Interview with Lauren Pressley

This week's post features Lauren Pressley, the Instructional Design Librarian at Wake Forest University, whose library
just won the ACRL Academic Library of Excellence award this year. Lauren is an active writer and presenter who was recognized in 2008 as an ALA Emerging Leader, and in 2009 as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker. Her publications include So You Want To Be a Librarian and Wikis for Libraries, in addition to her library blog, which can be found here. Photo credit: Ken Bennett, Wake Forest University.


What is your educational/professional background?

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do when I was in college, so I got degrees that were interesting to me: philosophy and communication. Once I graduated, I knew I had good general skills and knowledge but nothing specific. I was looking for work that did more good than evil, and eventually fell into a paraprofessional position. Once I did, though, it was obvious I was in the right place: I had volunteered in libraries for much of my life. After a few months in the position I knew I'd need the MLS to do the type of work I wanted to do, so I went to library school while I continued my library job full time.

When you graduated college/graduate school what were your career goals/have they changed since?

My immediate goal was go get a job. I knew I'd find something I enjoyed, so the next variable I focused on was in a location I'd be happy in for a little while. I was fortunate that Wake Forest University, where I worked through library school, was able to offer me a job doing really interesting work. Since then my goals have evolved to be about more than just the job. I still want to do meaningful and interesting work at my library, but I also hope to make an impact at the institutional level and for the field of librarianship. I'm working on both those goals through various committee appointments, and I try to contribute to librarianship through writing and presenting as well.

When/how did you decide the LIS career path was for you?

I knew it once I was in a paraprofessional position. But if I had been honest with myself, I would have known it since I learned to read. (I outlined my path in detail for the Library Routes Project.) My school librarians played a big role in my childhood, and I loved working with the local public librarians, too. Ironically, when I became a Resident Advisor in college I was told that I had to quit any jobs I held that were not directly tied to my career aspirations. I ended up quitting the student position I held in the library and kept the journalism job with the student paper.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

There is no typical day. Whenever I participate in Library Day in the Life I typically chronicle an entire week to get to some of the diversity of my position. In general I do a lot of communicating, so I have a lot of email, meetings, and face-to-face conversations. I serve on a number of committees ranging from focusing on the library website to academic technology for the entire university to serving on the Teaching and Learning Center advisory board. Most of my tasks are related to the work we do in these groups. I also am the liaison for Philosophy, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Teaching and Learning Center. I teach one-shot classes for these disciplines and collect materials for them as well. I also do a number of technology workshops for our staff and the general campus community.

What is your favorite/least favorite thing about your job?

I am most passionate about helping our users think about the changing information environment and what it means for them as users and producers of information. I love any work that touches on that, whether it's teaching the one-credit information literacy course that I teach or helping faculty think about digital scholarship. Some of the mundane tasks are less fun, and at times it's hard to get everything done, but none of that is worth complaining about because the job is generally intellectually interesting, satisfying, and I work with fantastic colleagues (both in the library and in the academic faculty).

What is your salary range/What can students interested in working in your type of LIS profession look to make as far as salary (both starting out and over time)?

It's hard to nail down specific salaries. The ALA-APA puts out a survey of salaries every few years, which is a really useful resource if you're looking for a point to begin negotiating with. Many institutions have a career ladder in which you might earn more as you move up in rank. For example, at WFU librarians have faculty status without tenure, so there is a ranking from Assistant to Associate to Full to Senior. To move up a level an individual has to have served a specified number of years and to have performed at increasing levels.

How do you think your education prepared you/didn't prepare you for your current career?

My graduate program gave me a solid understanding of issues that are important to librarians and the values of the profession. I also felt I got a really good grounding in the broad spectrum of the field, which is nice as I'm in a more specialized area where I don't do cataloging, access, or special collections. As anyone will tell you, classroom knowledge is different from working knowledge, and I learn a lot every day on the job. That tends to be more about specific duties, institutional culture, and the politics of an organization. I also learn a lot about trends and technology from Twitter and blogs.

What advice do you have for current/graduating library and information science students?

