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Category: guest post

Alumni Librarians: Jessica Hronchek ’05

Image from Hope College

Editor’s note: We invited Lawrence alumni who have gone into library work to share with us what they do and how they got there.  Here’s another in a series.

During my time at Lawrence, I chose a double degree in Vocal Performance and Art History that sent me bouncing between both sides of College Avenue on a daily basis, the Mudd Library frequently serving as a midway landing spot for late-night study sessions for art history exams and a place to pick up needed scores, song translations, and research books. I didn’t work in the library but had moments that cemented it as a space and resource that was incredibly valuable to me. For example, a music theory summer research assistantship required me to browse through dozens of CDs in the collection looking for excerpts, and I spent a semester tracking down historic newspaper clippings in a dark corner on the microform reader for Dr. Alexis Boylan. I still remember when Dr. Michael Orr mentioned in a paper advising meeting, “So, there’s this tool called Jstor that you might find helpful…” that sent me down a rabbit hole of hours of keyword experimentation.

As I moved through my fourth out of five years, I contemplated graduate school in art history and decided that a museum internship would be helpful for figuring out my next steps. As I was looking for opportunities I noticed one at the Newberry Library in Chicago that I almost bypassed, but a very wise Dr. Boylan advised me to “leave no stone unturned” if it intrigued me. This was the internship that ended up working out. Stepping into that beautiful architectural space with its amazing historic collections would be enough to sell anyone on the career path of librarianship, but I found I also enjoyed my projects working in the photoduplication department, which involved photographing really interesting historic sources and digitizing print records. My supervisors saw my interest and encouraged me to think more seriously about library school. As I started to explore what library school looked like, I realized that librarianship would allow me to take my arts disciplinary interests and apply them to the field, which sold me on the career path. During my final year at Lawrence Colette Brautigam hired me in the Visual Resources Center at Wriston, and I was able to do more of this interesting work in image management that was beginning to tip towards the digital, both photographing and mounting slides for teaching, but also scanning and cataloging them to convert to electronic form.

The grad school search resulted in me attending Indiana University Bloomington where I pursued both my Masters in Library Science and a Masters in Art History. After bouncing between a number of on-campus library jobs, I landed a paid internship at DePauw University in their Visual Resource Center, which both funded my graduate work and provided amazing professional opportunities. My supervisor and other librarian colleagues were incredibly generous in the opportunities they gave me, allowing me to partner in creative projects, teach, and present at professional conferences so that I could network with the wider field of library professionals. This job also taught me what I was not; it was primarily an image cataloging and digitization job, and I learned over the course of three years that I needed something more hands-on with students. 

When I entered the job market, I looked for academic positions that would involve teaching, eventually landing the Research and Instruction position at Hope College that I have held for the last 10 years. I began as the humanities librarian but had the chance to pivot to the visual and performing arts after three years, again allowing me to apply my disciplinary passions to my work. It is wonderful working in a liberal arts environment, with students who are there to learn to be learners. My day-to-day work centers on classroom information literacy instruction, one-on-one research meetings with students and faculty, just in time support through our Research Help Desk, creation of digital research support tools, and collection development projects. My personal research interests center on how deeper knowledge of arts-specific research approaches can help libraries be more flexible supporters of creative scholarship. I also appreciate getting out of the library to connect with faculty and students and learn more about their interests. Participating in broader campus committees and projects over the years has allowed me to think more strategically about how libraries contribute to student learning. I also love not knowing what fascinating topic I’ll get to research on any given day. As Lawrence springboarded my journey as a life-long learner, it’s a privilege being in a field where I learn new things each and every day.

By Jessica Hronchek, Class of 2005

Alumni Librarians: Zachary Fannin ’12

Editor’s note: We invited Lawrence alumni who have gone into library work to share with us what they do and how they got there.  Here’s another in a series.

At the end of my junior year at Lawrence, while wrapping up a tutorial meeting with Professor Carr, she asked about my post-LU plans. I had myriad answers which, in reality meant I really had no answer at all. All my life, I had been able to answer the question “What do you want to do when you grow up?” without hesitation, but a variety of unexpected, ongoing, and often debilitating health problems screwed up my plans. I no longer had a clear vision. Professor Carr sensed my confusion, smiled and said, “You might want to look into library science.” The rest is history.

