Since I was young, I have enjoyed going to the library. An integral part of my summers in elementary school was the children’s summer reading program at my local library. When I got older, I gave back to my community by volunteering at the library during the summers. Even in college, libraries remained one of my penchants. But they became something much more for me when I met a representative of the group Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) at the 2013 Annual American Meteorological Society meeting. That encounter gave me the amazing idea that I could combine my interests in the sciences with my penchant for libraries. Together with a number of other factors, I decided to pursue my MLIS, seeking a career in which I could use a very versatile skill set of handling information with the aim of helping others access it.
From the start of this program, I built a very versatile skill set, with one important part being critical thinking. There was so much I thought more deeply about throughout my studies that might otherwise be taken for granted. I gained new perspectives on the world because I stopped to engage in deeper thinking about the obvious. I still remember in the first week of Reference and Online Services, my professor, in the lecture notes provided for us, posed the question, “What is information?”, followed up by “What is an information need?” and “What is information seeking?” Helping facilitate access to information is an essential part of the work of library and information science professionals, and so considering these questions is an important part of finding direction in how to do our work.
My first semester in the MLIS program provided ample other opportunities to think more deeply about the nature of libraries as storehouses of information. Certainly Organization of Knowledge class provided a great opportunity at the start to learn more about concepts like the WEMI model, which serve as the basis for how materials are cataloged. The Introduction to Library and Information Science (ILIS)-LIS 701 class gave me the chance to think more about these institutions that are an important part of communities, especially in discussion posts and journal entries. I was very enlightened reading about and reflectively writing on the history of the Boston Public Library, which I saw as a turning point in librarianship from something for the affluent to institutions serving everyone, which is the purpose of today’s community libraries. Furthermore, ILIS class gave me the chance to reflect on the core values of librarianship, as established by the American Library Association, which are fundamental guidelines for our work of facilitating access to information.
Of course, public libraries, though the most recognized type, are only one kind of library, as I recognized early on when I first learned about ASLI. The association presentation in ILIS class gave me a chance to learn more about the organization that initially started me on the path to my MLIS studies, and build relationships with some of its members. Creating this presentation enhanced my perspective on how librarian professionals help people access information in other settings beyond the public library. One big take-away from my first semester, especially in ILIS class, is that libraries are always going to be driven by the purpose of bringing people together to engage with information and ideas, no matter what type of audience they do it for, nor what changes occur in how they do their work. Acknowledging this reality helped me more fully embrace the importance of marketing libraries, which came at the end of the first semester. The lecture I listened to by Ken Haycock provided me with a number of great insights about how to effectively market libraries. Ultimately, marketing is about building ongoing, collaborative relationships with the users and other stakeholders in the community, so that they are constantly aware of what the library does.
I took the solid foundation I established in the principles of library and information science during the course of the first semester into the second semester, when I put those principles into action. In Government Information Resources class, I applied principles I learned from Reference and Online Services, but focused on resources produced by government agencies, including health, business, statistical, and archival materials, at all levels, local, state, federal, and even international. It was very useful learning about the breadth of materials available specifically from the US government, which is the largest producer of information, much of it free. Like in Reference and Online Services, I learned about what’s out there, and then, in assignments, learned how to use those resources to answer specific questions. The final project was assembling a subject guide, which I did on government information resources on the American Revolution. In assembling this subject guide, I searched through all available types of resources, including books, websites, and artifacts, in various agencies.
Collection management class’s three major assignments were all great opportunities to simulate actual tasks pertaining to managing the collection, the fundamental part of library work. We created a seed collection, in which we searched out materials to acquire for the library, and then did a weeding project, examining books to determine whether they should be retained or not, and then how best to address those items being removed, as well as a library user survey. The seed collection project involved getting to know the community we selected, and then using that knowledge to influence what I would include as I searched for materials for a collection of biographical and memoir materials. Besides biographies and memoirs, I also included movies based on the lives of real people, seeking a variety of materials in the collection to reflect the diversity in the community I chose.
Library User Instruction class was driven by practicing actual instruction activity, in the form of three different presentations, the first two done solo, and the third done in a group. The most significant part of the presentation planning process was creating a USER document, a method described in our class book on instruction. Creating this document required us to think through each step and every aspect of the presentation, including understanding who the audience is, what kinds of tools I would use, the methods of assessment I would use, and, most importantly and most emphasized by my professor, the objectives of the instruction session, tied in with the overall goals. In previous instruction experience in teaching Religious Education (RE) classes at my home parish, when I planned lessons, I would think about what I wanted to do during class, but never thought through all the details. Doing so has helped enhance my abilities as an instructor, by being more thoughtful about the overall process, even in stopping to consider the parts of the USER document that seemed so obvious.
The third presentation was a group effort, in which we taught a concept, and my group led an instructional session on government information resources. This assignment was an opportunity for me to coordinate with group members as we sought to achieve a common goal of giving an instructional presentation. We talked through the content, and then determined who would do what part. After we gave our presentation, we collaborated in the task of creating a learning object, in which we would facilitate the same instruction by transferring it to an interactive tool. As the person who had the responsibility of assembling the website tool, and including the content created by my classmates, including videos, I had to coordinate with my group members about how to best place what they had created into the overall website, so that it would accomplish the task of being a solid learning tool.
