Reflection My desire to become a librarian began with my first job as a Childrens Library Aid at my local public library.

At the age of 16 I was left to manage the childrens library after the childrens library staff left for the evening. While I was not working on budgets or collection development, I learned a lot about circulation, technical services, readers advisory, and customer service. I enjoyed interacting with parents and children and the variety of tasks the job afforded. Despite the satisfaction this job brought, I did not consider librarian as a future career option. As an undergraduate student I changed my major from social work, to English, and, last, to child psychology. When my undergraduate degree proved to offer little in career options, my focus turned to graduate school. I worked for a few years, taking my time to decide on a graduate program. My thoughts often reflected upon my teenage days helping children find great books at the library. I heard about Dominican University through positive feedback of its affiliated program with St. Catherine University. Soon afterward, I applied and was accepted at Dominican University. In my entrance essay, I wrote with the anticipation of focusing on school librarianship, as I desired to incorporate teaching more directly into my career. I had some reservations, however, after talking with educators and other peers looking for school librarian jobs. Many cautioned against pursuing the profession as jobs were limited and many required or preferred those with a teaching license. My focus shifted rather quickly into the program when my Introduction to

Library and Information Science professor encouraged students to pursue medical librarianship. The field offered close interaction with medical personnel, interesting medical research, and a competitive salary. With my core-required classes out of the way, I registered to take Reference Sources in Health Sciences. This course, unfortunately, turned out to be the required Reference and Online Services Course all over again, but with an additional emphasis on medical databases. I instead desired to learn more about the practical use of reference sources in the career and also what the career would look like in a real-world setting. I found myself bored and uninterested in health sciences librarianship by the end of the course. My choice to no longer pursue health sciences librarianship was solidified by a presentation on the profession in my Management of Libraries and Information Centers course. A classmates interviews with medical librarians found that many in this profession spent their work hours proving a positive return on investment, rather than helping medical personnel. At this point, I knew I wanted to pursue an area of librarianship that promised job openings and would also meet my interests. I briefly thought about focusing on digital libraries, but when all related classes filled before my turn to register, only Library Materials for Children fit into my schedule and sparked my interest. Library Materials for Children turned out to be one of my favorite courses at Dominican. Besides the delight of reading great childrens litera ture, I learned new ways to analyze and look at this material. I enjoyed deep discussions on literature with my peers and its appeal to children.

My next course focusing on childrens librarianship was Services for Children and Young Adults. This course gave me practical tools to engage children and inspire in them a love of literature and learning. My professor was able to give practical advice and share real experiences from his career. I learned about the balance of building a collection of popular titles along with titles for minority communities and for those with unique interests. I learned about the importance of making the library a welcoming place; a place where children feel some sense of ownership. My professor emphasized personal authenticity as a key part of being a successful childrens librarian. And, while he stressed the importance of authenticity he did not imply that the task would be easy. He challenged us to be the best childrens librarians possible to make an important impact on children, communities, and the world. From this course came one of my favorite artifacts included in this ePortfolio the Passport to Culture outreach event created by a classmate and me. Here, we were able to package learning and fun, while reaching out to a community often forgotten about by libraries - homeschool families. I loved the idea of bringing the library to children instead of waiting for children to come to the library. To many children and families the public library is an unknown resource. While I found my courses related to childrens services very fulfilling, I wanted to ensure my skills as a librarian were well-rounded. With the way technology is changing dissemination of and forms of information, I wanted to hone my technological skills. I took Internet Fundamentals & Design and

Searching Electronic Databases. While these courses only offered a basic understanding of some technological tools, they gave me a starting point from which to pursue my own professional development. My professors steered my classmates and me towards the technological areas beneficial to the librarian profession. And, within the profession, they emphasized what technologies best support different areas of librarianship. I now have an idea of what areas to expand my own learning and what resources to use to gain that knowledge. When taking the Collection Management course at Dominican, the professor encouraged students to focus assignments, papers and projects on the area of librarianship in which we were most interested. This gave me practical skills in the area of collection development and community assessment in the area of youth services. It also led to the opportunity to create an entire core collection based on a real community! I created a collection based on a new Holocaust curriculum, which was a very challenging but rewarding experience. I have found many of the technological skills learned at Dominican to be beneficial at my internship through the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). There, I am creating a digital archive of all Caldecott Medal and Honor books and will have the opportunity to create online tutorials for various ALSC committees. As I hone my technological skills at ALSC, I also hope to make professional connections that will further benefit my career as a librarian. As graduation nears, I am anticipating the opportunity to put all I have learned into practice and the beginning of my dream job as a youth services librarian.