I started this website many years ago as a place to write about things that interested me. Mainly this was my jewelry at first. I spent several years after college running my own business making handmade jewelry, paper, and small art objects.
In 2013 I decided to pursue a long-time dream of becoming a librarian. I enrolled in San Jose State University and will graduate with an MLIS degree in December 2018.
When I started graduate school I was also the president of my local Friends of the Library group. One of our members was also an academic law librarian at UNH. She asked me if I would be interested in an unpaid volunteer job cataloging a large donation of monographs. In return, they taught me how to do copy cataloging. As luck would have it, someone in the technical services department was retiring and they offered me her job.
I became really interested in cataloging and in the systems that support the work of the library. Through a class I took at SJSU, I became very interested in Open Access and the concept of Library as Publisher which has played a major role in my career to date. It was this interest that lead my boss at UNH to ask me to take on the role of starting then managing the law school’s slice of the IR. This role would expand as I sought out ways to make the IR useful and relevant to our community. Eventually the IR would grow from just a few journal articles to include our law review, numerous legal briefs, and continuing legal education (CLE) materials.
During this time I gained some real expertise in how to set up, manage, and promote our repository. I went on to share my expertise with others by participating in listserv discussions, planning on-campus events for faculty to discuss OA, and presenting on OA journals conferences.
It was these experiences that led me to my current job at Boston University as the Open Access Specialist. I advocate for Open Access and work with faculty researchers to make sure their work is represented in our repository. I feel that my current job is an ideal fit for my skills and ambitions; it allows me to do what I love while continuing to develop as a librarian.
So, this blog, started as a way to showcase my metalworking and jewelry skills, has morphed into a platform for my ideas on librarianship. I still have other interests too, so in between the articles on algorithms and the presentations on thesauri, you’ll still find pictures of artwork and short pieces about bicycles.