My mother loves to tell the story. If I had errands to run, Id just drop you off at the library.

Wed pick you out a book, and put you in a chair, and Id come back in an hour or so and youd
still be in that chair, still reading. The librarians didnt even know you were there.
It was 1974, and I was four years old. Today, of course, I would not leave my child alone in a
public library for many reasons, but I dont tell her that. The story illustrates her point about my
lifelong love for libraries so nicely. The truth is, it was a great privilege for me to go to the
library. It was a place of freedom. Not only was I by myself, but through books I could go
anywhere. It was at the library where I met Jane Eyre, when I was ten, and formed a lasting bond
with her. Defiant, strong-willed Jane, who may have been penniless and friendless, but she had
her brain and her independence and she wasnt afraid to use either. With Jane as my role model, I
set out on my adolescence and young adulthood. As I grew older, the library slipped backwards
into the misty fields of memory. I fell in with actual friends instead of friends in books, and these
new friends loved the theater. I, too, became a theater geek and spent many long hours in college
at rehearsals, performances, and striking the set afterwards. I graduated from the University of
North Carolina with departmental distinction in acting and directing, and moved to Chicago,
where I kicked around the theater scene for years at night while bartending during the day.
I had to leave the theater behind at 29, when I had my first child, who was born with severe
ADHD and autism. Caring for him and trying to teach him how to function as an independent
adult became my second and primary career. We did it, though. He is getting ready to go off to
college to study music, and it is time for me to embark on career number three. Ive left the
theater world behind, but the library is still there, as wonderful a place as I remember.
Dominican University was kind enough to open its doors to me and provide me with the
opportunity to create the same magic I saw as a child for someone else.

Each class I have taken at Dominican has revealed more and more possibilities for me, and I
have not had the inclination or the heart to close any of them just yet. I attended my first class,
LIS 701, Introduction to Library Science, with Dr. Janice Del Negro. I had no idea what to
expect and did not know if I was even making the right choice to go back to school. She had
asked us to do some reading prior to the beginning of class, and I carefully read over the
assignments. At the end of class, she gave us a pop quiz. It doesnt matter whether you are in
elementary school or graduate school, apparently a pop quiz is always dismaying. Before we
began the quiz, however, she divided us into groups to work on it together. Remember, in the
library you are never alone, she smiled.
Later that semester, she taught us about the philosophies of librarianship, the American Library
Associations Code of Ethics, issues affecting libraries today, and S.R. Ranganathans Five Laws
of Library Science. The five laws are: 1.) Books are for use 2.) For every reader, his/her book 3.)
For every book, its reader 4.) Save the time of the reader 5.) The library is a growing organism.
The Five Laws of Library Science managed to be both practical and romantic at the same time.
Law 1, books are for use, is the law that, when it sinks into the mind of a child, unleashes a
world of hope and possibility that everything in the library is for her, and the only limits are time
and imagination. Laws 2 and 3 are how Jane Eyre and I found each other. Laws 4 and 5 have a
more practical bent. Save the time of the reader is a directive to librarians to get the right
materials into the right hands as quickly and efficiently as possible. This law is what taught me
that a fundamental skill of librarianship is customer service. I have spent my whole adult life in
customer service. To apply the skills I have honed over the years to librarianship is a task I am
ready for. The fifth law, the library is a growing organism, is as practical today as it was when it
was first written, if not more so. Books change. Materials change. The space changes. Budgets

change. And laws of the land change. In Introduction to Library Science, we learned about the
politics swirling around libraries and how the library is affected by our elected officials. My
whole life, I thought libraries were an absolute good, an almost sacred space. When I started
paying attention, I was shocked to find this was not the opinion of everyone; that many felt the
library was a frivolous, expendable place, or a place where citizens could be spied on by the
government. At one time, I would have found that last sentence to be absurd. However, during
my research for LIS 701 as well as LIS 770, Management of Libraries and Information Centers,
on section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act and the investigation of the Connecticut Four led me
to understand that it was not absurd at all. I became interested in the idea of librarians as political
activists who are the protectors of privacy, intellectual freedom, and fighters of censorship in the
community. All this from just one class, in just one semester.
My interest in intellectual freedom, privacy, and the USA PATRIOT Act continued throughout
my academic career at Dominican, and I wrote a paper on privacy issues in libraries, delving
further into the history of the governments involvement with public libraries and how that
involvement ebbs and flows with who holds elected office and the current political climate. This
paper, which I have used as one of my artifacts, speaks to the importance of librarians as political
protectors, serving the public and protecting civil liberties.
While the idea of a librarian as a political activist was a new and bold idea for me, the librarian
as a customer service representative was not. This idea was as comfortable as a well-made shoe,
and Dominicans LIS 703 class, Reference and Online Services, taught me how to best help the
patron using the librarys resources. I spent the semester learning to best help a patron find not
just information - any Google search can instantly turn up information but what information is
good information? Which sources are reliable? Whose point of view needs to be heard? To that