Epiphany! Libraries had always been my intellectual and emotional sanctuaries, but, strangely enough, I had never seriously looked into the profession. As long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by classification and organization, and not just of books: I’ve always been always curious about the philosophy and logic behind such notions, wanting to know how we describe things and classify them accordingly; the nature of the relationship between the concrete (e.g., a copy of a book) and the abstract (e.g., what a book is about); whether we organize things just for convenience, by convention, or in a manner allusive to deeper assumptions (consistent with the world carved at its joints). It only made sense to pursue a career where I could put these questions to the test and, yes, be surrounded by books, but in truth, that’s merely a bonus to my job; librarianship deals with far more than analog books nowadays. (Yes, dusty, bibliographic curmudgeons, I qualified the term book!)

Thus, I enrolled at UW-Madison’s iSchool (formerly SLIS–School of Library and Information Studies; now the Information School, a humorously vague title). Just as I matriculated, unexpected and unfortunate personal events reared their ugly heads once again, forcing me to take things at a much slower pace than originally planned. What I discovered was breathing room, allowing me to concentrate on doing a stellar job on fewer assignments and gain invaluable work experience, all of which led me to my current, dare I say it, perfect job.

A starter job as a pager in the Special Collections Department (which I loved because it allowed me to go into the vaults and inhale the archival fumes), gave me a chance to do some basic cataloging, and returned me to the meticulous world of bibliographic control. It reminded me of learning the basics of the card catalog back in grade school, when computers weren’t yet ubiquitous. Here it was: a way to utilize my love of organizing, to implement my abstract interests, and to facilitate information access and retrieval (with no appreciation from reference staff—Kidding!…kinda…).

Along the grad school way (actually, before I even started classes), I tripped over a job in the UW Law School Library. The Reference Librarian asked me to help with the library’s brand new institutional repository. Projects involved creating and maintaining collections of digital resources significant to the school’s history. I stuck with it all four years I was a student, and discovered an interest working at the intersection of analog and digital data—a fascination with the juxtaposition of old and new technology (e.g., I created electronic records for archived manuscripts and digitized old, brittle faculty photos). I worked on the faculty scholarship collection, the digital photo collection, and, my favorite, the oral histories. The Law School Library served as a guinea pig testing the new Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), an open-source software program facilitating metadata creation for interview recordings (involving former and current faculty/staff members). I indexed, summarized, and subject cataloged entire interviews (ranging in length from 2 to 8+ hours), listening two or three times over to be sure I captured all that might be of interest to patrons. The histories were fascinating, and I enjoyed creating data that (I hoped) would help patrons find what they needed for their research. I plan to do likewise here in DC, working on improving the hitherto neglected metadata for the LOC’s Web Archive.

Speaking of the LOC, shortly before I fully entered the dreaded world of job applications, I came across an interesting opening on the iSchool’s jobs blog: a new residential program at the Library of Congress. Knowing the chances were slim at best, I took a shot in the dark and applied. Thereafter I thought little of it, staying realistic and increasingly preoccupying myself with job applications elsewhere. I had several initial interviews but no job materialized. Then, in February, I received a phone call from the Library of Congress. A section head, the librarian who created the new residency program, asked me if she could interview me. A month and a half after the interview, I was offered and accepted a place in the program.

Six months into the residency, my section decided to hang onto me permanently. I can now call myself a full-fledged librarian. I plan to move up the ranks in my division to a point where I can catalog independently and train other employees. Down the road, my supervisor will lend me to another section to help subject catalog their influx of philosophy materials (I majored in philosophy at LU and continue to study it on my own time). I also plan to get involved in the BIBFRAME Initiative, a program testing the new Bibliographic Framework data scheme to replace MARC (finally!–don’t tell a veteran cataloger I said that). The scheme will streamline cataloging across different library systems and allow users to access the institutional catalogs outside their ivory towers (e.g., when you look up a title via Google, search results finally will include library holdings). As digital libraries continue to grow, metadata remains crucial to navigating bibliographical cyberspace. I’d like to help patrons maneuver through the maze of online resources with clear, concise, and consistent metadata.

I am unbelievably fortunate to have begun my career in the largest, most respected cultural heritage institution in the world.

Thanks, again, Karen. (And thanks, Pete, for letting me pick your brain about the profession.)

