Spring Term 2020: Interview/Library Visit Reflection

This term, I met with several librarians and a conservator to learn more about their work and experiences in libraries. I met with Abby Merritt (Carleton’s Conservator), Lisa Pillow (Carleton’s Collections Strategy and Development Librarian), Brad Schaffner (Carleton’s College Librarian), Cecily Marcus (Curator of the University of Minnesota’s Givens Collection of African American Literature, the Performing Arts Archives, and the Upper Midwest Literary Archives) and Rachel Mattson (Curator of the University of Minnesota’s Jean-Nikolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies).  Due to the pandemic, all of these meetings took place virtually. These meetings are the final piece of a long term project during which I have conducted over a dozen interviews in order to better understand the workings of the library as a way of preparing me for library school.

While nearly all of the questions were different for each meeting, they often covered the same kinds of themes: their career path, learning about what their job entails, often learning about how their role interacts with other positions in the library or parts of the university, and advice that they might have for someone starting into the field of librarianship.

The interviews covered a wide variety of subjects, and so the following are highlights from each in lieu of a more general summary. My first conversation of the term was with Lisa Pillow. I was fascinated to learn about Carleton’s collections development strategies and how courses and faculty play a large part in the selection. In addition, I thought it was really interesting when Lisa explained how she tries to balance continuing access resources with perpetual access electronic resources so that Carleton’s collections can be prepared for events such as budget cuts or changes in the materials available in continuing access resources. In my conversation with Abby Merrit, I learned a lot about the process of preserving materials and the steps she takes to assess materials and to work with other departments to make sure the item is being preserved in a way that makes the most sense for how it is used. When I met with College Librarian Brad Schaffner, I was really interested in learning more about what being a College Librarian entailed. I was really interested to learn about Brad’s tenure as a Slavic Librarian before becoming Carleton’s College Librarian, and I also was interested to hear about his work with national and international consortia like OCLC. Valerie, Claudia, Emily, Rebecca, and I all met with Cecily Marcus and Rachel Mattson to learn about the Givens and Tretter Collections. It was fascinating to talk with them about their understandings of what archives are (Cecily brought up a really interesting idea that the absences from a collection can be just as important as what is in a collection), as well as to hear about how these collections work with other projects and collections.

As with everything these days, all of these conversations were virtual, and so I also often asked about how the pandemic is affecting their work. It was really interesting to hear the range of changes happening from Brad and Lisa thinking on library-wide terms, Abby getting used to her new job at Carleton having only just started before lockdown started, and Cecily and Rachel thinking about how the process of accessing materials will change once things start to open again.

I learned so much from these four conversations, and I am so grateful to all of them for participating, as well as to Claudia for helping to organize them (especially the meeting with Cecily and Rachel). These conversations allowed me to continue to learn more about different areas of the library and different kinds of collections, which I really enjoyed and I think the opportunity to learn about all of these different areas will help me as I move on to library school in the fall.