It may seem odd to include (systems and IT) together with (administration and leadership), but bear with me: there’s a logic to it, a pattern, and a history.

I started out as a pure tech services geek. I worked in what I called the “cave,” literally a nearly windowless former warehouse room in the basement, shared with the network adminstrator, full of boxes of books and computers in various stages of deconstruction, I didn’t have a lot of patron contact at first, and liked it that way. But very quickly, I started getting interested in library programming, interacting with the other staff and patrons a little more, and learning about library theory.

It was necessity that finally got me out of the cave: we were renovating a historic building for a new facility, the Director was dealing with building project stuff, and ongoing library operations fell on the shoulders the Assistant Director/System Administrator and anyone who could learn fast under pressure and step up to help. A lot of the rapid changes were in tech areas: a new ILS, new staff and patron computers and new tech-driven programming in a new building, emerging media. Working closely with the AD, I started picking up a wide range of new skills and assisting with staff training. My confidence in technology work, in my big-picture understanding of my own institution and the profession as a whole. and my leadership and teaching abilities have all intertwined and and grown, together, in a single process.

I love traditional tech services, but I am intrigued and enthralled by systems. I have learned more, worked harder, felt prouder, and enriched myself – personally and professionally – more intensely while doing tech work, strategic planning, and teaching and procedural documentation than at any other moments in my career. The shift in cataloging from something that looks like data entry toward something that looks like coding, the underlying reasons for that shift and the potential outcome of it, is phenomenally exciting. Working in digitization makes me want to learn more about information architecture, and learning content management has got me excited about web design for the first time since the ’90s. Everything is connected to everything else. Everything I learn makes me want to learn more and dig deeper, and become more involved in the fundamental changes that are rocking the library profession.

Current projects: Digitizing and publishing SPLD’s oral history project, completed in 1979-1980; developing training materials and long-term use plans for BTOP Creation Station technology.

Current fascinations: Information architecture and content management; building a Koha server for my 4000+ item home library.

Best learning experience: Helping to keep fulfillment moving forward on a BTOP Public Computer Center grant when our Network Administrator went into cancer treatment. Everything from tech acquisition research to staff and patron training to actually learning the new devices and then turning around and creating documentation for them, all at once.

Proudest accomplishments:

• Cataloging, helping to design internal management best practices and circulation practices, and developing training materials for a wide variety of BTOP-related tech equipment
• Developing materials for classroom-based and one-on-one patron technology instruction
• Training two teenaged circulation clerks who went on to take initiative in their own technology-driven art projects in and out of the library

Portfolio items:

Digital projector instructions (internal, 2010)

SPLD Public Computer Center- Beginning Google Searching (internal, 2011)

gMail privacy tip sheet (internal, 2014)