end, I put together a Lib Guide for my final project on a specific topic, pulling together
information from all available library resources, and presented my findings to the class. The Lib
Guide is one of my favorite artifacts as it represents another facet of a good librarian a guide
who can set a patron down on the correct path of knowledge with an eye toward saving their time
by eliminating sources of faulty information.
In my first year as a library student at Dominican, I was introduced to the ideas of librarians as
guardians of civil liberties and as committed guides to accurate information. In my second year, I
was introduced to the world of archiving, where I learned that librarians are also guardians of
history. In LIS 775, Introduction to Archives, I had the great privilege of interning with the
Theatre Historical Society of America. Under the guidance of Patrick Seymour, the archivist in
residence there, I learned about preserving and properly storing old materials, doing research,
and refreshing history and bringing it to the present for new generations to enjoy and revere.
Archivists are stewards of the past, but must integrate the past into the future no easy task. In
my internship, I learned how the Theatre Historical Society does that, starting with a donation
and ending with a display for the public to enjoy. While the Theatre Historical Society is not
open to the public, it has a web presence to draw interest in the preservation of the history of old
movie palaces throughout the United States. The project I was given was a collection of
hundreds of color slides donated by Eric Ellis. The slides were of movie palaces primarily in
Chicago and New York. Some were clearly labeled, but others just had an address hastily written
on it in pencil, or just the name of the theater and did not mention which state it was in. This
meant research had to be done to find the name and location of each questionable space, and
once that was done, a complete, specific inventory had to be taken of each slide in the collection.
Once the inventory was done, the slides had to be properly labeled and stored. Finally,

everything was uploaded onto the website, and I got to write a blog post about the collection,
singling out two Chicago theaters I thought were interesting. I chose the Will Rogers Theater and
the Uptown Theatre, both remarkable movie palaces in their day but for very different reasons.
For the Will Rogers Theater, I got to delve into research on old Hollywood and also the climate
of the day when the theater was built and named. The Uptown Theatre I chose because it was a
true palace. It offered playgrounds for children, fountains, daycare, and a nurse on permanent
staff. Thanks to my archiving class, I learned that an MLIS degree can give a person the chance
to become a historian, steward, and preservationist as well. The blog post I wrote for the Eric
Ellis collection is one of my favorite artifacts and one that I enjoyed writing the most.
I put the final piece of the librarianship puzzle together in Dr. Janice Del Negros Library
Materials for Young Adults class, LIS 722. Described as a reading intensive class, we were
assigned to read 4-6 young adult books a week and be prepared to discuss them in class. These
discussions taught me the value of being able to book talk a book to a potential reader, and help
get the right book into the right hands. When most people think of librarians and what librarians
do, this is what most imagine. In order to be successful at this aspect of customer service,
however, it is important that a librarian knows her audience, and to be well-versed on what is
current and what is classic to be able to offer someone. In order to know her audience, a librarian
must know what issues her community is grappling with. For our major project, we had to build
a website touching on various themes in young adult literature. I was assigned Body Image in
Young Adult Literature. In a group, I delved into the world of eating disorders, fat phobia, and
images in marketing to young people. Doing the research on this issue, and listening to other
classmates present their information on what they learned as well, taught me that librarians need
to be aware of the issues in their community in order to best serve them. If a librarian can

consistently find the right book for an individual, she will gain their trust and open the doors of
possibility for that person. This is the library I remembered as a child. This is magic.
In my two years at Dominican, my view on librarianship has both been reaffirmed and expanded.
Libraries are the canary in the coalmine for a community. If the library is thriving, things are
probably okay. If the library begins to falter, I believe the community is faltering as well.
Librarians, I have learned, are political people, stewards, researchers, customer service
representatives, and guides. They are both the past and the future. It has been my great privilege
to be even a small part of this community, and the lessons I learned during my time at
Dominican will serve me well going forward. My e-portfolio is, I hope, a reflection of the
diversity I have learned about in library school. I believe the possibilities are endless, and after
graduation I hope to be able to use that diversity in any range of career opportunities, from public
libraries to archiving. I am grateful to Dominican University for allowing me behind the curtain,
to see how to maintain the strong beating heart of a community, and to help others see the magic
for themselves.