By Zachary Fannin, Class of 2012

Alumni Librarians: Elizabeth Bast ’89

Image of Elizabeth BastEditor’s note: We invited Lawrence alumni who have gone into library work to share with us what they do and how they got there.  Here’s another in a series.

Envy. I admit it. That’s what I feel when I think about students in college and graduate school today considering entering the library field (including my son, a current student at Lawrence). Not to be too “back in my day” about it, but when I attended Lawrence in the late ‘80s I can positively state that being a librarian never entered my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my local public library in West Bend, Wisconsin and was a frequent visitor to my school libraries and even the good old Mudd while a student at Lawrence, but it’s hard to describe to students today how much technology and culture have transformed libraries (and the role of the librarian).

Quiet. Sedate. Solitary. The libraries I used to know were filled with knowledge but were not particularly dynamic places. Going to the library (of any kind) meant entering a serious place where mostly silent, individual exploration took place. The stereotypical librarian was a “shusher” with glasses and a prim demeanor. She (typically) served in a gatekeeper role where orderly systems of classification ruled and being a patron had a definite “supplicant” feel. It was not a world I ever envisioned finding the most engaging, dynamic, and fulfilling career of my life. And yet…

If I could have majored in “Liberal Arts” at Lawrence I would have. I was interested in everything and took as long as I possibly could to pick a major, and even then chose one that spanned two disciplines (back then Lawrence had an Anthropology/Sociology department). Plus I threw in an Education minor and earned my teaching license in 7-12 Broad Fields Social Studies. Lawrence made it very difficult to leave the world of learning, so even though I was prepared to enter the classroom as a teacher, I decided to extend my studies into graduate school and entered the Masters in Sociology program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I completed the program with a thesis based on original research on the topic of urban education. After getting married and moving to New York City so my new husband could pursue graduate studies, I entered the world of publishing as an editorial assistant for an editor working on academic titles in the fields of Sociology and Philosophy, while I spent nights teaching GED and ESL classes at a non-profit community organization. Upon returning to Wisconsin three years later I took a job as an academic advisor with a program called Upward Bound, run out of the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan campus and three years after that I became pregnant with my first child and found myself moving again so my husband could pursue his career. Whew.

Taking time off from paid employment to be a stay-at-home parent to my two children was definitely not time wasted (in fact I highly recommend it if money and circumstance allow), but it did create a sizable hole in my resume when I decided to return to the work world when my younger child started Kindergarten. I knew I wanted a career again, a profession that would be part of my identity and allow me to fulfill my potential. Traditional teaching was obviously an option, but I didn’t have the same passion for it that I did when I was younger. I considered other roles within the education field, such as counselor, or reading specialist, because I had really enjoyed the one-on-one relationships I built with students when I worked for Upward Bound, but I knew I needed to go back to school on some level to refresh my knowledge and credentials before anyone would hire me.

I turned to the website for the UW-Milwaukee Graduate School to see what programs were available that might allow me to combine taking courses in-person with an online component, because I still had young kids and driving 35 miles from my home in Racine, Wisconsin was not always possible. It is there, while perusing the various programs, that I first laid eyes on the School of Information Studies (SOIS). Have you ever had one of those moments where everything just came into focus? I was excited and surprised. Course titles like The Organization of Information, Information Access and Retrieval, Metadata, and Information Ethics intrigued me. What sold me was the ability to combine a Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) with the certification for a School Library Media Specialist license (K-12) by taking courses like Library Services for Children and Young Adults and Multicultural Children’s Literature. It felt like a great fit, so I enrolled in January of 2008 and never looked back.

How had this field escaped my attention all this time? Well, a little thing called the Internet took over the world in the time since I left Lawrence in 1989, and libraries and librarians have been leading the way as innovators and navigators of this brave new world. Now I work as a Library Media Specialist (sometimes referred to as Teacher Librarian) in a public middle school serving more than 800 students in a very culturally and economically diverse community. I am certainly proud of the collection of books I have selected and curated over the years but I am not the English-major book nerd that is often part of the librarian profile. I approach my profession as a Lawrence graduate, a liberal arts nerd who is fascinated by and knowledgeable about many different fields and topics. I collaborate with my social studies, math, science, art, music, and even gym teachers as much as I do my English faculty. The online world is a wonderful and terrifying place for kids and adults and a large part of my value to my school is my ability to make technology and digital information accessible, manageable, and meaningful. I collaborate, I troubleshoot, I teach, I counsel, I provide inspiration and sometimes refuge. Every day is a different schedule and a different challenge. I get to know and serve every student and teacher in my building. I also have chosen to participate in my profession by serving on task forces and committees for the American Library Association (ALA) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), which is just the cherry on top of my already awesome job because I get to know and work with amazing librarians from around the country. (I’m currently serving on the Odyssey Award 2019 committee which selects the best audiobook created for children each year).

