indiana

I can’t think of an easy way to pick up blogging again after a summer off, but here we go–I’ll just jump right in! I am now in Bloomington, IN, just beginning the third week of my graduate program at the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science. The fact that I am an actual graduate student still seems bizarre… I am entitled to print 2,500 pages over the course of the semester, obtain my very own graduate carrel, and CHECK OUT BOOKS FOR AN ENTIRE SEMESTER. When I realized I would get the complete works of Edna St. Vincent Millay until the end of December I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped. 

This semester I am taking three classes: Reference, Computer-Based Tools, and Representation and Organization of Information. These classes meet only once a week and seem very doable so far. I am mostly concentrating on finding jobs and diversifying my work experience. The coursework, while important, is more like an afterthought. I asked a student involved in the Society of American Archivists student chapter if she had any advice for me as a first-year student. Her response? “Don’t worry about doing your readings. Just get involved.” Happily, I can both do my readings AND get involved. Her comment has been mirrored many times by other students and even faculty. I think it helps that I came to library school with the knowledge that future employers weren’t generally going to care whether I had taken one elective over another. While the MLS is the backbone of my career preparation, it needs a lot of support from actual hands-on experience.

Three weeks in, I feel relatively settled in Bloomington. It is a nice place to be a graduate student because there are so many other grad students from out-of-state who feel the same pain I do: I am talking, of course, about the invisible loan money just flying out of their metaphorical pockets. Despite the scary loans and skyrocketing cost of higher education, I still feel that IU was the right choice for me. While I am proud to have been accepted to the highly selective UW-Madison SLIS, I am glad that I have been granted the opportunity to carve out a fresh new start for myself. The rolling hills and climate are reminiscent of Wisconsin, though the Southern accents serve to remind me that I am now indeed much nearer to the South than I have ever been! 

I have managed to snag three jobs here at IU. After some initial scheduling chaos, my classes and jobs now peacefully coexist. The first job I got is as a Receptionist/Reference Attendant at the Lilly Library. It is a basic public services position within the rare books library that entails answering the Lilly phone, overseeing the exhibition gallery, helping direct staff communications, and overseeing patrons’ usage of Lilly materials.  The Lilly is filled with the mysterious ephemera and miscellany of centuries ago, and this is intoxicating for me, as I know it is for plenty of other starry-eyed SLIS students. I often wonder if the librarians who work there ever lost their sense of amazement about their surroundings… I know they must have begun their careers filled with wonderment. When I first pored over the SLIS specializations, I did consider the Rare Books and Manuscripts specialization, but I’ve since diverged from that path. Instead, I hope to pursue the Archives and Records Management specialization, which overlaps in some areas. 

My second job is working in the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center (located within SLIS). I started working in an administrative capacity last week: printing on the giant plotters, scanning articles, etc. Much of the work is related to the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science ongoing exhibit by SLIS professor Dr. Katy Borner. So far I’ve found that working at the CNS keeps me on my toes–I’m required to utilize a lot of the bare-bones techy skills that I’ve practically forgotten, such as the minutiae of using Excel.  I’ve also begun using the CNS wiki and Launchpad, a Content Management Software that I watched a presentation on at the Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians conference this past spring. When I was hired I was also told that while CNS currently needs a student worker to assist with basic office tasks, as I became more knowledgeable about the Center I will likely be able to work on specialized projects (!).

And last but certainly not least, I will be working as an Instruction Assistant in the Wells Library Information Commons. While I was at UW-La Crosse, I saw my superb librarian mentor Rachel‘s face light up every time she talked about her tenure as Grad Assistant for the same program. She often expressed her hope that I would be able to meet and even work with her mentor, Carrie. To my delight, now that I am officially a SLIS student, I’ve been accepted into the fold of IAs! For some reason I thought that being an IA involved team-teaching with other students or perhaps assisting a “real” librarian with a class–boy, was I ever wrong. IA’s sign up to teach courses on an online portal, contact the professor and get information on what they’d like covered during the class, craft a lesson plan, and teach. AKA: just me, alone, solo, independent. I am filled with a terrific level of excitement!

