Julie Mohedano

MLIS e-Portfolio: Reflective Essay

Spring 2022

I decided to pursue a career in librarianship somewhat by chance during a time when I had no set career

goals. After completing my undergraduate degree, I spent some time abroad teaching English. After that, I did

not have any professional or career goals and spent time working at entry level call center jobs. As I neared five

years of this type of work, I knew that I had to decide on a career to work towards. I stumbled upon library

science by seeing online advertisements for schools in the field. This led me to research the field more

thoroughly, as I immediately reflected on the time I spent in the library not only as a patron, but also as a

volunteer in my youth. I also looked at the career paths some of my peers from undergraduate and high school

were on who work in the library field. Once I knew that this was the career I wanted to pursue, researching

schools led me to Dominican. While it is certainly the case that I initially considered Dominican due to the

convenience of it being one of only two ALA accredited schools in the state and in my local area, visiting the

campus prior to applying made me certain that I wanted to attend. Unfortunately, as the pandemic began the

year that I started the MLIS program, I was not able to take any classes in person despite initially hoping to take

a mixture of in person and online programs.

Having to take all courses online meant that certain expectations I had for my graduate school could not

be met, particularly regarding spending time on campus and getting to work with fellow students. Work for

classes was almost entirely independent and while I was able to connect with some other students via class

discussions on Canvas, it was not possible to talk with other students outside of class or about topics unrelated

to the class discussion. The only course I took where I had to complete a group project was LIS708, which

involved a complex research project done as a group. While I was glad to have an opportunity to do group

work, it was extremely difficult to get the project started as scheduling times to have discussions in real time

was very difficult without the ability to simply meet before or after class. Nonetheless, having the chance to

work with other students was still a valuable experience.

 Despite the difficulties I have had with networking with other students, I have enjoyed developing

lasting professional relationships with several of my instructors. Additionally, working at the Butler Children’s

Literature Center (BCLC) has given me a chance to get to know the other students working there along with the

curator. When I began the job at BCLC in May 2021 during the summer semester, we were still working from

home. With the start of the fall semester, this work transitioned to being in person, which allowed me a chance

to spend some time on campus. In addition to allowing me to get to know the BCLC curator and other student

workers more, being on campus allowed me to participate in some student events, which was something I had

been looking forward to doing when choosing to go back to school. While these more general events for all

students did not necessarily help with career related networking, I have been able to make some friends at

Dominican through attending events, which is still valuable to me on a personal level.

Much of my course work was in pursuit of the Certificate in Youth Services, which I chose to get as my

goal is to work as a teen librarian at a public library. I chose to focus on this goal as my fondest memories of the

library come from my own years as a teen and many of my hobbies and interests remain in line with things that

are popular with that age group. Classes I took towards the certificate made me feel more confident in my goal,

particularly Library Materials for Young Adults and Services for Children and Young Adults. Additionally, my

professional work experience makes me more confident in my desire to be a teen librarian. While I have not

been working in the teen department, the library where I work sees an influx of teenagers daily as it is located

right next to a middle school. Thus, even working in the adult services department, I get to interact with

teenagers regularly. Additionally, while I believe much of the work I have been doing in adult services is

important, I feel strongly that I would enjoy preparing programming and materials for teens more as they would

tie into my personal hobbies and interest more than anything I have been able to do while serving adults.

Overall, my coursework has given me a greater understanding of the many facets of librarianship. While

I was aware that working in libraries goes beyond the cliches of simply shushing people and checking out

books, my studies have given me a clear picture of all the things this career can entail. While duties vary greatly

based on type and size of library, in some cases librarians must wear virtually all the hats in their institutions.

This makes it even more important that we learn at least the basics of various library related skills ranging from
collection management to readers advisory to cataloging. I am glad to say that my coursework has allowed me

to do this. I would therefore like to highlight some of the artifacts featured throughout this portfolio that I

consider to be my best work, highlighting one for each of the five learning goals.

Goal 1: Develop a professional identity and philosophy within the library and information professions.

One of the major projects I did for LIS 701: Core Values, Ethics, and Issue of the Library Information

Professions was a presentation on a professional association. The project involved making a PowerPoint,

recording a presentation utilizing the slides, and creating a handout with information about the chosen

professional association. Having to put the information together in the formats of both a presentation and

handout was also a valuable experience as I had not done a handout before. Creating the handout allowed me to

distill the information into its more important parts. This is a useful skill for creating pamphlets and fliers which

are common materials created for patrons.

