Professional Development
Looking Abroad
My situation is something of an unusual one: at the time of my writing this I am currently in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. While ALA may be the heart of library networking within the United States, its networks, resources, and groups are ultimately aimed at the American market. Having journeyed outside that sphere, I found myself initially at something of a loss. I had joined ALA and perused its resources, but needing a broader perspective on libraries I found myself running across an organization I had only heard of in passing during my information and organization class: IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations.
As seen here, IFLA provides, among many other things, an open mailing list containing a directory of available jobs from across the world—including in America. This alone has provided quite a bit of comfort in an otherwise very uncertain time.
Of course, through ALA and several of my LIS professors, I also learned of the existence of English-language schools scattered across the globe alongside several universities, each with their own library. These organizations sprang up to tend primarily to the overseas diplomatic core of English-speaking countries, allowing them to give their children an education close to what they would receive back home as well as providing opportunities for those locals who are interested. One example of these are the schools under the International Schools Services umbrella, managed loosely by the US Department of Defense.
Dinners and Networking
During my year and a half at UNCG I was sadly unable to attend the two ALA conferences—the first in Las Vegas and the second in Seattle, both on the distant west coast of the United States. Nonetheless I did attempt to participate in various local events such as a Friends of the Library dinner wherein famed author and researcher Kathy Reichs gave a presentation detailing some intriguing bits of her career and thought. While the presentation itself was quite good, it was the networking and advice that proved to be of the greatest value as I spoke to a number of professors, librarians, and even fellow students about the library experience and how to solidify a sense of direction and purpose.
National Day of Making
Of course, some of my professional development came in a more lighthearted form, such as in my participation in maker space activities, whether it was as simple as helping set up and clean or helping to organize and catalog the myriad odd bits and contraptions. Perhaps one of the most memorable examples came when the SELF Design Studio, our maker space, was attempting to frantically prepare for the National Day of Making. I was managing the Teaching Resources Center desk when my co-worker Sarah Prescott rushed in and announced that the maker space crew needed to create some sort of announcement video. It was the last minute as the video needed to go up that very night and they needed someone to help them pull it all together. Thus I volunteered to help Sarah not only set up a makeshift studio with our portable green screen and lighting kits, but also found myself somehow becoming the star of the video. It was a rather amusing journey, and through a bit of editing we ended up with the video which you will see below.
Being able to be a part of the maker space and the National Day of Making could not help but make me smile. It is the sort of thing that I hope to be able to continue to do in my library career, helping not only in grand ways but in these special small ways that really bring everything together.
Related: SELF Design Studio's National Day of Making Video
Moving Mountains (of Books)
This was not the first time that I had the opportunity to help the Teaching Resources Center (of which the maker space is a part). When I first came aboard, plans were already in the works to expand the TRC to make space for the SELF Design Studio, along with an expansion of the library portion of the TRC that required a thorough renovation, right down to knocking down walls and installing new windows. We had to figure out an entirely new organizational scheme for our equipment since our storage closet was being knocked out, but harder still we had to temporarily move the entire library across the hall. At the time there were only three employees, one of whom was working on weeding the collection as we moved it while the other had recently been injured and thus was unable to move too many books. Thus it fell to me to move each shelf of books onto rickety wooden carts rife with splinters and dust, then move these over to a classroom we had taken over as a temporary library, and finally set them back up over there as our library was staying open all throughout the renovations.
Needless to say, moving an entire library was no small task, even if it was a small library. The deadline for the construction crew to arrive drew near, and wanting to make sure that we met our deadlines I decided to stay late each day of the week, working until 8 pm on several days and until midnight on the last night to ensure that all was accomplished. I had not actually been asked to do any of this, but simply volunteered to do so to make sure that we met our goals. By the end the dust had given me a nasty sinus headache, but we had done it: the old TRC was empty and our temporary makeshift library was up and operational, just in time for the construction crew to come in and start knocking down walls and tearing up wires.
Several months later, we had our new TRC and the time had come to begin work on the maker space. This was quite exciting—except for the fact that it meant moving the entire library back to the TRC. Fortunately this time it was much easier as we had hired new employees for the approaching school year and could take our time getting things set up again.
ALA and Beyond
Of course, there is much more I wish to pursue as I wade into professional librarianship, from cartographic archives to digital libraries. I cannot say exactly where the next few years will lead me, but I am rather excited to find out. I recently joined ALA (memeber ID 2074285) and have been exploring the various discussions and listservs to further my own interests and development and further refine the idea of what sort of librarian I wish to be in five, ten, even twenty years' time.