When I started my career at Dominican University, I really did not know what kind of librarian I wanted to be.

I can honestly say I was not even aware of all the career choices one had with a Master of Library and Information Sciences degree. I came into the program somewhat naively and never fully researched all the possibilities this career had to offer. Retrospectively, I am glad that I was not as knowledgeable about the profession as I am now because it allowed me to keep an open mind and explore the many facets the MLIS career path has to offer. I am afraid that had I come into this program focused on the type of librarian I thought I would want to be and I would not have taken advantage of the many course offerings. In the early stages of my student career at Dominican University, I assumed, I would become a public librarian. Public libraries were really my only exposure to librarians. Sadly, I will admit in my previous academic endeavors, I vary rarely utilized the library. Through taking courses at Dominican, I came to realize that I wanted to be an academic librarian. One of the main reason is because of students like me that do not know or understand what the library can offer you in ways of helping with studying and research, just to name a few. I feel that while there is a change happening, most public libraries offer programs for young children, preteens and adults. They tend to leave out teens. In my high school, while we were brought to the library, no one ever taught us library literacy. I feel this was a huge gap in my education and I find it was not only a gap in my education but in many teens as well. This sends us to universities not fully understanding how to use libraries but expecting us to thrive in our new academic environments. This idea has made me want to help students work to their fullest

potentials by changing their perceptions of the library and learning how to utilize the wealth of knowledge and tools the library has to offer. Once I realized what I wanted my library career to be, I registered for Library User Instruction. I do not know that I necessarily want to focus entirely on user instructions but I do feel that patrons, especially university students, need to be taught how to effectively use the library. Library User Instruction taught me how to write lesson plans and formulate my thoughts into initiatives that I can use to help teach students. I think library user instruction is an essential part of a librarians profession and I am extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to learn the skills from this class. Not only do they work for a classroom setting but I also think they can transition into how to organize projects and help you define what it is that you hope to accomplish. I remember I was in the MLIS program for about a semester and I was having a conversation with one of my colleagues in the IT department at my work. I was telling him how I had gotten into a masters program and I told him it was for Library and Information Science. I will never forget his response, Are you sure you want to become like me? At the time I had just started learning about all the technology aspects that are associated with becoming a librarian. I will say this was the biggest shock for me. I went into the program with the thought, I like books, not computers. One of the hardest classes for me was Internet Fundamentals and Design, but I am proud that I conquered my fears and took this class because I am good with research, I am good with the Microsoft office suite, but actual technical computer skills, I lack. I felt proud when I started being able to write code and it would make sense and be able to translate onto a webpage. I know that in my class, I probably had one of the least spectacular web

pages out of my classmates but for me it was an accomplishment that I was able to come into a class with zero knowledge on a topic and be able to become mediocre. After taking Internet Fundamentals and Design, I decided to further put myself out of my comfort zone and take Digital Libraries. It never occurred to me before starting the MLIS program, how much technology is involved in librarian work, or how much librarians are on the cutting edge of newer technology. I found the Digital Libraries class very informative. The amount of work that goes into digitizing a collection is incredible. I do not think one can fully appreciate the amount of work that goes into creating a digital collection until they take the time to try and create the process. I found it interesting for me to be involved with a grant proposal and trying to explain to a committee the importance of your collection and why your collection needs to be digitized. It was very insightful to have to walk through the grant process and fully analyze why a collection will be beneficial to a specified group of people. I never really thought about how many people would be needed to take on the undertaking of such a project and how much money would be needed to help complete the project. I feel the skill I learned from this class can translate to any major project that needs to be completed and can be extremely helpful in my future career. To further bolster my thought of librarians being on the cutting edge of technology, I also registered to take the class for Social Media and Emerging Technologies. When I first started this course, I was not very sure how social media could be very helpful to libraries. I had a general understanding on how Facebook was

helpful, as I follow my own local libraries. It was not until I took this course that I was able to see the effectiveness of a Pinterest page for a library, if properly implemented. Being able to show patrons banned book month in a whole new way, by creating a pin board of books that they might not even know are banned. I think having a complete Wikipedia page of your library is also essential. It allows potential patrons to have a quick overview of your library and its offerings, without the patron having to go out of the comfort of their own home. I now have a broader understanding on how social media can be advantageous to libraries. One concept I learned is that, if a library has multiple social media platforms, they need to have varied information on all the sites. For example, we did a project where we follow a library of our choosing through social media. I choose my local library, and I found them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, broadcasting virtually the same information. What causes me as a patron to want to utilize all of the librarys social media platforms, if I can get all my information from one place? This class helped me see what the advantages of the various social media platforms are and how they are best utilized. This knowledge helped me further the concepts of how to better market a library. The concept of how to get patrons to want to utilize the library and how to let the patrons know what the library has to offer them. I started my career at Dominican University interested in reference librarianship. This is a skill that I am still very much interested in. I love helping patrons find information that helps them answer their questions. I personally also love learning and I feel while doing reference work, you are continuously learning. I registered for two separate reference classes. I chose reference courses on topics, which I would not

normally choose. I did this because I know that I will not always have the choice on what I get to research. The first course I participated in was Reference Sources in Business and Economics. Before taking this course, I was never very interested in business and economics; however, this course has caused me to take much more notice in the business sector. The major project in this course was to follow one publicly traded company of our choosing and to do an overall analysis of the business and to make our own suggestions as to how they may approve their business. The analytical nature of this project is what appealed to me. I had never before delved that deeply into a companys overall business portfolio and business transactions. This class and the subsequent project have caused me to be more analytical with any information given to me. I find that in my current job, I now analyze our business practices more and it has resulted in me coming up with and having had implemented some technological changes within our company to improve productivity. I also partook in the course Reference Sources Sciences. This is by far one of the hardest classes I had to take in Dominican. I learned so much about how to search and find sources from this class, that I know I would never have learned elsewhere. Since, I am not usually scientifically inclined; I had zero base knowledge on where to begin finding answers to questions that are science based. I really liked the challenge of having to search Rebecca Crown for print and electronic resources to answer the homework questions. I find that in general, I have a much easier time conducting research as I have to attack the questions from multiple angles to find the exact right answer.

One of the last courses, I took at Dominican University was Planning and Equipping Libraries. Going into this course, I did not know how a library building could affect its own patron traffic. Meaning, I never realized that how a library was laid out could potentially either cause it to thrive within a community or to be a building that hardly anyone visits. The course conducted several site visits as well as had many speakers from architects to furniture designers. Being able to be immersed in all aspects of how a library is built and designed allowed me to be able to effectively see what constitutes as a good library. For instance, my own public library has a horrific location. It is very awkwardly located and it is very easy to drive right past the library. With this being said, the library is immensely popular within the community. Once inside the library it is easy to see why. They have taken great care to make the library easy to navigate, they have programs for their various patrons, and they have created a comfortable environment that people want to be in. This is information I would never have ascertained if I had not taken this course. I mentioned all of these programs because the information and skills I have gleaned from these courses I can and have used outside of the class room. These courses have taught me how to effectively market a library by not only creating programs that patrons would want but how to create spaces they would want to be in. I know now how to make sure my patrons are informed on what is going on at the library and I can utilize social media to help me do this. I am now more effective at organizing my thoughts and this will help me in teaching future patrons how to utilize the library and will also help me tackle major projects. I know how to create a grant proposal and how much work goes into creating one and I have also learned effective research skills that

will not only help me with my work life but I can also help potential patrons. I think all of these skills lead up to the fact that I now feel that I have a base knowledge for effective managerial skills.