Sarah Nolan

I find that my personal career goals have taken a somewhat winding road. When I first had the notion of becoming a librarian, I was a child, looking up at my primary school librarian. Mrs. Fair was amazing; she even had us call her “The Library Goddess”. I remember being delighted at the world of creativity that was opened to me, all through the books that “The Library Goddess” revealed to me. Even at the age of 5, I knew the value that creativity had for the imagination, and in turn, the value that it made for people. I knew that I wanted to join that world, and when I grew up, I wanted to be “The Future Library Goddess” for some other child.
Over the years, I have worked in a public library for 6 years, where I discovered the joy of life-long learning. I also learned the value of working in a team-like organizational culture. When I was choosing my library school, as I was still on the library path, I knew that being able to work collaboratively and communicate with other librarians would be a treasure. Upon entering the SILS programme, I learned about the concept that librarians were actually information professionals. While one might not think that a change in terminology would have that much of an effect on professional development, I felt a bit lost amdist the multitude of horizons that I could cross with this degree.
Many of the speakers, especially those within this final semester, introduced new exciting jobs that fit for an information professional. I particularly began to like the idea of an embedded librarian within a non-library organization. I liked the idea of leading others, having general free reign of the organization of information, being a solo-librarian working in the back with special collections. I feel like I was beginning to lose sight of why I wanted to become a librarian in the first place. While each of these other careers are very interesting, I now feel like they are not the right fit for me. Throughout the readings and class discussions of this module, I found myself being drawn back to a user-centric design, creativity and being the best support service that I can be. Issues like disintermediation do not scare me as they seem to have with some of my other colleagues. Instead, it inspired a renewed sense of uber-professionalism that I would aspire to employ in my own professional career. The readings and discussions helped me gain a sense of my professional goals and mission.
In particular, the individual assessment where we looked into a particular information professional career we were interested in, helped me make up my mind as to where I want to go. I realized that I preferred to work collaboratively, or at least have a tight team where everyone has the same service-oriented goals. By putting my users first, and not the interesting collections that various organizations have to offer, I am able to narrow down what I would like to do. I feel that the skills I have learned throughout my coursework in SILS will be of use to me, in my pursuit to provide the most viable information to my users. The coursework has also introduced a great deal of new ways to express and think about that information. I feel that the competencies of teamwork, research skills, organization of information and creativity/innovation define my professional career. While I am also proficient at a number of other skills and competencies, I feel that these are the most important ones that will help me during my career. They all link together in ways that will assist me in becoming someone else’s “Library Goddess”.