Rachel

Newlin Reflective Essay 1

Saturdays were for books. If you were to visit the Buder branch of the St. Louis Public

Library on a Saturday, you would find a little girl sitting in the aisles, having chosen too many

books to leave with, making a hard decision about which ones she would take home. An hour

later, you might travel to the B. Dalton bookstore across the street, and you would find that little

girl again, doing the exact same thing. Somewhere near her, you would see a perfectly patient

older woman, waiting for the hard choice to be made. Exhausted with the effort of choosing, that

little girl and her grandma would end up at Steak N Shake, where that little girl would have an

itch to take her new books out, but hunger would get the better of her. Without fail, my

Saturdays were spent this way, and I am forever grateful to my grandmother for allowing me to

be the girl sitting in the aisle.

Fast forward some years to my junior year of high school, where my love of literature

and libraries has only grown. As a low-income individual who was lucky enough to be placed in

the best high school in the state of Missouri, Metro, the coursework was hard and finding the

resources and the help to keep up with my peers was harder. When I was younger, the library

was a place for books and fun, but now it became a place that provided me with the homework

help and computer access I needed to stay on pace with my better equipped peers. The library

was a sanctuary for me, a place I could always count on to level the playing field. That sanctuary

deepened for me when my partner-in-crime, my grandmother, passed away. In the wake of her

death, I struggled to find ways to make her life something that I took with me everyday. The

lessons she taught me about kindness and politeness, of course, but more than that, my love of

literature and always insatiable curiosity. One day, it occurred to me that I could become a
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librarian. At the last minute of a Chicago college tour, I asked if we could add one more stop:

Dominican University.

Turns out, that stop would end up changing my life in countless ways. Chaperoned by my

high school friends father, he complained about the traffic to the suburb of River Forest, and the

haphazard way in which I added another stop. But as we entered Dominicans campus, I knew it

was worth it. I have the distinct memory of my friend turning to me and saying: This is perfect

for you! And right she was. Knowing that I preferred to move only once for school, I decided to

make Dominican my home for my undergrad and graduate education. I almost immediately

applied for jobs in the University library, and found myself working in Government Documents.

Through the years, I transitioned to different departments of the library (circulation, technical

services, reference) and fell in love with it all. When it was time to apply for the School of

Library and Information Science, I felt prepared.

My time in the LIS program began a little earlier than most, as I was enrolled in the

accelerated program. As I finished out my B.A. in Political Science, I also enrolled in two of the

introductory courses for the program. While I felt prepared for the program, that by no means

meant that I knew what I was getting myself into. One of my first projects in the program was

my Privacy in Librarianship research paper (outcome 1a), where I was introduced to the level of

professionalism and commitment that came along with a career in librarianship. For me, that

assignment was the beginning of a journey where I slowly realized the more noble and ethnical

concerns of my future profession. I was all in.

As I graduated with my B.A. and fully immersed myself in my graduate program, one of

the biggest differences from my undergraduate education to the LIS program came in the form of

my peers. My expectations had been that my peers would be as they always had been with
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differing levels of interest and skill. To my delighted surprise, I found that the vast majority of

classmates were just as dedicated and engaged as I was. Where in the past, I had held the mantle

of leadership for any group effort, I found myself in groups with classmates that all wanted equal

say and were equally interested in making the best thing possible. This was especially evident in

one of my very favorite assignments, my metadata creation project (outcome 5c). For this

assignment, groups were taxed with creating an online exhibit, mapping metadata from our

schema to another, and then creating full records from our mappings. Throughout the process,

communication was important. We utilized Facebook messaging, email, and Google Docs to

work together when we couldnt physically be together. Additionally, we worked hard to

understand one anothers perspectives, and always ended up compromising. The entire

experience was immersive, where were struggled to sometimes find common ground, but in the

end, all wanted the best possible project.

As my courses continued, I found that my experience with my group was not out of the

ordinary. It was impressive and stimulating to be surrounded by those that were so committed to

the profession and their success. Another way that this manifested itself was through my

internships. Where my course mates were dedicated and professional, my internship supervisors

were knowledgeable and supportive. My first internship experience was with the Art Institute of

Chicagos Ryerson and Burnham art libraries, where I was able to explore my interest in art

history (my minor in undergrad) as well as a potential future in special libraries. My supervisor,

Karen Stafford, was dedicated to my learning goals in technical services, and sought out a

project that was interesting and unique: authority records (outcome 3c). I interned at the Ryerson

for 8 months, and not only did I learn a lot about cataloging in art libraries and NACO

organizations, but also about utilizing resources to evaluate the integrity of the data in a catalog.
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This internship deepened my love of technical services and metadata, and was a big influence in

my coursework. I continued to take courses that were technical services focused, including

metadata, advanced cataloging, and knowledge management. My Ryerson internship, matched

with my work as the Graduate Technical Services Assistant at the Rebecca Crown Library,

proved to me that technical services was the right direction for my career.

In addition to my budding love of technical services, my second internship introduced a

new love. In January of 2017, I began interning at the Studs Terkel Radio Archive (outcome 1c),

where I quickly learned the ways that my library science education could support a social justice

mission. I was impressed with the seamless way that my metadata tagging of Terkels programs

fit into a mission where exposure and access were very important. Working with Dominican

alums Allison Schein and Grace Radkins, I learned how to use my technical and theoretical

knowledge to serve not only the larger mission of an organization, but a larger mission overall.

