Tell me about your path to librarianship:
Like many people, I had a circuitous route. My undergraduate degree is in English, and that is because I wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t until I was close to graduation that I realized that “poet” is not really a job, and I didn’t want to teach.
But I had gotten a part time job at my local public library and they cross trained me. I worked the circulation desk, I did interlibrary loan, I paged and shelved, and when the reference librarian went on her lunch break, I could sit at the reference desk to sub for her. That really clicked for me: the idea of helping people find the information that they needed to answer their questions and accomplish what they wanted to accomplish really resonated with me. I found my home.
I knocked around for a few more years, but decided to go to graduate school and become a librarian.
What do you most enjoy about your current position?
Ironically, it’s teaching! The thing I thought I would avoid by becoming a librarian!
So what changed?
My students have elected to be there rather than the compulsory nature of public school, so already it’s an easier crowd. They’re a little more mature. I don’t have much experience with little kids, but I can handle 18 year olds. I’m lucky enough that my university allows me to teach a first year seminar of my own design and that’s probably the biggest asset that I have in this position.
Of course it’s an information literacy class, but in the thinnest of disguises. It’s called “Seems Legit: What’s Real and What’s Fake on the Internet”. We talk a lot about social media, which is a place where my students already are, so I’m meeting them where they are, which makes it easier for them to progress.
They teach me so much, because you know, I’m old! I don’t know about who’s influential on Tik Tok, but it’s an important resource for where they get information that they actually use to make decisions. It’s a changing world.
So they keep me somewhat abreast of what’s going on in the world and I help them develop the skills they need to navigate and evaluate information. It’s fun!
More traditionally, I like research consultations, the teaching that happens in a one-on-one meeting, which is so much more effective than a one-shot, classroom session. For me, the most rewarding part of traditional librarianship is when a student has an Aha Moment, where they find something that clicks for them and they can make real progress on something they’re working on.
These are difficult times for many people. There’s a global pandemic, its devastating effect on the economy, people are acknowledging anti-Black racism and protesting and political unrest. There are so many people in real turmoil – and there are real challenges in higher education as a result as well. How have these things impacted your work?
There are some in-person experiences happening on campus now, but for the most part, Arcadia has been entirely online for a year. It’s a whole new way of teaching and learning and connecting and living. It has been a long time and the winter was rough. I think a lot of people have hit a real wall.
For my teaching, I’ve learned to focus on what is essential and I’m hoping that I can bring this forward. I’ve always been student centered, but I think even more so now, I understand students’ real need to be able to determine what works for them. So if we accomplish the learning goals that we agreed on, I’m a little bit less concerned about the details of how that happens.
Racism has long been an issue in higher education and my campus is no exception. My university is taking active steps; we have an Anti Black Racism Initiative with many different prongs and faculty, staff, and students are all involved in trying to identify what racist policies exist and to make the changes we need to make. We’re recognizing the lack of diversity in our full time teaching faculty and trying to elevate people of color, especially Black faculty and staff, so that their voices and perspectives are heard more around campus. I really hope that the university remains committed to these initiatives. We’ve only just begun, and there’s so much work to do!
And for me in my own classroom, because I have access to first year students, I made sure that we talked about the issues of the day. Our “common read” was How to Be an Antiracist, so we spent a lot of time focusing on that book and the ideas that Kendi presents. It surprised me to see how so much of that content was news for many of my students – that systemic racism exists. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I was. But I was heartened to see their response to the book and their commitment to doing what they can in their own lives to take antiracist action.
Let’s switch gears… What have you read, attended or participated in recently that has had an impact on your professional development?
One of my colleagues is hosting a Community of Practice for our team. We had tried to launch this once before, and it failed to take flight, but we’re trying again. We’re still in a fledgling state, but I have really appreciated her dedication to getting us to commit and so far, so good.
It has encouraged a lot of reflection, which is something that I don’t often do in a written sense, but she’s encouraging that and that has been really useful for me. I’m a note taker and a note reader, but I’m not a journal keeper. It has been helpful for me to adopt some of the practices that she has been advocating and it helps our team. We discuss our concerns about teaching and librarianship in a productive and directed manner and it’s good.
With so many responsibilities and so much going on, why did you choose to contribute so much time and energy to the Delaware Valley Chapter of the ACRL?
Well, I was asked to participate, but I said yes because I had been to DVC events before that I thought were super cool because they took a more progressive approach than something that, say, ALA would do. For example, I’m thinking of the Fall 2018 program held at Drexel, which was about advocacy in the library. I thought it was so awesome – that was probably the best event I’ve ever attended. There was a lightning round and someone from Penn State gave a presentation on the work they were doing with students’ knowledge of internet privacy. It was so cool. I had a really good impression of DVC and have found since I’ve become a part of the board that my suspicions of how progressive the group is have been confirmed, which is great. It’s my people.
What are your goals or hopes for the upcoming year?
Like everyone, I hope that we can do more things in person safely in the coming months. I hope to take some of the lessons that I’ve learned about my privilege and about my teaching forward with me in my everyday practice and to model critical thinking not just about information, but about myself and my place in the world for my students. And I hope everyone can get vaccinated.
But what about your non-working time? Tell me about your interests — even though it may be challenging when working from home to separate working time from non-working time…
For real – especially when you are at the kitchen table! We are two people in a two bedroom apartment. I had the spare bedroom for several months and now it’s my turn to be out here, especially since I’m not teaching my class right now.
One of the things that has been successful throughout this whole thing is that my book club has continued to meet. We have not missed a single meeting and have discussed nine books on Zoom! We moved the meetings to Saturday nights since there are some members with young children and that’s a time that works for them. It works for all of us and it has been really nice.
I miss concerts so much! Today is actually one year to the day since the last concert I attended. I saw Wire at Underground Arts on March 10, 2020. I remember my partner and I talking before going, wondering if we should go. Looking back, it was pretty risky, but I also don’t regret it because we didn’t realize at the time that it would be more than a year before being able to do that again.
Another hobby that has fallen by the wayside, is that we like to play Dungeons and Dragons. Some people make it work online, but that doesn’t really work for our group. The last time we played D&D with our friends we were talking about what might happen. One friend was confident that the pandemic would be under control within a month. I think about that almost every day.
I also collect records – LPs. We have way too many records. We have a pretty eclectic collection, you can find a little of everything in there. It’s kind of nice to sit down for 20 minutes and just really listen to one side of a record. I can’t wait to spend quality time digging through the bins in a record store again.