The world of librarianship is filled with interesting origin stories: second careers, third careers, accidental librarianship; some folks even choose this path early in life out of a love of reading, or a deep bond with their childhood librarian. Here is my version.
I did not have a deep bond with my childhood librarian, nor was I a particularly invested library user in high school and college. I studied “audio technology” aka audio engineering in undergrad. Most of the classes were project-based, so there wasn’t much call for research or paper-writing. However, I did work throughout college, and a friend of mine clued me in to the library as a good place to be a student employee. I shelved books for a while, and then she guided me to the Acquisitions Department, where I did something with checking new purchases – I don’t remember the details, just piles of Blackwell slips. Librarianship as a career remained a vague mystery to me.
When I graduated I assumed I’d be working in a music studio, or possibly TV or radio (I loved the TV news production class where we got to run all the equipment for the seniors who were putting the newscast together). Then, Napster hit, the cost of digital production equipment fell, audio editing software that could run on a laptop become prevalent… and the job market for audio engineers dried up. The few available opportunities were in cities I didn’t want to move to.
I didn’t know what to do with myself when I graduated. This same friend sensed my desperation for a steady job, and got me an interview at my undergraduate library, in what was then called the Database Management Department. Essentially, we were the copy-catalogers. I got a crash-course in OCLC records, some pointers on efficient keyboard shortcuts, a monthly quota assignment, and off I went. It was… torturous, but as my first full-time job it was also great. I earned enough to support myself and learned how to be an employee, how to navigate weird coworker dynamics, how to make boring tasks fun.
Just when I was starting to realize I couldn’t do that job much longer, the lab manager for the audio technology program I’d graduated from left the position. I was recruited by the head of the program (my mentor), and hired back in to run the production studios, set up labs for classes, manage the schedules for student access. I enjoyed that job and might have stayed; then the head of the department was denied tenure. I saw the writing on the wall – he was going to leave and they were going to downsize the program. Fortunately, I was able to apply for a studio manager position at a non-profit education company that recorded textbooks on tape for students with visual and learning disabilities. Prior training working as a Talking Books intern for the Library of Congress set me up well for that job, and I enjoyed it. I was working with volunteers who read everything from picture-books (describing the images in great detail), to calculus and law textbooks. The work was rewarding; I liked that we were helping people meet their educational goals and providing access to information that wouldn’t otherwise be available. The idea of fusing my technology training with an educational mission took root.
I would have stayed on in that studio, but a few years later my partner and I decided to move out of the city, and we picked Vermont (somewhat on a whim). Before we made that decision, though, we came up for a long weekend to visit, and stayed with Jessamyn West, whom we knew through an online community blog. Jessamyn’s work as a roll-your-own-adventure / library technologist / fair access librarian activist was inspiring. It helped me see librarianship in another light: expansive, flexible, technology-forward, and intertwined with education.
There weren’t any affiliated talking-book studios in our new area, so I started looking for jobs in higher education in Vermont. The timing wasn’t great for the job hunt, and I had to take some weird opportunities just to pay the bills (seasonal temp for Vermont Ski Areas was an interesting one). I spent a year as the World’s Worst Administrative Assistant. Then, an entry-level position in the media center of the Dartmouth College Library opened up. Reading the job description, the pieces started to click in my mind: “This job combines audio and video production with education. And it’s in a library. If I get this job, I can figure out if I like working in a library. They have lots of positions in the library; if I like working there and get my master’s degree, I can probably move up the ranks into a professional position.”
I’m so grateful that Dartmouth did give me that opportunity, because it saved my sanity and led me to a career path, something I’d never had before. (My most dreaded question from childhood through undergrad was “what do you want to do when you grow up/graduate?” I couldn’t find anything that deeply appealed to me.) And my plan worked. Some folks in our department left for various reasons, there was a bit of a reshuffle about 6 months before I was due to graduate, and the library created a new position just for me: Media Services Librarian. I wasn’t quite savvy enough at the time to realize they were giving me de facto department head responsibilities while paying the lowest possible salary for a librarian position; I was a cheap solution to some weird personnel problems they’d been having. But it was a great opportunity to acquire a lot of different skills and experiences. I had 3 full-time direct reports, oversight of our collections, and the chance to teach without having to be a full-time instructor. (Aptitude tests in middle and high school had always suggested “nurse” or “teacher” — they weren’t far off, but “librarian” was better because it didn’t involve grades, lesson plans, or bodily fluids.)
Working at a large, well-funded, complicated library system as my first professional gig was helpful in so many ways. I got to learn a little bit about all the possible jobs one could have in an academic research library. I got to see how all those roles fit together; how they used technologies; how they supported different types of patrons; how they designed projects and selected items for the collection. I also got to participate in a lot of professional development opportunities: attending conferences, giving presentations, organizing workshops for faculty, and even hosting an event for other librarians at our school.
After a while, though, the Ivy League started to take its toll on my personal well-being. Silent cliques and competition among certain employees, unaddressed personnel issues, a downgrading of promised compensation and benefits, and the daily commute of 66 miles round-trip started to wear. I’d always wondered what it would be like to work for myself – the dream of entrepreneurship kept nagging at me, and the idea of serving a totally untapped market seemed like a sure winner. So I left librarianship for about 5 years. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, physically, mentally, and emotionally. If I had known how difficult it would be, I wouldn’t have done it. But I’m also proud of that work; naive and unprepared as I was, I never gave up. And in the end, I was lucky to find a buyer at the right moment, and was able to sell my company to someone so they could keep it going and make it even better.
I longed to reenter the world of librarianship, but I didn’t want to move out of Vermont; a limiting position at the best of times, and this was 2020. I got on the sub list for our local public library network to try to get back in the game. I applied for a position at UVM just before they put on a hiring freeze. Then, a part-time job at Vermont Law School opened up: running the grant-funded program for public access to legal information. I wasn’t going to apply (“What do I know about the law?”) but my family encouraged me (“It’s a library job that is not 33 miles from your house. You should apply to this!”) And they were right. Because working a part-time job in an unfamiliar area of librarianship was a great way to re-enter the profession as a whole, and to see if I liked the subject matter and the environment of working in a law library.
And it turns out that I do. The law is very complicated; researching in this field is difficult due to the vast number of sources of law (governments, agencies, case law, etc). Access to the sources is fragmented. It’s a giant tangled puzzle, and I like puzzles. I also love helping people and getting to grips with new and sometimes arcane technologies, which is where I eventually landed when the Electronic Resources Librarian left for a corporate job. Since taking over this position I’ve conducted my first big platform migration (a forthcoming post), learned more about serials and electronic resources management than I thought I’d ever want to know, and gained confidence in helping students with their legal research. Every day is different, and I’m always learning. I get to propose projects and strive for improvements, and most of the time these suggestions are adopted, provided they don’t require much funding (a Dartmouth-level budget we do not have). Importantly, I work with a great group of people: caring, knowledgeable, respectful, and gracious. I feel like we’re all pulling in the same direction, even when we have different opinions on how to do that.
So tell me, what’s your librarian origin story? I’d love to know.