At STRA, I learned the basics of digital archives, where I was able to put together the work I was

doing and the history that was being preserved. Each program that I worked on, I gained

knowledge and insight to different events of that time period (outcome 5a), and used that

knowledge to provide access points for future listeners. My time at STRA (which continues, as I

am a permanent volunteer) has taught me how important a social justice mission is to the work

that library professionals do, and my professional identity has grown because of it.

As STRA focused my attention on the ways that technical knowledge could become

advocacy, I turned my education towards that technical knowledge and learning as much as I

could. This took the form of my Graduate Technical Services Assistant position at the Rebecca

Crown Library, where I was able to test out the things that I was learning in class: advanced

cataloging, especially. In my advanced cataloging course, I began to take the step from a focus
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on books to the wider world of description. In this course, we learned how to properly catalog all

types of items: digital books, Playaway devices, CDs, DVDs, and even three-dimensional

objects. One of the cumulative projects in this course was an online cataloging portfolio, where

we could showcase what we had learned (outcome 3b). Through the experience of creating the

records for this assignment, my love of cataloging and description only deepened. While the

work was certainly harder, my resolve to enter the professional with some role in technical

services did, too. As my practical cataloging skills developed, my curiosity for theoretical and

historical knowledge of this part of the profession did as well. In my Metadata course, we were

required to research two metadata schemas and create reports on them (outcome 4b). During the

course of this assignment, my knowledge of the ways that information can be described and

serve different purposes for different types of organizations developed. I knew that I loved

working with library materials, but as I explored CDWA (Categories for the Description of

Works of Art) and EAD (Encoded Archival Description) I began to consider how more

specialized schemas can provide for different organizations, like a museum or art library, as I

was interested in pursuing. Especially, from this assignment, I learned that my technical

knowledge of description and access was easily transferrable to different professional

organizations and environments, which was an exciting prospect.

While my love for cataloging and description grew, I knew that it was not only place that

my skills needed to develop. As I wrapped up my undergraduate education, I applied for a job at

the River Forest Public Library, where I was hoping to gain insight about how a public library

functions and if the environment was preferable to the academic and special libraries I had

experience thus far. I applied for a Materials Services Assistant position, and received an offer

shortly after. As a Materials Services Assistant, my primary job is to check in and out materials,
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while providing information on events, policy changes, and other relevant information. At a

small library, I am lucky to have learned much more than that. I regularly staff the adult and

childrens service desks, as well as provide reference from the circulation desk when necessary.

Over the past two years, I have presented at our staff training days, as well as support

programming for children and teens. Through this experience, I learned that I loved the mission

of public libraries, where everyone is welcomed and everyone is served equally. As a very

friendly person, I love the daily interactions with patrons, and I find myself looking forward to

every shift. Having focused a good portion of my courses on cataloging and metadata, my love

of a public-facing job surprised me. As much as I loved cataloging, I also loved staffing the

public desks and working on programming. Realizing this, I began to take some courses that

would serve me well at public desks. Among these were Readers Advisory, as well as a

seminar-based course with the past Follett chair, Dr. Lankes. In this course, we explored

advocacy in librarianship. Each week, we were required to come up with conversation starters

(outcome 5b) that summed up important elements of our reading of Dr. Lankes book, Expect

More. Through doing this work, I realized my passion for public libraires and the work that they

do, and began to see myself working in one professionally. As my professional identity grows, I

realize that I would like a role that leaves space for technical services and public services.

This realization has served me well in my most recent position. As a Technical Services

Assistant at the Elmwood Park Public Library, I am able to take the technical skills I have

learned in academic and special libraries, and use it in the environment I am most passionate

about. Additionally, I staff a public desk weekly, which allows for the kind of overlap in

technical and public work that I have come to enjoy. I do not think that without the experiences

of my coursework and internships, I would have arrived to the professional place I now occupy.
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At the beginning of my journey at Dominican, my career goals were tinted with a sentimentality

that I am grateful for it has motivated me throughout the program to do my very best, and learn

all that I can. But as I began the program, I had no idea what type of librarian I wanted to be, or

where I would see myself as I graduated the program. For awhile, I was very focused on just

taking the first job I was offered. As I moved through my coursework and realized where my

passions were, I focused my energy on the ways that I could end up bridging a communication

and skills gap between technical services and public-facing librarian roles. The more work

experience I had, the more the apparent separateness of technical services from other library

roles was disheartening, and I felt my education at Dominican propelling me forward to make

this a bigger part of my professional identity overall. I am still the little girl that loves the

dilemma of choosing a book to read, but I also infinitely more concerned with how I can share

that book with patrons in the catalog and at the public desk. As I search for professional

positions, I hope to find myself in a place where I am both creating access to information while

interacting with my clientele in a genuine way. While it is not the exact role I saw for myself in

the wake of my grandmothers passing, I think that she would be proud to see the ways my

passion for literature has been nurtured into a passion for information, access, and genuine

relationship building.