The Path Before Me

As a graduating student with a BA, I believed I had what my professional life would look like figured out.  However, I have learned in the time since then that things often do not go as planned and, thankfully, one ends up satisfied with a reality never envisioned.  That need for flexibility when considering career goals in planning recognizes the fact that new opportunities may present themselves and old goals may lose their appeal.  Even that hard earned wisdom, however, does not negate the value of beginning a course of study with an end goal in mind.  Having an idea where on is going allows for a path to be mapped and steps taken along the way to get there.

As I start my studies in library and information science, my hope and desire is to work in a public library in a reference or adult services role.  I have previously worked at both a university library and a public library and enjoyed both experiences, but felt the most fulfilled and well used during my time at a public library.  There I was able to help people who needed information that would directly impact their lives and often had no other way to get it.  The books and other resources I was able to help provide them with enriched their lives and saved them money.  The library was a community resource that provided space for people to interact with each other and with information in a more equitable and accessible way.  I would like to be part of this process of individual community support and enrichment again.

Of course, I now live in a very different community than when I worked in a public library before.  The public library I was previously employed at was in my medium-sized, Midwestern home town.  I had gone to that library as a child and many of the librarians and patrons knew me for most of my life.  It was not a culturally or racially diverse place, though we did serve people from a variety of class and education backgrounds.   Now I live in a very large, East Coast city which people move in and out of freely.  It is a multicultural and multiracial space.  The public libraries here serve different needs and different populations under different pressures and constraints.

With this difference in context in mind, one of my goals during my education is to make sure that I am aware of the particular challenges urban libraries face.  As a white person in a city that is majority African American, I need to be comfortable with and trained to work in a cross-cultural and diverse environment.  I hope to both taking classes and seeking out practical experience in this area.  I am committed to this city and to this profession and my goal is to do them both justice by being well prepared and competent for the particular place I’m in.

As I’ve begun my school work and begun to be involved in the professional library organizations in my city, it’s become clear to me that one need that libraries everywhere seem to have is for librarians to be good managers.  I certainly didn’t decide to enter this field out of desire to create budgets, make staff schedules or create policies but libraries need competent people to do this work if they are to survive and thrive.  I currently have around four years in management experience in a small non-profit.  I was promoted to that position with little training and have learned with watching my boss and trial and error.  My hope is that during my time of study I will be able to gain management skills in a more formal and systematic way.

It is good, at this point, to remind myself again that plans are just that, plans.  We create goals, take steps to achieve them and life sometimes conforms itself to our vision and sometimes looks completely different.  It is my hope that whatever forms my future in libraries takes that I will be prepared, competent and dedicated to the mission of libraries and librarianship.