New Job! Instruction & User Services Librarian

On December 31st, I left my position at the University of Maryland Libraries. This was a very hard decision. I loved my work and had a wonderful group of colleagues in Special Collections, however I was not able to afford to live in MD on an interim position. My coworkers understood this and encouraged me to seek out full-time, permanent employment which would provide a livable salary, benefits, and a retirement plan.

Fortunately, I was offered a full-time, tenure-track position as the Instruction & User Services Librarian at the University Library of California State University, Stanislaus. I am very excited to start this new position (today). I will be moving out of my comfort zone of Special Collections and into the larger arena of  academic librarianship. This new job is in a much smaller library than the University of Maryland Libraries and so I will have the opportunity to do a little bit of everything: reference, instruction, collection development, outreach, etc.

In this position I hope to learn (and eventually master) most aspects of public services in an academic library. I do plan to return to the realm of Special Collections someday and believe that I will be a better Special Collections librarian when I do because of the broader knowledge of academic libraries and new skills that I will gain as Instruction & User Services Librarian. 

I plan to spend the first few months observing and soaking up as much as I can about the culture and practices at CSU, Stanislaus' library so I probably will not have much to blog about during the coming months. As I take on new projects and responsibilities I will update this blog with those activities.

Have a great day and keep smiling!