LJ revisits a decade's worth of graduates When these LJ cover subjects were profiled as part of our annual Placements & Salaries issue, they had come from all walks of life. Susan Winch had been a social worker, for instance, and Chery Marzano was director of a day-care center. Armed with library science degrees from various institutions, they had just secured jobs in librarianship and were off to a good start forging their careers. Since then, they've worked at elementary school, college, and university libraries in both private and public settings. Some, like Tami Suzuki and Carol Krueger, found their first jobs out of school so gratifying that they stayed on happily. But their experiences run the gamut. Some tried several jobs on for size before settling into one place. Others have found an alternate line of work they love. Still others may not yet be entirely sure where they'll end up. For those about to graduate or who have recently graduated, the tapestry these 11 graduates represent is refreshing, showing that the road to happiness forks in multiple and unforeseeable ways. Attaining a library science degree, this group has proven, may not be definitive. It can lead, as it did for Alice Hershiser, to a career in organic farming or, as was the case with Marzano, to a way to combine a love of librarianship and children. It is most likely, however, the gateway to an ever-challenging career.

Tami Suzuki Is on the Right Track

2000 Tami Suzuki's graduate studies at San José State University, CA, landed her a job as municipal records archivist at the San Francisco Public Library in 2000, where she remains today. Her goal then was to improve at her job and to become a mentor to others. Suzuki says she's still 'working on becoming an efficient and effective librarian,' and, indeed, she's since taken courses in encoded archival description and oral history and is considering pursuing a second master's degree in history. She's also currently enrolled in a leadership series sponsored by the California State Library. Since receiving her MLS, Suzuki has been at work in a field that suits her and at a library that inspires her. 'I feel so fortunate to have found the right path,' she says. 'This profession has allowed me to take advantage of past work experiences and combine those with my interests - doing research, working with historical documents, providing access to information.' What librarianship meant to her in 2000 is what it still means, she says: providing quality access to information. But now there's a difference. 'Today, librarianship involves looking at those modes of access in new ways,' she says, 'with users' appetites for technology challenging other users' and librarians' comfort with tradition and the familiar.'

Stephanie Davis-Kahl Has Her Hands on Technology

1999 Stephanie Davis-Kahl - Stephanie Davis and minus a three-month-old son when we profiled her seven years ago - took a job as research services coordinator at the University of Southern California's (USC) Leavey Library after matriculating at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign. Since then, she's worked at USC and University of California - Irvine and is currently digital and media initiatives librarian at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington (appropriate, as in 1999 she'd expressed a desire to broaden her technological horizons). Davis-Kahl says her library science studies gave her 'both the theoretical and practical elements to get me started in the field' and that she's built from there. Her proudest achievement is the information literacy and campus outreach work she's done. Be equally hands-on, she says. 'Know your community, talk to your users, make them part of your network.' But her ultimate secret to happiness (aside from that three-month-old) is the knowledge that she's made the right decisions along the way. 'If you have the choice between two jobs,' she offers, 'take the one that makes you feel excited and inspired, even if it pays less.'

Kate Lippincott and Herbert Myers Part Ways

1998 Kate Lippincott and Herbert Myers were profiled in tandem in 1998. Both had graduated from the University of South Florida (USF) School of Library and Information Science and both ended up in reference at the Selby Public Library, Sarasota, FL. But after six years of working alongside each other at Selby, their paths diverged. Lippincott went on to work at what she calls 'a small private college, a very large university,' and, most recently, the 'young, growing' Florida Gulf Coast University Library Services, in Fort Myers, where in January she became business librarian. Partly because she enjoyed the teaching aspect of her work at Selby PL so much, she's now also teaching a Foundations of Library and Information Sciences class at her alma mater. Her move from generalist (reference) to specialist (business) reflects her desire to meet particular needs. While listening to the speakers at the USF convocation this fall, she says she felt 'like I had become a part of this young campus community with a specific role to fill and many challenges to come.' Myers left Selby for family reasons. It was a difficult decision for him: 'the self-directed team concept being implemented at Selby made my job challenging and enjoyable,' he says. He regrets that the years between jobs and his segue from reference at Selby to audiovisuals at Northwest Regional Library, Broward County, FL, left less room for 'creativity and freedom of action.' Further, he notes, 'though there are lots of opportunities to advance in the profession for young librarians, salaries have not kept pace with the cost of living.' At 56, however, Myers has no intention of slowing down. 'In five years,' he says, inviting us to follow up with him again, 'I hope to be in a supervisory role or managing my own branch.'

