Introduction

Over the years I have developed a personal code of honor based upon core values like acting honestly, doing no harm, leaving things better than you found them, treating others how you wish to be treated, and always doing your best. This personal honor code naturally applies not only to my expectations for others, but also to the manner in which I hold myself accountable for my interactions, both professional and private, and it has sculpted the evolution of my self concept as a library and information science professional. My personal code helps direct my efforts to excel in this exciting field and to best use my talents to the benefit of my patrons, coworkers and fellow community members.

Discussion

While I chose to focus on digital services while pursuing my LIS master’s degree, choosing much of my elective curriculum has centered on a developing my computer and information technology skill sets. Despite my passion for this aspect of librarianship, its fitness has only become clear to me quite recently; in the years leading up to my new career, I never anticipated choosing this path, and I did not even begin my time at SJSU with this focus in mind. At the beginning of my SLIS experience in 2011, I was following my personal code by steering myself into a speciality where I could do my best work and make the most meaningful social impact– working as a young adult and youth librarian, directly recommending literature and media to a population that is often underserved by current library practices.

Spring 2012, my first semester that allowed electives and not simply core classes, saw me enrolling in two young adult LIS courses. For further exposure to this field, I pursued a lead from SJSU and began volunteering at a nearby public library with a robust and multicultural young adult population. I assumed I’d enjoy the service aspect of this volunteership, and that it would help me feel more connected with my goal of learning to assist young adults as a librarian specializing in their interests, culture and needs. What I had not asked myself, however, was why I really wanted to work in YA services.

Deconstructing this semester, I realized that my ardent goal of helping young adults stemmed from my gratitude at discovering my own love of reading early in life. I carried books with me everywhere I went in middle and high school, both narratives and nonfiction, and I would race through my school work and finish my homework as early as possible just for the reward of reading a book of my choice. I’d even sneak in a few pages in the 5 minutes between classes. These honest reflections further triggered happy thoughts of volunteering at my school library all through my senior year, and of the woman who had recommended so many of those books that kept me happy, motivated and successful academically when I was a young adult.

My high school librarian gifted me with good books and a life-changing opportunity to work in one of my favorite environments, a real library. Her effortlessly friendly, spunky and talkative personality redefined everything I thought a librarian might be, and I enjoyed visiting our school library even more thanks to her easygoing yet professional nature. So when this dynamic woman, whose personal book recommendations influenced me even more than her demeanor, asked me if I had a free class period because she needed someone to help her work in the library, I jumped at the offer. We liked to joke that the reason why she asked me to be her aide was because saw me so often in the library throughout high school.

I thought back to sincerely enjoying reshelving material, running inventories and working with my school library’s OPAC system, all of these tasks I’ve further honed through earning my MLIS. My fondness for this work rings true in my memory because despite its volunteer nature and the fact that I was a teenager working at her own high school, when no patrons were around to assist I would always find other things to do in order to stay busy and help out my beloved library.

With this new realization, the end of my youth librarian exposure in Spring 2012 found me feeling a bit disillusioned yet mostly quite content. It was clear that the direction I thought I wanted to proceed in was not something that was right for me.

After all, this has happened to me before, with a prior life as an art student. All throughout high school and parts of middle school I took ceramic classes inside and outside of school. I enjoyed creating art and I was good at it, so I went to an art school to become an artist. As my freshman year went by, I found myself holed up in my room in front of my computer more often than I was in the studio. I also noticed that I was finding the English and Art History courses to be far more interesting than the ceramic studio classes. Thus, I withdrew from art school and spent time traveling and rethinking my life’s direction.

This slowly-realized dream of being a librarian gestated in my mind over the years of moving around, finishing my BA, and working. I remember looking up the statistics of what sorts of bachelor degrees recent library school students possessed. This cemented the fact that I wanted to major in English: to increase my odds of getting into a Library and Information Science program. The idea was to emulate my high school librarian while not working in a high school library setting. I had fond memories of my local public library, a small one room library sandwiched between two fast food chain restaurants. Despite being quite a small library, it was a branch of a much larger library system and they had a wonderful ILL service. Hence my original focus of working in a public library.

So there I was, grimly facing the decision of a new career path to explore, and the clock ticking away all the time. I thought back to taking LIBR 202 Information Retrieval in one of my first semesters (Fall 2011) at SJSU, remembering fondly the assignment to create a queryable database with records I had populated myself. Indeed all of 202’s work proved very computer-heavy, and I recall my instructor stating that if I felt like I might be one of the lucky few who enjoy this type of work, then I ought to consider the digital SLIS career pathways. At the time, this seemed like an additional specialization to tack onto my young adult services concentration, because I remembered how I actually took it upon myself to defragment the Windows computers in one of my high school computer labs, and how I honestly enjoyed teaching fellow students how to navigate the ‘90s Internet. Now it seemed like a viable new direction to choose for my career.