I always advise current and graduating students to just go ahead and get involved! Most of the opportunities I've had have been indirectly and directly tied to my blogging through library school. Twitter can be a great gateway to professional networking. Some ALA and state association committees look for library school students to get a more diverse perspective. Just saying, "I'm a student," can get people to share with you about their professional path, which can help you think about what other experiences you might like to get. Go ahead and think of yourself as a member of the profession (you are!) and begin getting your feet wet and making connections!

What changes do you foresee for the field of Library and Information Science in the next five to ten years?

One of the most exciting things about our field is that we're changing a lot right now, and you can contribute to the discussion of what we should be doing and who we should be. I believe libraries are about information. Books were just the most convenient location for a long time. If we think of ourselves as information experts we can contribute to conversations in our community about new information formats and services, we can offer agile and adaptive services based on current user needs, and we can help our users think about how they want to be involved in their information environment.... in addition to getting materials (be they digital or physical). It's an exciting time to be in libraries, and I'm glad you're here with us!

Interview with Jon Haupt

This week's interview is with Jon Haupt, who is the interim director of the Hamon Arts Library at SMU in Dallas (which is a fantastic visual and performing arts library, by the way). In addition to this, he is currently serving as the music librarian, so as you can imagine, these two jobs keep him very busy! Without further ado, let's get started!

What is your educational/professional background?

In addition to the MLIS degree from the University of Washington, I also have bachelor's and master's degrees in music (piano performance and musicology, respectively) from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After finishing the MLIS, I took a job as Fine & Performing Arts Librarian at Iowa State University, where I worked for about four years before coming to SMU as Music Librarian at the Hamon Arts Library. In October 2010, I was named interim Director of the Hamon.

When you graduated college/graduate school what were your career goals/have they changed since?

I was originally pretty focused on being a music librarian in an academic library. One of the reasons why I moved to SMU was to focus more heavily on music. I've always felt at home around other music librarians. I've always tried to combine various things that I enjoy, and music, technology, research, and helping other people are all intertwined. I don't know if I'll always be focused on academic libraries, but you can be sure that I am going to stick with some combination of those four things.

When/how did you decide the LIS career path was for you?

I thought I would major in computer science until my senior year in high school... when I suddenly decided I wanted to be a music major. After my undergrad, however, I decided I didn't want to have to pay the bills with the piano; my music history master's degree was excellent, but I knew I didn't want to pursue the Ph.D. and contend for faculty positions in that, either. I started thinking about it even before I started that musicology program, but it wasn't until after talking it over with other music librarians that I knew that is what I wanted to do.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

Haha. Well, the most typical thing is that my day is completely different from any other day... but basically you can mix and match and plug in things to do across my week until there is no time left. These days, since I am doing two jobs (my old job and the interim job) every day can be very hectic and busy. When I arrive at work, I have to deal with some bizarre thing, like, say, a mysteriously locked door, or a problem with a student worker, or keys dropped down an elevator shaft. I then spend the next 30 minutes trying to figure all that out. As soon as I can sort things out, unless I have to run across campus for a meeting or something, I sit down and sort through my day a little. I use Hiveminder (http://hiveminder.com) to keep track of to-dos and a paper planner to keep track of phone calls and meeting notes. I try to organize myself on Sunday a little bit so that I know what the most important thing(s) I need to finish by the end of the week, and then I use Hiveminder to show me only the to-dos that I need to do on a particular day. At some point, I dive into voicemails and e-mail. Some days there are many, many meetings and I feel like I can't get anything done. Other days, the patrons all seem to need assistance or want to make a complaint or something. I'm usually able to find a day here or there where I can focus and finish a lot of to-dos all at once. So... my days are a mixture of administrative tasks, meetings, helping other people with problems, and typical public services librarian work--collection development, reference shifts, and instruction sessions.

What is your favorite/least favorite thing about your job?

My favorite thing is the sense that all of us in the library are helping to make the library a better place. I get a lot of satisfaction out of students leaving the library with new knowledge of useful research tools and/or how to use them, or getting excited about the new scanner or our new digital music library system and what these tools can do for them. I love working with the other librarians and the rest of the staff to figure out how to improve. We're very lucky that our staff gets along very well right now and is able to maintain a singular focus pretty easily.

My least favorite thing is what happens on the other end of the spectrum—not every interaction can be good. That said, I really don't mind dealing with direct complaints or difficult patrons; passive aggression, deceit, and unexplained opposition by others are more draining. It's hard to keep looking forward sometimes, but our approach is to continue treating others the way we would like to be treated—with respect, honesty, and authenticity.