So, yeah. Do I wish I had found this career earlier? Absolutely, but I also recognize that the school library of my childhood was nothing like the one I work in today, so I just have to be grateful that I’m able to spend the 2nd half of my working life in a job I truly love (and also a little envious of those who can embark on a vital career in libraries right out of college).

By Elizabeth Bast, Class of 1989

Student Research in the Library: John O’Neill

John O’Neill is a double-degree student from Reno, Nevada. He’s been at Lawrence for five years and will earn his BM in French Horn Performance and his BA in Russian and Government in a just few short weeks!

John is also a much-beloved library student worker, and has been the night supervisor at the Circulation Desk. He definitely knows his way around the Mudd and offers great insight into using the library to your best advantage.

Upon being asked what he would like his fellow students to know about the Mudd Library, he responded,

“Get to know the staff, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and always go upstairs to find your own books because you will come down with an entire stack of useful materials.”

Read on to learn more about John and the fascinating and important research he’s been pursuing in the Mudd!

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John O’Neill holds a 2002 issue of Appleton’s local newspaper, The Post Crescent, which he used to research Appleton’s sister city, Kurgan, Russia.

John, what are your plans after graduation?

I am planning to travel to Ukraine for the summer to work with an NGO there that works with under-served regions of the country. After that I will be back in Appleton and hopefully onto Chicago in the fall.

What have you been researching in the Mudd Library?

Over the past two terms I have been working on my senior experience in government. For this project I am profiling the Fox Cities-Kurgan Sister City Relationship. The partnership had an astonishing period of peak activity from the 1990s through 2013, but it has since been dormant. Some of the partnership’s major accomplishments included a 2003 security summit hosted in Appleton with keynote from Mikhail Gorbachev, opening of medical facilities and a domestic violence shelter in Kurgan, obtaining funding for a project to decommission a significant stockpile of chemical weapons in the Kurgan region, and over 100 educational exchanges between universities, high schools, and middle schools in both regions.

What library materials and resources have been the most useful to you in pursuing this research?

For this project I ended up using a wide variety of resources that the library offers students. I took advantage of the main collection, ILL, and electronic databases for most of my background research. Later, I relied on our wonderful reference librarians, who pointed me to contacts at the Appleton Public Library and the Appleton Historical Society. Finally, I learned to be grateful for the VCRs and microform readers that the library makes available to students. Most of my resources were on VHS tapes from the 90s, so having those VCRs on hand was absolutely fantastic.

What are you hoping to learn or gain from this research?

One of my main objectives was to learn how sustainable local organizations are built. This involved finding out how Fox Cities-Kurgan got its start, what program leaders hoped to accomplish, and why it eventually entered a decline. As I progressed in my research I found many other sister cities around the country with similar stories of huge growth followed by a swift decline. This led me to ask just how much these relationships are subject to the broader political climate and what their place is in the global geopolitical environment.

Why do you think this research is important?

For me, The Fox Cities-Kurgan Partnership has been an inspirational example of international partnership that transcends political boundaries. Not only did the program accomplish some enormous objectives that we wouldn’t normally associate with smaller towns like Appleton, but it also forged lasting friendships between the countless exchange participants, volunteers, host families, and students who were involved. By increasing awareness of the program I hope to re-spark the interest in international advocacy that the program was founded around.

How did you become interested in this line of research?

A couple of years ago I found the partnership’s website, which hadn’t been updated since 2013. I later tried to search for Kurgan on the Post Crescent’s website, but due to archiving of the newspaper, my search returned no results. The disappearance of this program from the public eye made me a little sad and I began reaching out to program leaders and participants to find out more.

John, this sounds like really important work. We are so excited to see where you take what you’ve learned and to see the grand adventures that are in store for you! Thank you for sharing.

