Tag: interview

Meet the Librarians: Julia Stewart

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Government Information and Social Sciences Research Librarian Julia Stewart started her path to librarianship with a unique first step.

 

Stewart worked in the publishing industry at Harcourt Brace College Publishing where she first got interested in working with a subject. “From working with college texts, books, I knew it would be interesting to read, to work with a subject in depth, so I like the idea of being a subject specialist,” she said.

 

Stewart also has a background in teaching. She was a language arts teacher at R.L. Paschal High School in the Fort Worth Independent School District.

The transition between working with high school and college-age students has been interesting for Stewart. At her high school, she had a busy schedule dealing with students all day.

“You’re taking role, going to faculty meetings for your campus policy, trying to enforce dress code, trying to teach whatever’s needed for the state test at the time, and working more with a giant class. You’re with seven classes of 30 every day for five days a week,” she said. “It’s a really hectic pace. You’re also working with their parents. It was very people intensive.”

Comparatively at in a college library, students are more hands-on in their own learning. “With college, [the students] have so much more freedom, and they’re organizing their time, trying to be cognizant of that. They’re still trying to fulfill goals and look at the future,” she said. “You’re dealing with them more directly; they’re taking more interest. In the high school, it seems like the parents are more involved. [In college,] it’s [the students] you’re working with.”

 

Now that Stewart is at Southern Methodist University something that she enjoys about working in college is that it is never boring. “Especially in the library, there’s been so many changes. The library was renovated a few years ago, so the building is a whole different building to me than when I started. [It is] much more useful and gets more usage from students. It’s very interesting to see [that change].”

 

Part of the appeal for SMU for Stewart is the location. Located in the heart of Dallas, SMU offers access to everything from Mockingbird Station to the Farmer’s Market. “I like Dallas. It’s nice to be at one of the main universities in Dallas as the city’s been changing so much, so I guess it’s just it’s a good fit for me,” she said. “There’s always something to do. There’s always something happening.”

 

At SMU, Stewart is in charge of the government documents collection. As the librarian in charge of that collection, Stewart has had the opportunity to expose herself to many different rare U.S. documents. One of her favorites is the World War II collection of documents on creating victory gardens. “There are pamphlets for how you can plant your Victory Garden,” she said. “[Back then,] you’re trying to save food and trying to be supportive of the war effort. It seems like you can see a window into a different world of people trying to come together during the war to be sufficient and plant a garden on their own.”

 

One of the political science projects she has worked on involved collaborating with the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School and one of the political science professors at SMU. “[At Irma Lerma Rangel, the professor] was able to start an internship for some students at that school, some of the seniors, and it was a research internship. I was able to provide some of the research instruction and the information literacy instruction for them on their project. Their project had to do with the Center for presidential history, and I was the one who helped them use the library resources to do the project. It went back to having worked in high school. I felt like this is really perfect, because it’s got library stuff; it’s got students involved; it’s something with Dallas.”

 

Interview conducted by Author Wren Lee, SMU ’22 Creative Computation and Film and Media Arts Pre-Major and Fondren Library Marketing Department Student Assistant

Meet the Librarians: Megan Heuer

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For Head of Information Literacy and Communication Arts Librarian Megan Heuer, there is no such thing as a typical. She spends her time working with professors and students in the communication arts majors, managing the other librarians in Fondren Library, and working with the guides team.

 

Heuer got her start as a librarian at the age of 35, but it was love at first page. “As soon as I started library school, I just fell in love with it; I was one of those super library nerds. I just loved library school,” she said.

Her first job out of library school was at a school of only 300 students. “It was a tiny library in a tiny school, so I ran everything,” she said. “I did everything for that library; I had my finger on everything sort of thing. I got to experience all of librarianship at once, and probably my favorite part of that was working with students and faculty and thinking about education. I’m a naturally curious person, and I love to learn, so the educational side of librarianship is a very natural fit for me.”

 

One part of her job is managing the Fondren librarians. “Managing is helping somebody; thinking about what’s going on in their job and what goals do they have; and trying to remove the barriers that they have,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just listening to [them] and being empathetic or making suggestions or helping them connect with people who could help with any challenges that they have. It’s talking through more kind of areas of personal development they might want to take on or what more they should take on.”

As a subject librarian, Heuer knows what her fellow librarians go through.

“I think [being a subject librarian while being the other subject librarians’ manager] is really important because I have to be able to walk the walk. I feel like it’s really important because it gives me empathy for what I’m doing,” she said. “In any organization, the higher up you go, the farther away you are from the front line. I would say I am in the middle. I am that person who is seeing both sides of the coin. I see like things from the management side, but I am on the front lines as well. And that is very important to me personally that I do that. And I’m not ready to give up working with students and faculty directly, so I don’t want to give that part up.”