Alice Hershiser Generates Her Own Brand of Soul Music

1997 It took us nine years to amend the misspelling of Alice Hershiser's name (we identified her as 'Hirshiser'), but here we are, and, oh, how times have changed. This University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences graduate is no longer director of the North umberland Public Library, Heathsville, VA (where the phrase she found herself most often using was, 'they didn't teach me that in library school'). Now she is general manager of the family-owned Olin-Fox Farms in Reedville, VA, which grows organic produce. 'When I was featured in Library Journal in 1997,' she says, 'I was completely focused on my library career.' Since then, she says, 'I've realized that I need a combination of musical/artistic pursuits along with linear/analytical thinking.' When Hershiser left Northumberland PL, she was a network administrator responsible for maintaining the library's 12 computers. One of her disappointments was the library's extreme focus on technology. 'Technology is important,' she says, 'but it doesn't have a soul.' For that, Hershiser looks to music: she's the organist at Fairfields Baptist Church; plays piano at a local restaurant; plays the French horn with the Williamsburg Symphonia; and, along with her husband, is part of a Celtic/bluegrass trio in which she plays the tin whistle and concertina and sings. If it sounds as though Hershiser is juggling a lot, she learned it from her library days, when 'prioritizing tasks was a necessity.' She's hopeful that while libraries go on without her, they won't ever stop 'interacting with humans, one of the most important activities of our lives.'

Susan Winch Undergoes Multiple Reincarnations

1996 When we met Susan Winch, she had already been a social worker and a paraprofessional children's librarian. Just one year after graduation from Syracuse University's, NY, first distance education MLS program, she became assistant director/technology coordinator at the Scarborough Public Library, ME. But she felt she still had paths left to travel. She had expressed an interest in teaching and called her position at Scarborough her 'second act,' predicting 'a third one coming.' As it turns out, however, learning, not teaching, was in Winch's immediate future. Still assistant director of Scarborough PL, she has taken classes in web server management, network administration, and web design and is exploring courses in records management, web site indexes, and online taxonomies. How does she account for her current incarnation as student? Winch cites Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Librarianship - that a library is a growing organism - amending the wording slightly: it's a librarian, she insists, who is the growing organism. And just in case we weren't listening, 'I still have time to reinvent myself!'

Chery Marzano Heeds the Call of the Child

1995 'I don't know what I want to do in five years,' Chery Marzano-Hassett - now Chery Marzano - told us in 1995, 'but I do know I want to be a librarian.' Marzano's first career was in child care, as director of a day-care center in Darby, PA. A library science degree from the Rutgers School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies put her in the serials department of the Neumann College Library in Aston, PA, where she won the Pennsylvania New Librarian Award in 1994, shortly before we first interviewed her. Children inevitably drew her again. Today, Marzano is a librarian at Indian Lane Elementary School, Media, PA. 'The kids here seem to read so many great books,' Marzano says, 'that I often get recommendations from them to keep up on what's new and noteworthy.' Along with her 11-year-old daughter, eight-year old son, and three soon-to-be stepchildren (twin ten-year-old boys and a 13-year-old girl), the children at the library are her greatest pride. Her major accomplishments so far: 'raising my children and helping the kids around me be comfortable with who they are as people.' She advises future graduates to test the waters before committing to any one career track. Libraries 'are all so unique in their work and challenges,' she says, 'that you won't really know what you like until you've experienced it firsthand.'

