Madam Librarian

Sister Mary Kenneth Keller (born Evelyn Marie Keller, December 17, 1913 – January 10, 1985) was a pioneering American Catholic nun, educator, and computer scientist. She became the first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in computer science, awarded in 1965 by the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

'Enjoy summer more - read books'

Out and in

Book of hours, Flanders c. 1485

Library of the Notre-Dame des Prés monastery in Neuville-sous-Montreuil, Picardy region of France

Grrr!

Guillermo Deisler (1940-1995) was a Chilean artist who worked in stage design, woodcut printing, visual poetry, and the early global mail art movement.

Deisler was born in Santiago, but spent most of his life in East Germany. In 1973, he was arrested during the military coup in Chile and was forced into exile. He lived in France and Bulgaria, but eventually settled in East Germany.

He created artist books and unique mail art using rubber stamps and poetic imagery, blending word and picture. In 1987, he launched UNI/vers(;), also known as the Peacedream project—an international mail art publication with 35 issues, bringing together visual and experimental poets from around the world.

This publication entitled “Grrr” is an invitation to create meaning of this word on your own.

The note from the publisher in Spanish is translated as below:

“Grrr grrrr gr grrrrrrr gr grrrrrrrrr gr……

We invite readers to create their own translation of this message.”

This publication is a facsimile reissue of Guillermo Deisler’s artist’s book made in Antofagasta, Chile in 1969, under the aegis of Ediciones Mimbre (1963-1973). The facsimile publication was produced by Naranja Publicaciones after 50 years of its first publication. 500 copies were made that maintain the narration of the original and different printing techniques such as risography, letterpress, screen printing and stamping have been mixed.

You will find this and other artists’ publishing collections in our Reading Room.

My mom was a graphic designer and I played with all this stuff as a kid and will now be liberating them from the work dumpster. As a treat.

The less exciting part, at least 15 media types (so far), two completely filled dumpsters (so far), boxes of heavy unused awards obviously way up on the top shelves, me alone climbing all over counters and moving tables to try to wrangle this a bit. My inbox not being chill for a minute while I try to deal with this.

Not pictured, 2 more tables of stuff, 2 more carts of stuff, my desk and surrounding work areas covered in stuff.

All of it is filthy. I am filthy.

So I'm weeding our ancient and terrible collection of children's books for the first time in possibly ever, and I'm making a decision about a book about migrant workers by Sandra Weiner, called Small Hands, Big Hands. And I'm not 100% sure and I go to just see if there's anything out there about this book's being notable in any way so I do an open web search for

"small hands big hands weiner"

And then I look at my results for a moment

In mathematics, you often consider the two-dimensional plane - you know, the idealised flat two-dimensional object that extends infinitely - which can be real or complex (doesn't matter what that means)

On this, you can perform a mathematical operation called a "blow-up" (resulting in a more complicated geometry)

I needed to look up a formula related to this, so I confidently typed into the search bar:

"Blow up real plane"

So I'm weeding our ancient and terrible collection of children's books for the first time in possibly ever, and I'm making a decision about a book about migrant workers by Sandra Weiner, called Small Hands, Big Hands. And I'm not 100% sure and I go to just see if there's anything out there about this book's being notable in any way so I do an open web search for

"small hands big hands weiner"

And then I look at my results for a moment

In mathematics, you often consider the two-dimensional plane - you know, the idealised flat two-dimensional object that extends infinitely - which can be real or complex (doesn't matter what that means)

On this, you can perform a mathematical operation called a "blow-up" (resulting in a more complicated geometry)

I needed to look up a formula related to this, so I confidently typed into the search bar:

"Blow up real plane"

I have been thinking about this for a few days and the thing is, it depends. I can't in good conscience say yes absolutely. But I also can't say absolutely not. It comes down to personal circumstances, desire, and all that.

There are a lot of great things about working in libraries/archives/special collections (working with cool collections, other people in the field tend to be super rad, awesome if you are a super curious person, allows for creativity, etc). There is also a lot that are not awesome (job hunting, temp labor and job insecurity, salary, vocational awe, secondary trauma, etc).

So here are a few things that might help you make that decision for yourself:

Conduct a job hunt, you don't need to apply, for jobs in the area you live or are realistically willing to relocate to. Take a look at things like salary ranges and if the job is term/temp (extremely common for archives, less so for librarianship) etc. Remember you won't be starting in a director level. I recommend doing this over time as often hiring comes in waves. What is the general trend and is this something you can work with? This also gives you a rough idea of skills and requirements for jobs which can be helpful if you decide to go to grad school

If you can, volunteer within the area of librarianship/archives you are interested in. This will give you a hint of what the work is like (the fun parts, because you won't have to go to meetings and deal with the not fun parts) and if this is something you want to do more of or is it not what you thought it was

Talk with people in the field about the job, especially people in your area. This is really helpful at getting information about your local area joys and challenges, the job in general, as well as a larger view of the field. Information people love sharing information. Bonus, you are building a network.

If you reach this point and go, "I am in! Grad school time!" Awesome! Welcome. Please do your research on grad schools and especially cost. I chose to do mine as an online program through Kent State because it was way cheaper than doing it in person at the university 2 miles from my apartment at the time. Like. SO much cheaper. I have friends that decided in person was the way to go but also did a different focus within MLIS. You don't need to be completely decided on a focus, but you should have a pretty good idea of where your focus is (say archives vs public librarianship vs technical) before you enroll and use that to research different programs and the cost/benefits of them.

If you do this research and decide it is not worth it or it will not work for you, I totally get it.

I want to add one little note here that is based off random conversations I have had over the years with people, so this is more of a general point and not off your ask specifically.

Over the years I have had a lot of potential archives and special collections people tell me they want to go to grad school and become an *insert phd levels of highly specialized incredibly specific collections person ever* here. And that is a goal that is beautiful but is a road to frustration, debt, and heartbreak. One person told me they wanted the degree just to an archivist for collections involving one specific cultural mythology and that was the only type of collection materials they were interested in. If that is the only thing you are interested in working on, I hope you are independently wealthy and also a nepo hire because it was so specific that that was probably the only way that job was happening.

Also, definitely go in with an open mind about what you want to do. I was archives-track and wanted to ultimately work with incunabula. I'm now doing metadata for active-use datasets.

Personally, I went into my MSLIS program with 3 years of internship/volunteer experience across 3 types of special collections (digital archive, academic special collections, county historical society), did the archives track coursework, and ultimately decided I wasn't willing to scrape together multiple term limited positions with awful commutes to stay in archives. I was geographically limited by my partner's job, whose field is even rougher than mine, and in my first post-MSLIS job hunt applied for ~40 jobs over 6 months. Of those, 2 were library jobs; I interviewed at one for a liaison librarian role and got it, and felt like I won the lottery. And they wouldn't have hired me without the degree, but the actual reason they hired me was my 6 years of experience in the non-library academic staff job I worked full time while paying for my degree so I could do it without debt.