I chose to research the Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table (GNCRT) of the American Library

Association (ALA). The reason I decided to focus on this association is because I was familiar with it prior to

studying for my MLIS as I had seen the organization’s presence at events I attended in my free time, such as the

Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo (C2E2). My personal interest in the association made it interesting to

research its history and explain what it does to others. As a longtime fan of media such as anime, manga, and

comics, the organization's mission is important to me. In another course, LIS 722: Library Materials for Young

Adults, I did a presentation about anime and manga and how they can be used in the library.

Goal 2: Understand the essential nature of information and its relevance to our diverse society.

Also for LIS 701, we had to do a research paper with an accompanying handout and poster as our final

project. Similarly to the association project, the multi-faceted assignment gave me experience with presenting

information in formats that I had not utilized before. The handout involved creating an abstract and choosing

some sources used for the paper to present as an annotated bibliography. While I have read abstracts when

conducting my own research, this was my first time writing one myself. Creating a single poster that

summarized my research was also a new experience for me, as the only comparable experience I have is

creating tri fold poster style presentations, which I have not done in quite some time. I am glad to have gained
experience in both creating handouts and posters as they are essential components when presenting research at

professional conferences.

The topic that I chose to focus on for my research project was multicultural diversity in library

collections. I began my paper by discussing the history of multicultural diversity in United States libraries and

then discussing why diverse material is important. The importance of diversity in collections lies in materials’

ability to provide representation to everyone and windows into other cultures for those in majority

demographics. I then discussed how the diversity of a collection can be assessed through a diversity audit,

providing examples of some libraries that have conducted diversity audits. Understanding the importance of

providing diverse materials and how to assess a collection are important skills as diversity audits become more

commonplace as a matter of assessment. In fact, the library where I work will be conducting a diversity audit.

As we have a larger collection, we will be splitting the collection into parts, which is a common way of doing

an audit that I discussed in my paper.

Goal 3: Navigate, curate and create information across the spectrum of human records.

LIS 748: Collection Management focused on principles of collection development such as selection and

weeding. The final project for this course involved putting together a core collection for a specific part of the

overall collection in a library. This was a useful project as in many smaller libraries, librarians themselves take

part in collection development. While I currently work at a larger institution where there is a dedicated

department for collection development, I have seen job listings that include collection development among the

duties of librarians throughout the library.

For this project, I focused on updating African American works in a teen collection. In addition to

providing a list of materials, the project also involved explaining why this core collection was needed along

with theoretical community statistics and selection criteria. I highlighted recent works released within the past 5

years, referencing an annotated bibliography I created for another course, LIS 804: Special Topics in Youth

Services: The Dark Fantastic: Reading Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comics to Change the World, for many of

the books I chose to include. Additional research went into choosing materials in a variety of formats which
included consulting websites focused on diverse materials, a RAILS training I viewed through my job, and

review websites.

Goal 4: Synthesize theory and practice within a dynamic, evolving, and diverse information environment.

One of the major projects for LIS 708: Evidence Based Planning, Management, and Decision Making

was to evaluate a service at a real-life library. This involved researching the chosen library and its community

as much as possible with publicly available information as well as doing a literature review on the chosen topic.

This course focused on research and this assignment provided experience that will be helpful for researching in

the library field. It is important to conduct a literature review when going about research to see what has already

been written about the topic of your choice. If conducting research in order to solve an issue or improve a

service, others’ research could help lead you to solutions. Noting community demographics when assessing a

library service is also important in real life practice as what works for one community may not work for

another. The paper also involved applying evaluation models to the service, which is also a skill that will

continue to be used in future real-life practice.

The service I chose to research was summer reading programs. I focused on the library I went to as a

teenager and assessed its community. Looking at the existing literature about summer reading programs, I found

that much of the focus was on programs for children and how they help children continue their learning over the

summer without school. This led me to focus the paper on the idea of providing more summer reading support

for adults. As a core aspect of librarianship is supporting lifelong learning, programs that support literacy and

reading for fun should be equally targeted to patrons of all ages.

Goal 5: Effectively communicate and collaborate to deliver, market, and advocate for library and

information services.

For LIS 723: Services for Children and Young Adults, the final project was to create a program portfolio

in the form of a board report. This was meant to simulate presenting programs before a library board, which is

an important skill when advocating for what the library does to stakeholders. In addition to highlighting several

programs, the assignment asked us to make a statement of our professional service philosophy.
 For my program portfolio, I highlighted six real-life programs from the Addison Public Library. I

divided the programs into sections based on those specifically for children, teens, and those appropriate for all

ages. This assignment allowed me to look at programs and describe not only what occurred during the program

but also why it was important from a developmental standpoint. The service philosophy allowed me to discuss

why I believe providing programs seen as “fun” is important, while also acknowledging that programs of that

type are frequently also helpful for young people’s development.