Nervous too, obviously. Nervousness is okay, normal, and shows that you care about what you are doing. As long as you don’t let it stop you from acting (or postpone your actions indefinitely!), I think it’s a valuable tool to corral your energy. Also, simply from inhabiting this body and carting this mind around for 21 years, I know that the only reason I feel nervous is because I do not feel prepared. Once I feel prepared–by trying my hand at creating lesson plans, by doing my own research on databases, by exploring IUCat and other resources on my own–I will feel more comfortable and less nervous. Then once I start actually teaching, I imagine that just about all the nervousness will vanish. The only nervousness stems from the anticipation, the unknown. As Carrie said during training, “There is always a reason not to teach, so just jump right in.” Wise words from a wise woman. 

I understand that the IAs are doing the IU Teaching and Learning department a great service because it costs significantly less to pay us to teach classes than it would a whole fleet of professional librarians, but  at the same time it was apparent from the get-go that all the supervising Teaching and Learning librarians are focused on ensuring that their IAs feel comfortable, confident, and experience lots of self-growth. We were told to use the classrooms as our laboratories to try out teaching styles and techniques that intrigued us. We were given free reign to utilize instructional technologies in any capacity. Simply put, we were entrusted with courses under the implicit assumption that we would use our best judgment. (And no, this was not a begrudging entrustment–this was an enthusiastic welcome that made me feel as though, yes, I can teach!)

So, all in all, I thoroughly enjoy Bloomington, IU, and SLIS. I wasn’t sure of what to expect from library school, but now that I’ve been immersed in library-land for a few weeks… I like it immensely! My stack of librarianship-related books is piled dangerously tall, my babbling about library stuff is at an all-time high due to new SLIS friends, and I am building my resume with library-related activities.

I don’t have any complaints. 

Working at the Lilly Library provides a different experience each day.

From my vantage point of the front desk, I observe the amount of activity in the gallery ebb and flow. Staff swap out exhibits, carrying large glass cases back and forth. Patrons’ rubber-soled shoes squeak on the wood floor as they peer into cases. Somber white men (well, one woman; you guessed it, white) gaze stoically from their perches within glossy oil paintings, while muted light from the automobile-sized chandelier in the Lincoln Room gives everything a vaguely unnatural glow. The marble, the wood-paneled walls, the high ceilings: it’s all very patrician. And then there’s me, decked out in a floral print dress and cardigan more often than not, just trying to keep it all together.

My job is to watch people. Follow protocol. Use my best judgment. There are obvious things, and then there are the gray areas, just like real life. (Coats aren’t allowed in the gallery, but what about the thin jackets of early fall?) Often it is calm, allowing me time to read, but when chaos hits, it hits hard. Sudden peaks of activity are intense while they last, though they’re ultimately unsustainable. For instance: 

A pack of visitors with plenty of questions straggles in, while staff are either leaving for lunch (handing me their name badge) or coming back from lunch (requesting their name badge back). Students enrolled in the manuscripts or rare books class enter, trying to break through the pack of curious strangers; meanwhile, the phone rings. The caller has an ambiguous inquiry so you’re not sure who this person should be transferred to. You send it to a staff member who you think will know who should take it, hoping it won’t seem an egregious error on your part. Meanwhile, a member of the staff has shown up near the desk, probably to check if another staff member is in the building, but the visitors are midsentence and you’re trying to be attentive to them, since they were here first…

Out the corner of your eye you spot a student decked out in cap, jeans and boulder-sized backpack dart in through the door. He’s fast, and you know his type: kid who sees the word library and runs in to find a study space, not realizing that we aren’t exactly that sort of library. You know you’ve got to raise your voice a bit: “Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” He looks confused, then annoyed as he tears his earbuds out. “What?” he says, rooted to the spot in the middle of the gallery, unmoving. The crowd of staff and question-asking patrons all watch. You keep your voice pleasant. “We don’t have any study areas here. This is a rare books library, but you’re welcome to look at the exhibits if you put your bag in the free lockers around the corner.” He looks dumbfounded, turns and shuffles out. 