What is your salary range/What can students interested in working in your type of LIS profession look to make as far as salary (both starting out and over time)?

Academic librarians seem to be typically starting around $35K and going up slowly, possibly to around $100K annually and occasionally beyond—all depending on experience and various aspects of the particular position they hold. I would expect library deans would be paid the highest. Pay differs a lot based on location and other factors.

How do you think your education prepared you/didn't prepare you for your current career?

When I was in library school, there was a lot of talk about practice vs. theory and a lot of people thought we spent too much time on theory. Really, though, I think the mixture was about right. I took two different terms of directed fieldwork and those were obviously pretty practical. I also worked as a student assistant and circ supervisor in the library while doing library school. Anyhow, the coursework that was highly theoretical in nature (information behavior, information in society, general classification, etc.) has also been really useful—just more over time and not so much at the very beginning. The more you get into library work, the more you realize that what you are doing is grounded in theory and that your understanding of the theory is important to understanding why it occurs to you to do something one way or another. That all sounds highly esoteric, I'm sure... but I think about it a lot when doing a card sort to figure out the best way to organize web pages or am trying to explain why browsing subject headings in our catalog is useful and actually matters.

What advice do you have for current/graduating library and information science students?

First off, when looking for a job, you really have to either choose a narrow field (based on subject knowledge or some sort of job niche) or narrow location (you want to live in X city) but generally not both. The more broad you are with where you're willing to live, the more likely you'll find a job in the particular area of expertise you want. Of course, some people just get lucky and the job is available when they want it.

I'd also suggest that you look beyond traditional jobs. Many people who graduated with me are working at pretty neat private companies, doing related work (using the same theory!) and probably getting paid pretty well. Many different career paths are rewarding and you can use what you have learned in this program on many, many things. What company doesn't need someone with a really good understanding of categorization or indexing?

What changes do you foresee for the field of Library and Information Science in the next five to ten years?

Not only did a lot of people graduate from my program and go work at all kinds of different types of places, they planned to all along—it seemed like about half of the students were not really comfortable with the whole "librarian" concept, but loved the program anyway and happily found work doing things they liked. I think the most successful schools right now are doing a brilliant job of balancing theory and practice as well as balancing librarianship with information science. All of the concepts mesh very well together—but it does take some work to organize everything so that it makes sense. Right now, people graduating from different types of schools sometimes don't feel they have a lot in common, but I think more and more you'll see that is not the case. We really all are studying the same thing—schools are just tipping one way or the other on those scales.

Special thanks to Jon for taking time out of his busy schedule to participate in the interview! If you have any questions for him, he can be reached at jhaupt@smu.edu.

Interview with Emily Dust Nimsakont

Today we're talking with Emily Dust Nimsakont, who is the Cataloging Librarian at the Nebraska Library Commission. She also provides cataloging training to librarians throughout Nebraska and recently spoke at the online conference, RDA @ Your Library, presented by Amigos Library Services. Let's get started with the interview!

What is your educational/professional background?

I have a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology from Knox College in Galesburg, IL, a master’s degree in museum studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Before working in the library world, I worked for museums and nonprofit organizations. My first library job was as a reference assistant at an academic library. I finished library school in May of 2008, and since October of that year, I have been working as the Cataloging Librarian at the Nebraska Library Commission in Lincoln, Nebraska.

When you graduated college/graduate school what were your career goals/have they changed since?

When I finished my undergraduate degree, I wanted to work in a history museum, preferably as a museum educator. When I finished my library science degree, my goal was to find a job as a cataloger, and I have succeeded at that goal. See my answer to the next question for more detail on how my goals changed.

When/how did you decide the LIS career path was for you?