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Alumni Librarians: Emily Passey Vieyra ‘08

Emily (right) with celebrity librarian and author, Nancy Pearl

Editor’s note: We invited Lawrence alumni who have gone into library work to share with us what they do and how they got there.  Here’s another in a series. 

Thanks to the librarian alums who have gone before me on this blog and set the tone of telling the interesting story of how they came to be a librarian! It is one of those professions that prompts that question. From the outside, it’s not totally clear what librarians do. So it’s even less clear why or how someone came to find themselves in the role (other than being big readers, which not all librarians are.)

So here’s my story. During my four years at Lawrence, I was always on what felt like a pretty clear path: I would get really good grades, get my BA, and then go to grad school.

Senior year, I was nearing the end of that path. I had decided to explore journalism after a few years writing and editing for The Lawrentian. I was also armed with the knowledge that, despite working on an Honor’s Project in English, I did not want to pursue higher education in that subject because I did not want to be a professor. After a trip to New York City to explore NYU’s journalism program, I was totally disillusioned. I had a Rory Gilmore moment while there. I was used to being a sort of big fish at a small high school and then in the English department at Lawrence, but visiting a top journalism school in the Big Apple I felt like a single-celled organism floating in the Pacific Ocean. And I felt as spineless as one, too. In the end I graduated and then moved home with no plan.

Through twists and turns, I found myself 18 months post-Lawrence doing the tremendously unsatisfying work of a classified ad salesperson at a newspaper in North Dakota. One day I was walking my dogs and listening to a podcast of the public radio show, To The Best of Our Knowledge (produced right here in Wisconsin!). They were talking about public libraries, and profiled a book called This Book is Overdue! which I promptly went to the library to check out. In pretty quick succession, I applied for grad school, moved to Illinois, and spent two amazing years at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying library science and working as a graduate assistant at the Undergraduate Library. Yes, Lawrentians: they have one whole library just for undergrads! Big schools are so weird!

Now, I am the Assistant Director at Shorewood Public Library.

A few important things happened along the way to becoming a librarian, many of them at Lawrence. I’ll use these experiences to give you an idea of what a librarian does, at least this librarian.

I didn’t have one of those highly coveted jobs at the Mudd, but my jobs on campus gave me what turned out to be relevant experience for what I do as a librarian. Editing at The Lawrentian taught me to work strategically with a team, focus my creativity and turn work around quickly for a deadline. Tutoring at the Center for Teaching and Learning taught me to communicate tricky concepts in easy to understand ways, lead by example, and engage the learner in the process. I call on the multi-dimensional education I got at Lawrence when someone asks me for help finding a definition of modernism in poetry, or finding information on African explorers in the New World, or when I select new music for our collection, or when I write and edit library policies and procedures, or when I have to clean up puke. If only I were joking.

When a young woman asked me recently why people started writing books (I can’t make this stuff up), the librarian in me had the patience and forethought to answer her question as simply as I could (no library patron needs to hear a dissertation, but many want to give you one), but it was the Lawrentian in me who had the knowledge and confidence to answer.

By Emily Passey Vieyra, Class of 2008

“A Group of Completely Ordinary Objects”

Madeira Seaman’s solo show “A Group of Completely Ordinary Objects” opens today, May 3rd, in the Mudd Gallery. For the show Seaman created surreal and wonderful sculptures using reworked old toys. When you enter the gallery, or as Seaman calls it “the Playroom”, you are immediately welcomed by a message written by the artist in crayon inviting you to play with all of the toys you see. Seaman writes that they used toys as their sculptural medium because they saw them as a way to explore human behaviors and relationships.

Madeira Seaman’s solo show “A Group of Completely Ordinary Objects” in the Mudd Gallery

We are incredibly excited to have the idiosyncratic work of Madeira Seaman on display in the Mudd. There will be a reception for the show on May 14th before the show closes on the 16th.  Be sure to spend some time playing with Seaman’s toys before then.

Madeira Seaman’s solo show “A Group of Completely Ordinary Objects” in the Mudd Gallery

A Stone of Hope in the Mudd Gallery

A Stone of Hope, an exhibit which opened in the Mudd Gallery this past Wednesday, explores Black life in the Fox Cities from the 1700s up until the present day. The exhibit, organized by the History Museum at the Castle, has traveled throughout the Fox Cities over the last two years and is making it’s return to the Seeley G. Mudd library.