 

Another part of her job is heading the information literacy efforts. Information literacy is important on a college campus, and Heuer defines it as “the ability to use information for whatever needs that you have. It’s a set of understandings about information use, and those sets of understandings really are dependent on the context of how you’re using [the information].”

Information literacy isn’t limited to academic research papers, though. For Heuer, she says It touches all parts of your life.

“[It’s] not just how do you find information for paper or knowing what a scholarly article is and how to recognize it,” she said. “That’s sort of the traditional way [of thinking about information literacy], but how do I evaluate information that I’m using for researching things for my personal health? Or how do I think about the news media?”

 

Heuer has designed workshops on fake and biased news in the past. She has noticed trends in how society consumes media and finds this problematic. “I think the biggest problem is that the way we consume news is very casual and quick,” she said. “As you’re cycling through your newsfeed on social media, you’re flipping through, and you see something that catches your eye. Take the time to investigate or dig down a little bit. Try to find a story from the other from another perspective or try to find a story that’s from a different kind of publication than you usually read. Just think through and apply analytical skills to what you’re reading. But I think a lot of us don’t take the time to do that because we’re inundated with all this information all the time. But just slow down and really think about what you’re looking at.”

 

Interview conducted by Author Wren Lee, SMU ’22 Creative Computation and Film and Media Arts Pre-Major and Fondren Library Marketing Department Student Assistant

Meet the Librarians: Jonathan McMichael

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 User Experience Librarian

Originally a teacher, User Experience (UX) Librarian Jonathan McMichael found his interest in librarianship while getting his Master’s in Education. “In my first year of real teaching after student teaching, we had to take classes to get a Master’s degree, and they were night classes,” McMichael said. “In between teaching and [my classes], I fell asleep in the library, woke up, and heard somebody asking about UN documents. I heard the librarian ask a bunch of questions. As a teacher, I know asking a bunch of questions is an effective strategy for getting people to think. [The librarian was] asking these questions in very specific ways that made me realize that they were helping this person realize what they actually needed and figuring what their information need was. And I thought, ‘This is really fascinating’.”

McMichael’s background in education has strongly impacted his time here at Southern Methodist University. His desire to be a librarian stems from a similar love for teaching. “I teach because I want to work with people who are genuinely curious about finding and using information,” he said.

Teaching has even bled into the UX work McMichael does. “Teaching is so much about empathy,” he said. “Everybody makes sense of the world in a different way. When you can start to realize that and see the nuances of how people work it out in their mind and appreciate it, your prior knowledge changes the way you would make sense of it. It means that if you’re going to have a UX design, it’s not going to be one size fits all because people bring so many different things to the table. But you can notice patterns, and you can notice trends on how people are making sense of things.”

For McMichael, UX design is strongly tied to designing curriculum and working with the professors to help guide their students through research. Not only does he work as an UX librarian, but he also works as the DISC librarian, helping the first-year students.

“I love the fact that there’s an interesting thing that is happening in colleges within first year,” he said. “People are making choices about who they’re going to be for the next decade or so in life. I think that’s a really influential time, so you get these seminal moments in someone’s life. Secondarily, it’s also where I see a lot of need. Adapting to a university environment is challenging for a lot of students, almost every student, because it’s brand new. It just so happens that the newest people to the group are the ones that don’t get it the best. If they don’t get it the best, they sometimes can become marginalized or frustrated, so there’s also probably a little bit of that.”

His love of learning has led McMichael to working at SMU. “In general, just working at universities is really fascinating,” he said. “I love the fact that there is an institution that is oriented to the generation of knowledge. I still think about it, having worked in it for 10 years now. It’s amazing that it exists. And it’s so well-funded and has such a prominent place in society, which I think is awesome. It’s just incredible [being] where learning is happening. I love being around learning. I’m addicted to the sense of people becoming the thing they’re going to be and figuring things out. It’s happening around me all the time.”

 

Interview conducted by Author Wren Lee, SMU ’22 Creative Computation and Film and Media Arts Pre-Major and Fondren Library Marketing Department Student Assistant

Meet the Librarians: Rebecca Graff

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Research Librarian, Rebecca Graff’s tip to undergraduates, “Contact your librarian. Seriously. It starts to sound cliché after a while, but we can help in many ways. We can help you think about the question you’re asking and help you think about it in ways you might not have thought on your own.”

Graff understands the challenge facing student, she began began her path to librarianship long ago with a CD Rom search.