For a long time, I’ve been interested in informal learning environments, places outside of the classroom where learning takes place. My first career path was in the museum field, and about a year and a half after I finished graduate school for the first time, I was feeling pretty frustrated with the job prospects in the field. At around the same time, I was discovering that while a lot of my colleagues were about preserving the stuff in our collections, I was interested in connecting people with the information about the items in our collections (writing up exhibit text, doing research in our collections for museum visitors, etc.). I started to think that maybe librarianship was the career for me. I started library school without any experience working in libraries, but luckily, I quickly discovered that working in libraries was indeed a good fit for me.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

There really is no typical day, since I have a variety of tasks that are part of my job. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission, we are a depository for state government documents, so most of my cataloging work is original cataloging of these items. We also have a collection of library-related materials that we lend to library workers and library students across the state, so I catalog these items, too (this is usually copy cataloging). I also am responsible for assigning metadata to the digitized historical photographs in our Nebraska Memories collection. In addition to functioning as the Commission’s cataloger, I am also responsible for providing training on cataloging-related topics to librarians in the state.

I do spend at least a little time cataloging just about every day. However, I usually try to balance the near-constant flow of items that need to be cataloged with the need to work on other, more short-term projects, such as preparing for an upcoming training session.

What is your favorite/least favorite thing about your job?

My favorite thing is probably the fact that my job duties include a variety of tasks, as I mentioned in the previous question. No two days are alike, and I very rarely get bored.

It’s harder to say what my least favorite thing is. I suppose it’s the fact that sometimes, working in a government agency can be a little restrictive. For example, sometimes there can be a decent amount of red tape involved with getting permission to start a new project. However, most of the time, my enjoyment of my job outweighs these frustrations.

How do you think your education prepared you/didn't prepare you for your current career?

I definitely don’t think that library school fully prepared me for my career, but I don’t think that it’s necessarily supposed to. I actually don’t think it’s possible for library school to perfectly prepare anyone for working in a real-world library job. The school that I went to didn’t really have tracks or specializations, so I definitely came out of library school a generalist, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. Although figured out halfway through library school that I wanted to be a cataloger, and I tailored my practicum and volunteer work to get some experience in that area, I feel that my coursework gave me a base of knowledge that would have helped me in many areas of librarianship, if I had ended up getting a job as another type of librarian, rather than as a cataloger. I feel like I learned the very basics of the profession in library school and have supplemented those basics with a lot of on-the-job learning in my first professional position, and I don’t really see how it could happen any other way.

What advice do you have for current/graduating library and information science students?

If a class sounds interesting to you, take it, regardless of whether it relates to what you think your chosen path in librarianship is. Though I knew about halfway through library school that I wanted to be a cataloger, I took classes on a variety of subjects, including readers’ advisory, library materials for children, and library use instruction. That library use instruction course has ended up being very valuable to me, since my current job involves not only cataloging but also training people on how to catalog, and I’ve applied many of the instructional techniques I learned in that class. You never know what type of position you’ll end up in or which classes will end up being useful in ways that you didn’t expect, so I would recommend exploring a variety of areas, if your program allows it.

What changes do you foresee for the field of Library and Information Science in the next five to ten years?

I think that there will be a lot of changes in the coming years. To focus on my area of expertise, I think that cataloging has been changing a lot and will continue to do so. Resource Description and Access (RDA), the new cataloging rules that are currently being evaluated by the national libraries, will certainly change things if they are implemented. There will most definitely be short-term effects, as libraries adjust their workflows and budgets to the new rules. However, I also think there is the potential for great long-term effects on the cataloging world if the full potential of RDA is realized.

Even without the new rules, catalogers’ work is changing. We work with digital objects more than ever before. We work with batches of items, rather than creating a record for one book at a time. I really think the whole concept of what a cataloger does will change greatly in the next five to ten years.

Special thanks to Emily for participating in our blog. If you would like to know more about Emily, or have any questions, she can be reached at emily.dust.nimsakont@nebraska.gov.

Interview with Sian Brannon

Hello, everyone! This post's interview is with Sian Brannon, who works here at UNT in the library annex as Assistant Dean of Collection Management. She is a UNT College of Information graduate and is currently finishing her PhD at TWU. She has also worked at both the Dallas and Denton public libraries and has experience in almost every area of the library. Enjoy the interview!

What is your educational/professional background?
I graduated from UNT in 1999 with my Masters. My degree says Master of Science. Nowhere does it indicate Library or Information Science. Sometimes I pretend it’s a Masters of Chemistry or Fine Arts.

My first job was as a children’s librarian at the Dallas Public Library. I was terrible. Luckily my boss didn’t know better. I moved to Colorado and managed the library in one of those technical schools that advertises on daytime TV. Not thrilling. The library didn’t even have a door. My total collection numbered around 250 items. A lot of science and computer stuff.

