enjoy doing weird old recipes. Right now I’m about to make a cookie that has the cereal Trix in it. It’s from 1963 from the Cookie Book. Whether people eat them or not, I don’t care, I’ll still show up with it. 

I’m also a big fan of jello molds. I love making a weird jello mold which is, again, not usually something people really end up eating, but I just think they’re fun. I use a regular mold but then I make it with weird fillings. I haven’t done any savory ones, yet (I know that they have salmon ones. I haven’t attempted those yet, they really just seem weird). I know there was an asparagus one that I’ve always been very interested in. I made an ambrosia jello mold once. But yeah, they just amuse me, I don’t know why. 

I go to a lot of local music things with my husband in Philly and a few years ago, actually started boxing as well. I just felt like I needed to do something out of my comfort zone so I signed up at a local boxing gym. We actually have to fight each other and it’s not just on bags, so it definitely made me uncomfortable at first. It took me a lot to punch someone (we’re only punching mits so we’re not like actually smacking someone in the face). But after I did it, it started giving me a lot of confidence and I actually enjoy it. You have to think a lot during it. You’re always thinking because if not, you’re going to get punched in the head. You have to be constantly moving and thinking of the next strike. And there’s also a very big community aspect to it, which I did not think about either. People bring their sons and daughters, and I’ve actually formed relationships with people outside of the gym which I did not expect when I walked in there.