The exhibit tells a multifaceted story of the lives of Black Fox City residents. Before the 20th century, there was a growing black population many of whom were veterans of the the Civil War, business owners, and community leaders. In fact Lawrence admitted several residents of the Fox Cities as early as 1856.  However with this growth of the Black population and social standing also came a rise in racially motivated harassment, discrimination, and violence. By 1920 most Black residents had left the Fox Cities. This continued throughout the twentieth century as Appleton was an unofficial “sundown town” well into the 1960s.

A Stone of Hope confronts Appleton and Lawrence’s long history of white supremacy, but in doing so also honors the many activists that have worked tirelessly to challenge these structures – in the area and throughout the country. The title of the exhibit is taken from a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. at UW Fox Valley in 1967 in which he challenges the white community to work towards inclusion saying the Fox Cities could emerge from a “mountain of hate” as a “stone of hope” in the Civil Rights Movement. While King imagined the Fox Cities as a haven from racism there is still no doubt a great deal of work to be done to achieve this. The exhibit ends looking towards the many Fox City residents  who continue to strive towards this goal.

A Stone of Hope

A Stone of Hope, which was made possible in part by the work of the Mudd’s very own Erin Dix and Antoinette Powell, will be on view in the Mudd Gallery until April 20, after which it will be moved to the Conservatory. Be sure to spend some time with this information and impactful exhibit before it closes.

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In the Mudd Gallery: Wonder and Resonance

Wonder and Resonance is a student-curated exhibit on view in the Mudd Gallery until Monday, March 12th. Using selections from Lawrence’s Anthropology and Archaeology collection, Manuel Ferreira crafted a show which explores the cultural meanings behind various artifacts. Ferreira encourages the viewer to experience the wonder and resonance of these cultural objects writing, “Wonder is the power of an object to grab the attention of a viewer, to convey a sense of enchantment and charisma. Resonance is the power of an object to go beyond itself, to convey the complex and dynamic cultural, historical, and personal forces that created it.”

Mudd Gallery - “The Story Behind the Artifacts” a solo show by Manuel Ferreira

Unlike a traditional museum exhibition, which would likely separate artifacts by time period, culture, and geography, Ferreira includes objects which cross all these boundaries. Walking through you’ll see an Aztec death whistle which dates back to the 12th century a few feet from Chinese ivory. The rich and diverse selection of the exhibit encourages the viewer to consider the consistent power objects have throughout cultures and time.

Mudd Gallery - “The Story Behind the Artifacts” a solo show by Manuel Ferreira

More than just present the viewer with a beautiful variety of objects, Ferreira pushes us to consider what goes into building a collection asking among other things: how did Lawrence come in possession of these objects? Why are they displayed the way they are and how does that affect my experience?  The result is an affecting and intimate experience with objects you otherwise are unlikely to have.

Mudd Gallery - “The Story Behind the Artifacts” a solo show by Manuel Ferreira

We at the Mudd are incredibly excited to house this exhibit and hope you all have a chance to see it before it closes Monday, March 12.

 

 

 

Alumni Librarians: Kathy Abromeit ’85

Editor’s note: We invited Lawrence alumni who have gone into library work to share with us what they do and how they got there.  Here’s another in a series. 

While a student at Lawrence, I worked in the music library under the supervision of faculty member, Paul Hollinger. At that time, it was a small collection housed in the conservatory, but we all ate up that collection like children in a candy store. Additionally, I was writing an honor’s thesis on Anna Bon, 18th-century composer and her flute sonatas, so I was getting a lot of library time both working in the library and doing extensive research myself. I studied flute with Ernestine Whitman, and both of us were very excited to be exploring Bon’s work. My advisor for the thesis was Professor Marjory Irvin, and she was the one who instilled my love of research, writing, and scholarly discussion. I came to love the hunt for information, and Professor Irvin helped me to understand that the process of research is often not a straight line from where you begin to where you finish, but that it is messy, that it is connected, that and it requires an ability to tolerate ambiguity. I think she was actually teaching me about life without me knowing it at the time!

