Earning the MLIS degree involves both acquiring professional skills — I learned to catalog, to perform environmental scans, to write grant applications — as well as honing professional judgment, analysis, leadership, and thought. This deeper reasoning distinguishes a librarian from the library worker I was when I began the program. A library worker may understand the way the library works, while a librarian must be able to understand why, and how, and to envision what the library could be. The SLOs are the measured mark of this progression.
Perhaps most importantly, I must ensure that I know the community I work with. This means looking beyond the current library users and exploring other data to determine who lives in the community and is missing from our current user base. Creating innovative responses to the needs and interests of diverse and global communities means reaching out in new ways to meet these diverse and underrepresented groups where they are, as I did in my Adult Education Center’s advocacy project. It also means identifying current gaps in service and coming up with the most effective ways to meet those needs. With the Adult Education Center, I realized that the portion of adults without high school degrees is disproportionately high in our Richmond community, and that few resources exist to help them pursue their goals of lifelong learning. By providing asynchronous support, the library could better help working adults find the resources they need. With the Library of Things, I was challenged to provide SOL support that would meet students at their own levels. By providing a circulating collection of STEAM supports beyond books, the library could embrace the diverse situations, abilities and learning styles of its students. In each of these projects, I first identified an unreached or underserved community, and then tried to meet the need creatively.
Innovative responses demand a leader’s ability to think creatively, to make decisions, and to envision the bigger picture. Projects like the Adult Education Center, the digital media archiving paper, and the archival description project required me to demonstrate leadership attributes for a variety of information environments. The Adult Education Center project required innovative thought and reasoning to meet a need in a new and creative way while conforming to a budget and timetable. It required insight and clarity to understand a broad and challenging topic like archiving digital media, and then present it in a clear, decisive way and provide a plan of action. And the archival description project demanded leadership in an archival environment by curating a cohesive collection of primary documents in diverse and original formats, blending old and new media. These projects required me to envision a creative solution, be willing to embrace something new, create a plan of action, and see it through.
Good leaders are also able to interpret and apply basic and applied research to improve their professional practice. Several of my projects helped me hone this skill set. The Library of Things required research into my user population and analysis of the results to find unique and unmet needs. It also required me to creatively brainstorm objects that would support SOL standards where my population needed extra support. By researching my population and applying that research, I was better able to serve them. The Tip Sheet presents research into preservation best practices that I had no exposure to prior to completing the project. As I learned in my preservation classes, many technical services skills are acquired by researching the solutions to problems when they arise. The Tip Sheet was an exercise in researching to increase my own professional skills, complete with resources for further study when my need arises.
In addition to being able to find the information I need to be the best information professional I can be, it is vital that I be able to access, synthesize, and evaluate information to assist information seekers. This means interpreting information and relaying it in a way that is accessible to the information seekers I serve. My video game preservation paper was an example of accessing a wealth of information, evaluating its usefulness, and synthesizing it into a format seekers could use. At the outset, I was faced with research results that required too much background knowledge for researchers at the beginning of the process to use easily. My challenge was to collect the material and interpret it at a level suitable for professionals who are just starting to think about creating a video game collection at their institution. They may not need detailed information about handling copyright issues, but they do need to know that copyright is a consideration. My paper was an exercise in this type of synthesis. My archival description project involved a different kind of analysis, where I was faced with a primary source and had to evaluate its attributes and determine what information a potential researcher would need to know, and then describe it in a way that would lead to discovery and accurate interpretation. The ultimate goal is always ease of access for users.
Leadership and research skills are both essential to integrating evolving technologies and theories that underpin their design, application, and use with library and information services. My Library of Things project involved interpreting collection development in a new way by understanding that craft supplies, technology, science projects, and AV equipment can be an important part of a circulating collection, and can be circulated in an equitable and accessible way. My digital archives paper represented an imagining of an archival collection that could safely and responsibly include both physical and born-digital artifacts like web pages and digital media. I needed to envision solutions to the endemic problems in this still new area of preservation while finding a way to make all artifacts equally accessible. In both of these projects, I sought to embrace technological innovations and new theories in professional practice.
Research skills and technology utilization both certainly contribute to a good information professional’s ability to analyze current and historical trends to forecast future directions of the library and information field. My three digital preservation projects, the video game preservation paper, digital archives paper, and archival description project, are all investigations into the new frontier of archival and preservation work. The proliferation of digital media means that it is vital for information professionals to embrace its preservation, or else these artifacts will disappear before they have the chance to enter the historical record. The cutting edge research needed to perform this task is still being performed by professionals in the field, and I am excited to be one of them as we all learn on the job.
Looking to the future also necessarily involves a lifetime of professional development. Relying on the research skills I’ve learned to improve my own professional practice, it’s essential that I create a plan for continuous professional development and lifelong learning. As I enter the technical services field, learning as I go is a necessity. Technical skills, cataloging proficiencies, and preservation strategies will need to be learned on the job. In my Tip Sheet, I included resource catalogs for further learning as needed. For the Adult Education Center project, I demonstrated ways to reach out to specialized services in the community that will provide expertise where I cannot, and teach me better skills in the process. And my Resources section of this eportfolio includes catalogs of webinars and training courses that will help me improve my cataloging, leadership, and professional skills once I graduate. The library world will continue to change once I graduate, and I intend to be part of the shaping force, rather than someone who is left to respond to it.
Together, these standards shape a leader in the information sphere. Clear thinking, creative vision, a firm grounding in the standards of our profession, along with evolving technical skills and competencies, are what make a librarian.