TMI: Tammi Kim Discusses Student Government and Student Organizations

Student organizations and student government are a big part of the MLIS experience, mirroring committee work and boards we will be expected to participate in as information professionals. Listen in!

Save Our Librar*

{This is from a post on my personal blog but felt that it may apply here as well.  A small disclaimer – I’m now actually working in a corporate library despite my hopes of working a public one.  However, I believe that the involvement and advocacy that I discuss really applies to anyone in the field, no matter where they work. }

A year ago I left my job in banking to go back to school to be a librarian. Wow. It’s been quite a journey. And as soon as I think I’m getting the hang of the whole school thing I find that something knocks me off my perch and I find myself questioning if I’ve really made the right decision.

In my quest to become more a part of the profession I’ve gotten fairly involved in student organizations on campus. I do not entirely regret this but I had forgotten how thankless some of these activities can be at times. However, I think it has been a really good lesson in learning how to work with people and learning how to not say “yes” to everything, which I have a tendency to do. The really wonderful thing that came out of getting more involved on campus was being able to help, a bit, with what is going on with the Boston Public Library and its branches. There are 22 branches of the BPL and 4 of them are currently up for closure along with almost 100 job losses. As a future librarian, and hopefully a future public librarian, this was a fight that I felt absolutely compelled to become a part of, even though I don’t actually use the BPL (the Brookline libraries are part of a different system). A group called, People of Boston, was created by a library user to help get people active in the cause.