When I moved back to Texas (Yeehaw!), I started working at the Denton Public Library (ironically, with the same boss I had at the Dallas Public Library), but not as a children’s librarian this time. I worked my way up from entry-level reference and programming to systems administration and branch management. An opening came in Technical Services/Collection Development and I hopped on it. I controlled the statistics, materials budget, and whatever else I could get my hands on. It was during this time that I realized that I am a much better worker AWAY from the public.

After working there for 8 ½ years, I was as far as I could go. I applied for the Assistant Dean of Collection Management position at UNT during the summer, and was surprised when they called me for an interview. Many grueling conversations later (12 hour interview!!!), I was offered the job. Lucky me! Now I have been here for about 3 months. Here’s looking to at least another 3. (Just kidding-I hope to be here a LONG time.)

Somewhere during my stint at Denton Public, I applied to the PhD program at TWU. I started in Fall of 2009, and am finishing my coursework this semester. I will be taking my qualifying exams this semester, and hope to start formally on my dissertation this fall.

When you graduated college/graduate school what were your career goals/have they changed since?
In college I studied Spanish and Mathematics. I cannot do math in Spanish. With a Spanish degree, I taught kindergarten for two years, back when Texas was lax with the requirement for education degrees. This was not part of my career plan, mostly because I didn’t know what my career plan was. So, I went to library school. In that program, I studied academic libraries, archives, and preservation. I thought I would hole up somewhere and keep the past alive. That didn’t work out, as I grabbed the first job offered-children’s librarian in a public library.

Since then, I have been involved in many aspects of libraries, and am hoping to translate that into a long practitioner career, and then become some type of professor (hence the PhD).

When/how did you decide the LIS career path was for you?
After the whole Spanish/Math thing didn’t really go anywhere, and after years of having friends comment (not always nicely) on my anal-retentive neat-nik organizing, I thought back to once when I was the substitute teacher in a library. It all seemed to fit.

What does a typical work day look like for you?
I have two types of workdays. One is super-meeting day. Dean’s Council, special projects, vendors, conference calls, etc. The other is catch-up/investigation day. Emails, looking into new products, professional journals, one-on-ones, budget talks, etc. Sometimes they blur, but I try to plan them out where it’s one or the other. Easier to organize, easier to do.

Any interesting anecdotes you care to tell?
I got lost in the Annex twice my first week. It’s spooky in places. I have heard talk of snakes in the basement. Not checking that out.

What is your favorite/least favorite thing about your job?
Hey, now, I’ve only been here 3 months, so I don’t have a lot to judge thus far. My favorite thing, I reckon, is the people in my department, and I don’t mean that in a hokey-kind-of-way. There are a variety of personality types in Collection Management, and I hope I fit in. (I also like making my own schedule…but not as much as the people). Least favorite thing…um…the location of my workspace (the Annex out by the Peterbilt factory) is not the most desirable for me. I am used to being able to pop over to Walgreen’s or 7-11 for candy, cokes, and medicine. Now I have to be more prepared.

How do you think your education prepared you/didn't prepare you for your current career?
My education gave me a perfectly adequate theoretical and somewhat practical preparation for my current career. I took courses in cataloging, management, collection development, and preservation. That all ties in to my current job. The LIS degree is short, and there is no way they can teach you everything you are going to need to know. There’s no nitty-gritty. In that way, though, it never lets you get bored.

What advice do you have for current/graduating library and information science students?
Get a veteran librarian to read your resume and share interview questions. Gather references all the time, and make them of varying types (positions, types of libraries, etc.). Volunteer. Get experience any way you can.

What changes do you foresee for the field of Library and Information Science in the next five to ten years?
Digital! Books won’t go away (during my career, at least), but there needs to be an effort to tailor some LIS courses to digital content collection development and mechanisms for gathering it. Another Assistant Dean here at UNT advocates for librarians learning to program so that we can create our own databases and content discovery systems. That’s not a bad idea.

And finally, what are you reading right now (what would an interview be without this question!)?
I am not reading anything fun. I am neck-deep in the literature review part of my dissertation preparation which means I am reading journal article after journal article after book after journal article. Any free time I have is spent playing Tetris on my Nintendo DS.