Elizabeth Beere Tackles

1994 Technostress After earning her MLS from the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, in 1993, Elizabeth Beere became a librarian at the Eldersburg Branch of the Carroll County Public Library, headquartered in her hometown of Westminster, MD. By 1995, she'd launched into a job at the NASA Center for Aero-Space Information, a repository for scientific and technical reports in Greenbelt, MD. Now she's back home in Westminster, working as an electronic resources librarian for Carroll Community College (CCC). It's a constant struggle for her to keep up with the latest technology, but she finds solace knowing she's not alone. 'Everyone suffers from some type of technostress at one point or another,' she says. Most important, she finds the work interesting and engaging and plans to stay at CCC for the foreseeable future. And while on the subject of the future, Beere ventures a prediction: 'I think that technostress will continue to be a challenge, both for librarians and patrons,' she says.

Rita Ormsby Struggles To Find More Time

1993 LJ profiled Rita Ormsby just after she'd gotten a job at the Brighton Beach Branch of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL). Several months later, the 1992 graduate of the School of Library and Information Science, University of Wisconsin - Madison, transferred to BPL's newly renovated Business Library in Brooklyn Heights. We should have known she wouldn't be sitting still all this time. Ormsby supplemented that job with part-time work first at the Polytechnic University library in Brooklyn, then at the Bobst Library at New York University. In 1998, she went on to become an instructor in information services at the library at Baruch College, CUNY, where she won the New York Chapter of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Distinguished Service Award in 1999 and the Outstanding Achievement Award in Business Librarianship from the Business and Finance Division of SLA. She earned a master's of public administration from Baruch in 2002. If there's one thing Ormsby wishes she had more room on her plate for, it's an extra serving of technical know-how. 'My technical skills were weak in 1993, and, compared with many, they still are,' she says. 'I've tried to learn with continuing education courses at conferences and local workshops, but keeping up with advances is really a full-time job.'

Carol Krueger Carves Her Own Niche

1992 Carol Krueger's MLS from the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science placed her at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Bethesda, MD, where she started off as a selector and federal depository rep in the serials section of tech services. It was a job she loved so much, she's still at it. 'I got better and better at what I love, choosing literature for the collection,' she says of her continued work at NLM. 'And at a library with a broad collecting plan and a budget to match, it has been a challenge collecting research journal literature in the medical sciences in all formats from all countries.' Krueger taught a course at the Medical Libraries Association Midwest Chapter's annual meeting in Louisville, KY, this month, on Federal Depository Program resources for medical libraries. Her advice to current and future graduates reflects the breadth of her job and how stimulating it is. 'The field is an interesting and expanding one,' she says. 'Be prepared for change, keep learning, and be prepared for an interesting career.'

Catherine Fleming Imagines Infinite Possibilities

1991 As the first graduate we profiled, former attorney Catherine, or Cate, Fleming has built up a long and interesting history between then and now. After graduating from Wayne State University, Detroit, she worked in a public library, then at the Library of Congress as part of an internship that ended in 1994. When we caught up with her in 1995 ('The Ever-Changing Professionals: LJ's Graduates Revisited,' LJ 10/15/95, p. 31), she was public services librarian at Wayne State's Arthur Neef Law Library. But 'a number of family illnesses, a downturn in Michigan's economy, and other interests intervened,' she says. She spent the next couple of years working at a bookstore part-time, then logged in 20 hours a week at Harper Woods Public Library in suburban Detroit. With her husband of 30-plus years having officially retired last year, Fleming is still in the game. Since March 2006, she's been working part-time at Rochester Hills Public Library, MI. Like Hershiser, she's caught the music bug and says she hopes to 'improve my storytelling skills and incorporate live music to the degree that it proves effective.' She is currently part of a group that entertains in malls, nursing homes, and other public venues. 'I use a Gibson, Chet Atkins electric guitar that immediately dispenses with any 'typecasting' that may result from revealing my day job,' she says. She tells future graduates to 'be willing to try an area that was not in your original game plan' because it will increase the likelihood of 'finding placements that fit the various stages of a career.' As to what these graduates might be getting themselves into, Fleming uses her storytelling skills to imagine the possibilities: 'Perhaps the libraries of the future will be a constant presence with myriad access points...the car, the classroom, the doctor's office,' she says.