Following Lawrence, I began graduate school in musicology. I had a teaching assistantship and was on the path to complete a PhD in musicology. To supplement my income, I also got a job in the music library helping with the copy cataloging of sound recordings. Before long I started appreciating the breadth of a typical day in the library. When I would visualize my life as a musicologist, I saw a tube that was somewhat narrow but tremendously deep. When I would visualize my life as a music librarian, the tube was much broader and offered exceptional breadth but not necessarily the depth of a teaching faculty member. I know it’s not that simplistic, but what I learned about myself, from my visualization of the two professions, is that I needed a career path that offered me a full span of knowledge and exploration. Essentially, I needed a big sandbox that included music, research, expansive learning and service, and the ability to influence the canon. It seemed that librarianship could be a viable profession that met the requirements.

In talking with a few librarians and exploring the job market, I decided to switch to the master’s in musicology, rather than the PhD, and apply for library school. I’ve never looked back. It’s been the perfect career choice for me. I work at the Oberlin Conservatory Library, and it is located on the campus of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. It was founded in 1865 and is the second oldest conservatory and oldest continually operating conservatory in the United States. Like Lawrence, Oberlin is a liberal arts college and conservatory of music, the best of both worlds! My daily work in the Oberlin Conservatory Library focuses on public services activities. I spend my days doing information literacy work, conducting research appointments as well as supervising the public services operations of our branch library. It’s a very busy library!

After spending a great deal of time thinking about breadth and depth, my thoughts have changed. My work as a music librarian has afforded me the opportunity to become moderately knowledgeable across a domain, and deeply knowledgeable within a strand of that domain. It has been a profession with a continual learning curve as technology advances and changes. While at times it feels somewhat overwhelming, I appreciate the constant challenge that comes with an ever-changing landscape. I remind myself that I did ask for a large sandbox!

I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working with a wide range of musicians and scholars ranging from the undergraduates in the conservatory to the budding rap artist to the chorus member in the Metropolitan Opera to the seasoned soloist who is looking for a bit of information for their award-winning CD.

Librarianship is a meaningful profession that has given me tremendous opportunities, intellectual growth, and created a framework for my professional life. That care started at Lawrence where I was a first-generation college student who needed mentoring and guidance, and Lawrence took great care to develop me as a leader despite me coming from an economically-disadvantaged family. That spirit of support helped me to identify that I too wanted to further social justice in my library and research work. It started with Professor Irvin introducing me to music by women composers. Since that time, my path has taken me through the creation of a large folksong database, co-created with the journal, SingOut!, that indexes anthologies of folksong collections, publishing two reference books on African-American spirituals, and I’m working on a third.

I feel blessed that I had the faculty trifecta of Paul Hollinger, Ernestine Whitman, and Marjory Irvin along with Dean Colin Murdoch to launch me on my way and teach me, in the Lawrence way, to engage, develop multiple interests, and give back to my community.

By Kathy Abromeit, Class of 1985

You can read Kathy’s honor’s project in Lux, our institutional repository.

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History of the Book Exhibit

Here at The Mudd we love books – we acquire them, we organize them, we help students engage with them everyday – but it’s rare that we get the chance to truly reflect on how books have shaped and been shaped by the course of history. However, we are lucky enough to host an exhibit created entirely by Lawrence students as apart of Prof. Garth Bond’s class “History of the Book”. Under the guidance of Professor Bond and librarian Jill Thomas, several Lawrence student’s engaged critically with selections from our special collection to examine how the role of books have changed throughout time and suggest perhaps how we have changed with them.

Topics range from Catherine Stowe and Harriet Beecher Stowes’ 1869 guide The American Woman’s Home: or Principles of Domestic Science to Artist Books to an analysis of 15th century Christian books. The exhibit, featuring the work of students Sara Armstrong, Allison Brooks-Conrad, Rufino C. Cacho, Anna Cohen, Yarely Covarrubias, and Hanwenheng (Billy) Liu will be up until January 15th. This exhibit is a special opportunity to view some pieces from our special collections in person outside of the Milwaukee Downer room, so be sure to stop by the Mudd before then. For those of you who want to spend some more time with these pieces, selections are digitized in the database Artstor under Selections from Special Collections, Seeley G, Mudd Library. Photographs of the exhibit are available in the History of the Books album.

      These precious books alongside the work of our students provide great insight into the lasting impact books have not only in our own lives but also in the lives of those who lived long before us and surely those who will live long after we’re gone.