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I am, I admit, the type that would generally not stand out in a crowd. Although I continue to admire the college students who have the confidence and gumption to (a) dye their hair bright, birdlike colors, or (b) wear unusual, even eccentric, clothing that somehow comes off as fashionable, these characterizations have never described me. I have never had the urge to stand out in such visual ways, choosing instead the hope of intellectual uniqueness.
Overall I am the backstage type, the one who builds the set but does not perform on it, an eternal editor who has for years sought to draw out the beauty of others’ writing without focusing on my own. I find it is the same with research. As I work with students and faculty to hone their searches and locate what they need for their own projects, I leave mine aside, at least for the moment.
So this blog changes things a bit. It came about as a seed of inspiration shared by a few bright, active, even daring colleagues whom I have had the privilege of meeting and getting to know. We have so many thoughts and ideas and ambitions about libraries, we heard ourselves saying. We are new voices who want to be heard. A blog was the obvious answer, an easy venue to acquire and employ to disseminate our passion, our desire for change, our wish to share a vision.
But I digress. If you’ve come to my bio page you probably want a few facts about me, so here we go. I’m originally from New Jersey, attended college in Pennsylvania, and grad school in Nevada and Arizona. For the past three years, and hopefully much longer to come, my home is Boise, Idaho.
My path to librarianship was a crooked one to be sure. My first years of graduate school in English led me into jobs as an editor until I realized that while I love the written word, I love less the attention to detail, the proofreading, and living with the constant fear of a typo slipping through (I missed one, once, that I know of, and it haunts me). Several enjoyable meetings with a campus career counselor and a reevaluation of my work ideals steered me to library school at The University of Arizona, where I happened to be working at the time. A few years later, I am a reference and instruction librarian at a wonderful university library. It is a happy turn of events.
I have found that I love being part of ALA and contributing to the larger profession of librarianship. I serve on my share of committees, so far mostly in ACRL’s University Libraries Section but also the ACRL and ALA levels. I was once an ALA Emerging Leader, a program that served to fan the sparks that became this blog. It has also been my pleasure to work with ALA President-Elect Camila Alire on her campaign website, and now her presidential website.
If you wish for a few additional tags to apply to me, here are a few: liberal, agnostic, environmentalist, gardener, dog lover, hiker, knitter, runner. There is more, of course, but it gets more complex from here. For that, we may need to go get a cup of coffee together.
[...] The blogs/bloggers represented (in addition to me) were: Writing as Jo(e), Frogs & Ravens, In the Library with a Lead Pipe, Diary of a Dandelion Diva, and Adventures with Ari. If you look at these blogs for at least a [...]