Goals and Dreams

Recently we've been asked about our goals for our MLIS degree, what we want to do when we're finished, and what we hope to gain out of the experience. On a very basic level, I am getting this degree because I want to be able to advance at my current job. It is industry standard that someone doing what I do has a graduate level degree relating to preservation of information. I am working towards a graduate certificate in information management. Because of my current experiences with cataloging historical documents, I am very interested in how researchers are able to find and use the information we put out there. I'd like to focus on the nuts and bolts of creating new tools and new ways of thinking about how we catalog, access, and apply information. I can see myself working in a government archives on day and digitizing records en masse. Another option would be to work for a government contractor and using my expertise to streamline the movement of information within government agencies. Ultimately I'd like to find myself at a doctoral program at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Their program is well known and its located somewhere I'd like to be for awhile. I'd like to do research into how well digital archives are doing as far as making their documents accessible to researchers and if those researchers are able to easily use what they find. The field is young enough that even in my own job, we have a hard time finding resources on best practices. That's part of the reason I'm going to the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference in March. I'm already working in the industry and I feel a very urgent need to be better at what I do. I suppose that need to be better at what I do is what brought me to Wayne State in the first place and its also what I expect to get out of the program.

Good Morning LIS6010!

This blog is a bit of an anomaly for me. Its an "I have to" blog. Its entire existence is a result of my being enrolled in a graduate level course at Wayne State University. This blog is not my first blog. Back in 2009 I blogged my journey through my first pregnancy and homebirth. (Warning: The homebirth blog is quite personal, can be medically graphic at times, and contains some NSFW content but is full of good information)  I maintain a Tumblr dedicated to my collection of vintage photographs. When I joined the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) I started a blog to preserve that journey.* In many ways I am not enthusiastic about adding another blog to the list but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

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To begin it may be helpful to understand where I'm coming from. I have held a variety of positions. I was a cosmetologist for the first decade of my professional life. After graduating with my B.A. in History in 2008 I took a position as an office clerk at the Russell County Noxious Weed Department. I was their entire office staff. The position was not a good fit. I was bored. I wanted a different job, so on a whim I applied to the local public library and got a part-time job as a library clerk.

I hadn't been in a public library in years. I read constantly but I read almost exclusively non-fiction. Small-town libraries in Kansas are almost entirely devoted to serial authors so I spent the majority of my time in academic libraries and archives. During the two years I worked at the library I advanced from a basic clerk to library assistant. I handled inter-library loan, inventory, and accession. I liked working with the public but I found that I loved the data of working in a library the best. I found MARC records fascinating. Whenever we would get new (nonfiction) books in, I would rush to see if I could guess what Dewey classification the Library of Congress had used. I was obsessed with usage reports. Halfway through my tenure we changed systems and the new system relied on SQL generated reports. The canned reports didn't provide us with the information we were used to getting so I found a book on SQL and wrote new reports to give us what we wanted. For the most part, I could have cared less about the new Nora Roberts or Janet Evanovich that our patrons were clamoring for. I loved data.

After two years I had outgrown my position and didn't know what to do next so I did what any self-respecting millenial does: I went to grad school.

I started a history program but my heart wasn't in it. I love research and writing, and I'm good at it but I kept wondering what I was going to do with the degree when I was finished. I knew I didn't want to teach and I still have no idea what the practical applications of a Master of Arts in History are. In my second semester of grad school I took a position as a distance metadata intern at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. It very quickly became my dream job. I was working with data. After several months I was offered a more permanent position overseeing the work of other interns as well as continuing to catalog digital items.

On one of my visits to my workplace I started talking with my supervisors and the director about my future. I had just dropped out of grad school because I couldn't see a future in what I was doing and I didn't know where to go next. While there my supervisor said the words that changed my life: "Why don't you get your MLIS?" It was my "Could've had a V8" moment.

I had never considered a Masters in Library and Information Sciences. Up to that point I had dismissed the MLIS because I had only seen it applied in small libraries. I assumed that every MLIS holder had to become a librarian. I knew I didn't want to go back to slinging Debbie Macomber books and the thought of working as a school librarian filled me with nightmares of torn pages in Dr. Seuss books. I had completely overlooked the IS in MLIS.

Once I realized that the Information Science part of the MLIS was as much a part of the degree as was the Library part, I was in. For me, the collecting, organizing, and making accessible of all kinds of information is what Information Science is all about. As more and more entities (schools, corporations, governments, etc.) move to digitize their records, the more in demand LIS professionals will become. The traditional library will never go away, but I believe that as digital content becomes even more prevalent, their size will shrink, but the need for people to work with that data will only increase. I feel that what I'm doing is not only important for my current career path but its also important for our society's ability to maintain its record.

So what does all of this mean in a nutshell? Well first, my coming to this program was an evolution. There was no clear path that I was on that led me to an MLIS program but my personal and professional experiences essentially dropped me off on the doorstep of the profession. I had overlooked this option before because I only thought of libraries in terms of public libraries devoted to fiction or specialized academic libraries. My idea of a librarian was a middle-aged woman who spent her days brooding over the decision to put "Christian" stickers on the spines of Beverly Lewis books. It never occurred to me that people working on databases archiving corporate records could also be librarians. For me, its all about the data and how people who need the information look for it. I don't know why I never connected that action with what librarians do, but I'm glad the connection happened. I'm very happy to be here.

*I have subsequently deleted my original blog  though I have saved the content. The two projects were duplicating one another. I will attach the original blog to this one once the semester is over and this blog has been turned in and graded