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About Me
As an information professional, I am driven by the pursuit of equitable access to resources and a seamless user experience. I believe in proactively anticipating my users' needs to deliver excellent service. The future of online access excites me, as it has the potential to empower individuals to lead successful lives and reduce inequities. My personal experiences as an international student and an operations manager at a music library have helped me develop a service orientation and an appreciation for the needs of marginalized populations. Because of this, I am committed to making a difference in digital libraries through user feedback, developing new and improving existing services, and reimagining the library to sustain its relevance with emerging technologies.
Librarianship
Being able to think critically is an essential skill in today's world more than ever, especially in the context of "fake news" and rapid developments in AI. It allows us to evaluate the information available to us to make informed decisions. As an educator, nothing is more satisfying than seeing the impact of my teaching on students. It's even more rewarding to improve their information literacy so they can better thrive in the rapidly changing information landscape.
As a librarian, I believe that teaching also requires learning and self-improvement, which can be accomplished through active participation in committees, workgroups, professional development, etc. Being a student enables me to strengthen my educational skills and enables me to empathize with those I teach. In effect, I must develop myself as a librarian to raise awareness of the learning process itself as much as strengthen the practical skills of librarianship.
Libraries will play an even more pivotal role in shaping the future of our society as these changes manifest. As a librarian, I am compelled to advocate libraries' unique value and visibility within and beyond the organization. By doing so, I not only hope to ensure that the library receives the support it needs to continue providing resources and services to the community but also create a more informed and prosperous society.
I believe that librarians uniquely combine sense-making, talking with others on a wide range of relevant subjects, with relating to others by listening to them. As such, librarians have a clear perspective of the community’s needs. Libraries have a broad function as communal spaces to assist those with informational needs. Based on my own academic experiences, there is no place that is as simultaneously welcoming and enlightening as a library. From my observations, information literacy is being tested like never before with the advent of artificial intelligence and fake news. As such, librarians must evolve to meet these challenges by first educating themselves on these issues and then disseminating this knowledge to benefit others and the community. I believe that libraries are a critical yet undervalued resource. Engaging with the challenge of ameliorating this discrepancy and improving information literacy for the betterment of society is at the core of what I believe librarianship is about.
Teaching + Mentorship
Fostering critical thinking is one of my core beliefs as a librarian because of its profound impact on students’ lives in an environment saturated with information.
Being an educated librarian requires continuous professional development and self-awareness. Modeling these behaviors gives students the necessary tools they need to orient themselves to a discipline.
I am specifically interested in building students’ information literacy skills so that they become savvier information users in the digital age.
One strategy that I employ is the Socratic method, i.e. asking questions to teach. This is a subtle method used to build critical thinking skills while simultaneously assisting the student with a particular question.
Direct feedback from students and evaluations are some of the best ways of estimating my effectiveness as a teacher. Another method is judging a student’s level of engagement, such as when students ask “why” questions. To me, this is a sign that I have sufficiently piqued their interest and forced them to take the next step in the critical thinking process.
I was once told the following Chinese proverb from a former mentor: "Teachers open the door, but you must walk through it yourself." I still stand by that philosophy so I will continue to show students the many paths of opportunity.
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