You turn back to your group, which has now grown bigger because a new patron has walked in and she wants to use the Reading Room; this will require you to get her name and fill out a pass for her, which you cannot do because you’re attending to the others, but you smile apologetically in her direction for this inconvenience. The staff member interrupts the group during a pause and asks their question; you check the roster and hope that the person working the desk before you marked it correctly–if not, the staff person will think you were the one who didn’t mark down a colleague’s reentry into the building, they’ll think you’re slacking at your job. The visitors begin chatting again, half directed toward you, half directed at their friends. The visitors’ eyes all stare expectantly at you. 

This is an extreme scenario, obviously, but you get the point: it can be hectic. The combination of managing a ringing phone, patrons who are ignorant of the rules, upkeep of the roster, lockers that fill up causing students to stack their belongings in precarious piles behind the desk, Reading Room passes and buzzer… it has its challenges, but it is doable and most of the time I feel completely capable. However, it’s easy to get tripped up. My point in writing about this? I felt very tripped up yesterday. I’ve been getting accustomed to my jobs at the Lilly: finally remembering to initial the many things that need to be initialed in the Reading Room (for the most part), finally remembering most Lilly staff names, getting better at answering common patron questions… so yesterday felt like a huge step backward. 

Yesterday there were multiple simultaneous classes going on in the morning, as well as a few medium-sized groups of Lilly newbies–i.e., folks who were walking by and saw a big gray building with no other description than “LILLY LIBRARY” and decided to come in since they have some down time. There were about 6 or 7 of them, middle-aged, just wanting to poke around. Women had small purses, no giant bags, so I let them know they could put their purses in the lockers if they wanted to but it wasn’t necessary. I smiled and let them know to ask me if they had any questions.

Most headed toward the Lincoln room, in the back of the gallery space but technically its own room. With a cursory glance and a mindset of there’s nothing to see here, I noticed many members of the small group break away, remaining in the main gallery. However, my eye then suddenly snagged on a man who had been toward the back of the cluster of incoming people, now visible to me as clutching a distinctive cup emblazoned with an ivory and emerald emblem: a Starbucks cup.

Needless to say, beverages are not allowed in the exhibition spaces. By the time I spotted the poor fellow and his (unbeknownst to him) contraband item, he was sliding out of my line of sight (I cannot see into the Lincoln room from the front desk, and I must remain planted at the desk). Just as I was about to raise my voice significantly and practically yell to get his attention–that’s what the amount of room between myself and the visitor would now require–a professor teaching a class intercepted him and let him know that beverages were not allowed in the galleries. I was immediately grateful, but after a moment of relief I felt a wave of embarrassment overtake me. It would appear that I couldn’t do my job, that I was lazy or inattentive or just didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. To make matters worse, I have a lot of respect for the professor in question. Though I’m not in any of his classes he often smiles at me and will stop to ask how my semester is going–unnecessary kindnesses from a busy and important man. 

I realize that I care, that I pay attention, that I do my job to the best of my ability at all times; if asked, I would have explained the complexities of the situation. But I felt ashamed to think that others might label me just another student worker. From the coffee incident on, my day just felt off. It didn’t help that in the afternoon I was chastised (lightly) by a librarian based on a decision another librarian had made and supported. That is definitely not fun, because it was a small enough issue that I didn’t want to be the tattle-tale. I felt every bit the incompetent, never-going-to-fit-in fool. I am not beating myself up over this and I wouldn’t even label my day a bad day, though it had plenty of unfortunate elements (a department accepting applications for a spring GAship stopping the process early and causing me to be absolutely crestfallen, waiting for several entities to respond to me via email who are WELL past the appropriate time to reply, having a backpack jam into my face on the bus when we hit a bumpy spot and someone wasn’t holding on–yes, it was that sort of a day). But I feel better today. So it goes.

Even though my time at the Lilly yesterday was a long five hours, there were the Australian and South African accents of two patrons, which was nice, and I did sit next to both the Oscar statuette that John Ford won for The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 and a brooch containing a lock of Edgar Allan Poe’s hair… I cannot complain too much; the Lilly always has its unexpected wonders.