Choosing my next semester’s worth of classes and figuring out what would be my new direction. I read all of the career pathways described on the SJSU SLIS site. I found myself curious about creating websites, creating more databases and working with computers at an unknowable new level. I had to follow my code of honor and be honest with myself about where my strengths lie. I’m a very detail oriented, visual thinker. I can read a page a minute. I enjoy working with computers. I enjoy organizing digital information. I enjoy solving puzzles. And so, I changed my focus from a pathway of young adult user-centered service to one of digital and computer service.

While my past work experience is strewn with retail and office positions, these never made me very happy. Some of my favorite past work experiences occurred wherever I was filing, scanning, or organizing information. What this experience indicates to me is that I find jobs where I’m working on a computer in an office setting with other people who are performing similar functions to be ideal. These requirements mean that the organizational settings where I could potentially find agreeable work are quite varied. Looking back, it seems more and more that this program was always a good fit for me.

I also wanted to consider the sort of organization I would work at eventually. I knew that school libraries were of little interest to me, but I assumed that a public library setting would be a better fit. Now, I am extremely glad that I found my way after only a short time. I’m pleased with myself for volunteering at not one but two different public libraries. Those experiences helped me understand myself and determine my focus in my career. I also feel that those two young adult service focused classes were very enriching to me and helped round out my experience in this program. What I find truly delightful about the digital services pathway is the variety of organizations I can be of service to, since computers are used nearly everywhere.

Future Career

While I don’t feel that school or public libraries are the best fit for me, I haven’t ruled them out. Like many information professionals in our quickly-evolving and increasingly interconnected economy, I recognize that a diversified set of skills is extremely valuable. I remember enjoying calling a class to attention and assisting people in how to use the self check out, or how to find reliable sources. I enjoyed recommended books to students and helping them enlarge their reading selections or start enjoying reading in the first place. I enjoy teaching peers at my current volunteer position new Chrome keyboard shortcuts. However, I’ve discovered that often my practiced efficiency, strong natural focus on detail and professional diligence conspire to send me home early from volunteerships, who seem to underestimate my work abilities only to see a week’s worth handled briskly in a few hours’ time.

Thanks to this program, I feel that I am entering the workforce with a very well-rounded set of skills and that I can be helpful team member in many different types of library and information science organizations as a result. I enjoy staying busy and feeling productive, and get a genuine thrill from helping others, so I have always wished to contribute to a team and help support a larger organization. My immediate professional goal is to find a job that utilizes my digital services skills. Skills like website design and creation, database creation, and metadata management.

Professional Goals

Throughout many jobs and experiences, my dream has always been to work in an organization where my focused and detailed work ethic is appreciated. Some of the aspects of this work which I find fun, such as spending hours systematically checking hundreds of metadata records to ensure certain fields populated correctly, are quite far from ‘fun’ for many people. Before finding my niche in digital services, my own tastes sometimes struck me as quirky and odd; yet now that I’ve found my true calling, I feel secure in knowing that my work and skills will be broadly appreciated. It’s only natural that I will also strive to always appreciate my coworkers’ unique contributions and abilities.

Currently I volunteer at a local academic library in their digital initiatives department. I assist in cleaning up metadata that was recently migrated from one system to another and I also help by sorting through the curriculum vitae of the institution’s faculty. Each professor’s CV contains multiple articles, and what I do is track down the publisher of the journal article in question and find out if they’ll allow our open access repository to ingest this article to make it publicly available. I also verify which version of article to ingest. My original volunteer commitment was for the summer of 2013, but I found the work so stimulating, enjoyable and rewarding that I’ve stayed on with their approval and appreciation.

Looking back, it’s unsurprising how the reality of young adult librarianship did not quite match my expectations and did not prove a good fit for my talents. Yet in reflecting upon the experience I discovered my path to digital services. I now understand that I can provide help to young adults in search of meaningful and quality information content and narratives as a librarian best by honoring and improving my own strengths.

I therefore feel that I can contribute to the cultural, economic, educational, and social well-being of our communities by honoring my code and always following industry best practices. In any of my script or metadata creation, I always strive to adhere to international and national standards, ensuring that my work is consistent and useful to the global user community, both today and into the future. Consistency in digital standards makes for easy access to these resources for the global community. As for directly promoting interpersonal social well-being, I rely upon my personal code of honor and always offer mutual respect, consideration and kindness to all people.

Conclusion

So after some course correction on the road to my MLIS, I find myself feeling very hopeful about my future prospects for development and personal fulfillment, as I have finally found the right aspects of library and information services to fully utilize both my talents and my interests. I look forward to joining the growing ranks of LIS professionals who are helping digitize the whole total of our culture and science, to preserve it for future generations and to offer it to them freely. I can think of no greater gift to the world than well-ordered and widely-available knowledge, and providing this makes me feel extremely grateful to be alive and empowered in these exciting times.