Practical Experience

My work experiences prior to beginning the Master of Library Science program at Southern Connecticut State University actually provided me with a great number of skills necessary to be a successful librarian. I have performed a significant  amount of training to many different groups of people. This experience will help me to teach information literacy skills to all library patrons.

I also have a wide variety of management experiences. I have managed projects, departments, people, and resources. These types of experiences are all vital components in the successful administration of library processes. I have worked with people of many different professions and ages, which is something a librarian of any facility should have experience with. I have also handled budgets and cost estimates, which in today’s atmosphere of tightened library budgets is a key skill.

Librarianship is about storing, organizing, and sharing information. Our patrons today are more diverse, confused, and have higher expectations than ever before. My customer service skills garnered from years of training and dealing with “customers” provide me with a skill set and quality of service that is hard to come by in a strictly library-only background.

In February of 2005, I began an internship of sorts at Quinnipiac University. My role was to learn about general library operations and provide high quality circulation service at the Arnold Bernhard Library. I was entrusted with a set of keys for the building and was on certain days totally responsible for the building which is 48,000 square feet. My experiences at Quinnipiac provided me with real library experience, and a set of ideas and observations about libraries that can be applied to new venues.