Name?
Derrick Jefferson
Current job?
Communication Librarian in Research, Teaching, and Learning. American University, Washington, DC
How long have you been in the field?
Started library school and service hours at various libraries as part of my program in 2010, completed MLIS in 2012.
How Do You Work?
What is your office/workspace like?
I have a corner cube where I can spread out a bit, phone, pens, books, headphones, etc., all at an arm’s reach. The bulk of my instruction colleagues, as well as the supervisors of our Research, Teaching, and Learning unit, are nearby. I often will pass through the admin office to say hello and check in with technical services. I may do this a couple times a day as a reminder to get up and away from my desk, and to encourage and maintain dialogue with other departments and units for which I have the utmost respect; there’s no way that I can do the job I do without the efforts of others who work so well and seamlessly with myself and others in research and instruction. At my actual workspace? Headphones, tunes, water bottle, post-its.
How do you organize your days?
There’s a lot of email wrangling. I’m sure
that’s prevalent for many folks, not just those of us in libraries. I check in
regularly with my faculty to make sure books, resources, course reserves, and
so on, are up to snuff or if there are new titles/products that should be on my
radar.
What do you spend most of your time doing?
I spend a lot of time planning and working on my instructional load for the School of Communication students and performing other liaison duties for that school. Between that and prepping for classes, and individual appointments with my students, that’s the bulk of my day! I’ve been surprised in the time I’ve been here at AU that many of my appointments are working with graduate students. Some are working as GA’s for faculty and their respective research and others are just returning students who’ve been out of school for ten or twenty years so research and libraries are different from what they remember. Getting them back on track and familiar with the resources we have is important.
What is a typical day like for you?
I’ve been here at AU for a little over two years, and now that I’m settled in, I focus primarily on instruction with students, supporting my faculty, and tending to the research needs of both within the School of Communication. With that, my typical day is rather atypical. But there is email, meetings with various teams and colleagues, collection development, and staying on top of new trends and things happening in the field. I also keep one foot rooted in diversity and inclusion issues on campus and in the profession as well.
What are you reading right now?
Everything! I used to be a very dedicated reader
because it helped me with my writing, but after returning to school and reading
mostly textbooks and academic articles, I had to abandon it. I’m really excited
about writing again and reading good work gets me there in terms of
inspiration. I just read the most fantastic short story called “Charity” from a
short story collection by Charles Baxter called, There’s Something I Want You to Do. There’s this amazing shift in the narrative halfway through the story
that I just loved. Masterful. I’ve also really enjoyed Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot
See, and I’m nearly done with Morrison’s God Help the Child. She is just so powerful
and skillful with how she uses language and voice. I miss the verve of her
earlier work, but I feel like I see a lot of it in this new novel. Lots on my
to-read shelf: Purity, Americanah, Drown, Everything Ravaged,
Everything Burned, A Brief History of
Seven Killings, A Little Life, and in non-fiction Between the World and
Me, Ghettoside, and Negroland.
What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
Someone told me once, essentially: What makes
you a good librarian was already in place before you ever thought about
becoming a librarian. All the tools were already there. In hindsight, I think
that’s true. I try to be kind but firm, honest but real, exercise compassion
and consideration because we all know what it’s like to lose, to suffer, to be
on the outside looking in. It sounds cliché, but I chalk it up to my parents
who worked so hard so that I could have the life I’ve had. I mean, “I’ve seen
fire and I’ve seen rain,” to quote James Taylor, but I love what I do; I
honestly do.
What have you found yourself doing at work that you never expected?
Buying games. Board games, video games, old
consoles and cartridges from eBay, Ticket to Ride, Game of Thrones games, Twister. It’s cool and I love
being able to support our new gaming master’s program. I’ve had to learn a lot
rather quickly with how our program approaches gaming which isn’t say,
designing games to be a game designer, but looking at how something like Pandemic can be seen as an analog
and teaching tool to say the recent Ebola outbreak from last year. It’s pretty
great.
Inside the Library Studio
What is your favorite word?
What is your least favorite word?
Entitlement.
What profession other than your own would you love to attempt?
Part of me still thinks I’m somewhat of a pastry
chef. I enjoy cooking and am very ambitious once I’m ready to make things
happen in my apron. I thought about culinary school but I don’t know if I want
my enjoyment of food things to extend beyond my current hobby status. I went to
film school before I became a librarian and in many ways having that kind of
insight into something can alter your perception and enjoyment of it. With
that, I always thought I’d be a great pharmacist. I enjoy working with and
helping people and I think working with people in that capacity...kind of like
a doctor, but not a doctor would be
pretty awesome.
What profession would you never want to attempt?
Prison guard.
Everything Else
What superpower do you wish you had?
The ability to take away someone’s pain.
What are you most proud of in your career?
Interestingly, it’s not one big thing or event,
though there have been some great moments and achievements. I honestly am proud
of the opportunity to engage with someone in the midst of a research dilemma and
to witness when they “get it”. Something clicks and you can see it in their
eyes. People come to you in crisis, right? At the last minute and feeling like
they’re painted into a corner, which is awful. But even then, seeing someone
back down from the ledge a bit when they realize that they’ve figured out how
to make the assignment or capstone or dissertation happen; how to find the
citations and articles and books that will ensure the literature review is
going to work, or their term paper. I think people have a pretty set definition
on what a librarian is, and I’m probably not that at all. We can do a lot of things and helping people? I’m pretty
proud of that.
If you're willing to share, tell about a mistake you made on the job.
This isn’t really a mistake, but almost four
years out from my library degree, there’s still so much I don’t know much
about. Scholarly communication, governance issues, open access, grants, impact
factors; some of it is just the nature of higher education, but there is a lot of
crossover with academic libraries. In some ways I feel woefully ignorant of how
that aspect of the job works and I owe it to myself as well as my faculty, to
stay current on these things as it certainly informs the work we do. [Editor's Note: I'm almost 13 years out from my degree program, and there's still so much *I* don't know. I think most of us feel that way, at least if we're being honest.]
When you aren't at work, what are you likely doing?
I love music. So I’m almost always cruising
around either in real life or online for used records. I grew up on hip-hop,
just as it was springing forth as a cultural art form. But I can’t keep up with
a lot of the new stuff, so I listen to 80’s and 90’s golden age stuff. Also, a
lot of soul, funk, and groove tunes. Lately, I’ve been in a big jazz frame of
mind getting lost in Miles and Coltrane and Monk. And Nina. Always Nina Simone.
I do love the physical act of playing a record and playing it through.
Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
Shawn Calhoun, Eamon Tewell, Gina Murrell. Three
people I only really kind of know through social media circles, but admire and
would love to know more about.
Derrick Jefferson is on Twitter as @geekandahalf.
Derrick Jefferson is on Twitter as @geekandahalf.
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