When Graff attended Earlham College for her bachelor’s degree in English literature, she often met with the librarians to work on her papers. “It happened when I was searching the Modern Language Association Bibliography on CD-Rom, and one of the librarians, Nancy Taylor, came up and was looking at my search,” she said. “She complimented me on the way I was going about [the search], the way I was using subject terms and combining them with Boolean logic. And I thought, ‘Huh, I like searching, I like teaching.’ And then it was apparent that being a librarian meant working with students and teaching a lot.”

With her hair pulled back in a stereotypical librarian bun, Graff entered a Master’s program in Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan. Since then, she has worked at the University of Michigan, Loyola University Chicago, and Grinnell College before coming to Southern Methodist University.

Graff came to SMU 15 years ago and has seen Fondren library change over time. Beyond the physical changes, she has seen the students change. “Something that I find more surprising is the difference in the students.” she said. “When I first started, students were surprised they could check out 30 books. I heard [them ask] ‘Why would I ever need 30 books’ a lot. Within 10 years, undergrads requested for that number to be raised to 50. Students have become more studious, more engaged with what they’re learning than what they used to be. It’s impressive to me that within that short period of time the attitude of the student body has changed so significantly.”

As the student body has become more studious, it has changed the types of questions Graff has received. “When people come with better questions, it makes my job more fun,” she said. “I like a challenge. [The challenge is] part of why, among the different parts of my job, I’m the librarian for liberal studies. I learn about things I hadn’t considered before, and that’s always part of what interested me in librarians as the ultimate dilettantes. We get to know a little about everything.”

Graff’s love of working with students hasn’t changed since the early days of her librarianship, though. “I like learning about what other people find interesting,” she said. “I like helping them realize and discover what they’re trying to find and make sense of it. It’s an incredible honor and reward.”

Contact any SMU Library from anywhere. Have questions or need help? Just Ask Us.

Interview conducted by Author Wren Lee, SMU ’22 Creative Computation and Film and Media Arts Pre-Major and Fondren Library Marketing Department Student Assistant

Meet the Librarians: Beverly Mitchell

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Schedule a consultation with Beverly or any of your Librarians, now!

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The Assistant Director of Hamon Arts Library Beverly Mitchell wears many hats. She is a liaison for the Art and Art History and Dance Departments. She manages the Mildred Hawn Exhibition Gallery. She helps develop Hamon’s collections. In general, Mitchell is a librarian at Southern Methodist University. 

Equipped with two undergraduate degrees in French and International Politics from Texas Christian University and two graduate degrees in English with a Creative Writing Specialization and Library Science from the University of North Texas Denton, Mitchell got a job at the Dallas Museum of Art in the Imaging and Library departments. One of her primary duties was cataloging images. She would spend hours poring over image after image, around 1000 or more images a week. Yet, cataloging never seemed like a chore because Mitchell “enjoyed the exposure and that work with images.”  

She also liked working reference at the DMA. “I like those challenges of people coming in and asking for something and trying to find it for them,” she said. “And [reference] still continues to be something I really like in my position here.”  

When Mitchell got to SMU, she was able to put her degree in library science and expansive knowledge of art to good use. “When this position became open in 2005, I was thrilled because I could really apply a lot of my knowledge in art to this position because [of my duty as] a liaison to the art and art history and apartment,” she said. “Since then, this position sort of expanded into other areas of responsibilities.” 

One of the areas students might not know that Mitchell helps with is the Hawn Gallery. She helps the Hawn Gallery curatorial fellows find new exhibitions.  

R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation by Basil Kincaid, Performance image, October 28, 2016.
R3clamation: Routes & Roots, An Installation by Basil Kincaid, Performance image, October 28, 2016.

Mitchell’s favorite exhibition featured Basil Kincaid’s R3clamation: Routes & Roots installation and performance. “It was our very first exhibition with our new curatorial fellow Georgia Erger, and [Kincaid] installed quilts that he made,” she said. “He did a performance piece which was supposed to be very short, like 20 to 30 minutes but ended up being an hour and a half long. I still think about that performance piece. [Kincaid] had his cousin who was professional hairdresser cut his hair in the gallery space. It’s really unusual, and it really activated the space.” 

Her favorite part about working at SMU is the freedom. “I’ve been able to work somewhat independently and think about how I can strategically attain those goals that you want to achieve in your areas of responsibility,” she said. “This position allows for a lot of independence but also allows for a lot of creativity too. I don’t know if, while in library school, [the professors] really emphasized or exposed you to the creative possibilities of working as a librarian.” 

 

 

 

 

Interview conducted by Author Wren Lee, SMU ’22 Creative Computation and Film and Media Arts Pre-Major and Fondren Library Marketing Department Student Assistant