The process of developing effective instructional skills is something my professor talked about during the first class session. And in the process, we encounter critical Kairos moments, when something comes alive for us while progressing toward the goal. Writing my reflective essay for Library User Instruction class helped me think about all that I had accomplished in the process of developing my skills. I had initially registered for this class because I thought I might work at an academic library, where instruction skills would be useful. But throughout the semester, I embraced the idea that this class was helping me become more well-rounded, since the work of librarians helping people access information connects with instruction. And with another Religious Education year starting up just a few weeks after the end of the summer semester, I was ready, with my enhanced abilities, to dive in to the task of guiding my students on in the ways of faith.
In addition to doing my own instruction, I also had an assignment of doing research on some topic related to instruction in library settings. I chose to research how literacy instruction takes place in the college setting, and learn more about effective methods for instructing college students in literacy. I did a literature review, learning about methods in use, and challenges faced in facilitating instruction at the college level. Then, I went to interview two instruction librarians at Concordia University Chicago, to learn more about what they do when they hold instructional sessions, and how they help guide students through that process, in addition to how they confront challenges, not only with the students, but getting the professors and other faculty to invest the time in library instructional sessions.
My third semester in the program provided more opportunities to learn more thoughtfully about the way information is conveyed. For my midterm essay assignment in Management of Libraries and Information Centers class, I went back to middle school: I interviewed the staff at both public middle schools in Oak Park, IL, to learn about the work they do. I had gone to one of those two middle schools, Percy Julian, and had used its library media center a number of times, so going back to complete this assignment was a great chance to learn more about what happens there from the staff perspective, both the teacher-librarian, and the library assistant. It was also meaningful for me to see how the schools, a number of whose students I know from teaching RE classes, are served now versus my experiences a decade ago. Through my interviews, I learned more about the community of students and faculty they serve, assessing the community’s needs and interests, and then how the library fulfills them. I learned how they manage the collection, provide instruction, collaborate with teachers to promote the library media center as a resource, and manage the environment to make an inviting space for students to use outside of classroom.
Assessing resources was a big part of the usability study assignment I did in Internet Fundamentals and Design class. I examined the website of the public library in Bloomfield, NM, which my professor gave me, to determine the strengths and weaknesses. I then developed questions for a test that I gave to six different people, in which they had to search for specific items or pieces of information on the website. I then compiled a presentation, in which I pretended to be a consultant giving an evaluation of the website to the library’s board of trustees. In creating this presentation, I thoughtfully considered the aspects of what makes a website usable, and how that applied to the website I examined. I then offered suggestions for how the website could be enhanced to better serve its users, based on my own observations, and the results and feedback of the test I gave. This assignment was a great opportunity to step back and engage in critical thinking about the nature of this library’s website, not settling for the obvious of what does and doesn’t work. I also engaged my communication skills in this presentation, just as I did by using Twitter for the first time in my life, offering thoughtful comments in tweets about the discussions we had in class on the nature of digital resources, and their impact on society, which was a large part of why I enjoyed the class so much.
I also enjoyed Knowledge Management class, because of the opportunities I had, especially at the beginning of the semester, to thoughtfully consider philosophical and metaphysical matters, when we learned about the nature of information, knowledge, and even the antithesis of knowledge, agnotology. In my first essay assignment, I wrote about what knowledge is. My initial inspiration came from my study of Aristotle in the honors college program during my first semester of undergraduate studies, and together with material from other resources, I concluded that knowledge is ultimately information that’s put into action for some useful purpose, an idea which I was even called upon to share before a group of 50-60 young teens preparing for Confirmation at my home parish. Establishing a sense of what knowledge is serves as a good basis for understanding the processes of knowledge flow in organizations, which we learned about throughout the rest of the semester, not to mention how as LIS professionals, we help facilitate people’s access to information that they then use for some purpose.
In my fourth semester, I delved more deeply into the technical work of library and information science. My practicum at Argonne National Laboratory’s library has given me opportunity to practice essential library skills, including the technical work of cataloging, not to mention the chance to work in specialized setting focused on scientific materials. My practicum has worked in tandem with my job at the Oak Park Public Library in helping me develop as a professional. Cataloging and Classification class has given me the chance to go in-depth with cataloging work that I initially learned in Organization of Knowledge. Metadata for Digital Resources has given me the chance to learn more about the specific tools used to create data about resources that can be put into and read by computers, so that users can more readily access the resources and their content. One tool I learned about was the Oxygen XML Editor, with exercises in class providing opportunities to learn how to use it. The exercise in my portfolio had multiple components by which we engaged many skills: scripting in XML, using the editor to check for well-formedness, and finding URIs to include in the script to create RDF statements for the given information.
Indeed, I’ve enhanced so many skills throughout the process of studying for my MLIS, which will help me engage better with information, which surrounds us all the time, so that I can help others use it for higher purposes. So these skills won’t just be part of a job I have, but will aid me in achieving my goal of living out my life’s vocation, which was on my mind as a college senior when I first considered merging science and library skills together, and then when I applied for the MLIS program and throughout my studies. It’s been amazing to see my interests, knowledge, and developing skills converge into a harmony in the process of my studies. And even now this harmony flows throughout everything I do in my life, as I participate in the process of people engaging with information. It’s been especially nice to study for my MLIS as I teach RE classes, a setting in which I present my students with knowledge about what faith means, with the aim of helping them understand its importance in their lives. I’m excited to go forth from my graduation using my skill set and my penchant for seeking knowledge to urge me on toward grand achievements.