During the month of March, the MD Chapter sponsored two Chats. The first Chat took place on March 24th and was held at SLIS at Catholic University. The topic was law/legal librarianship and we had three chatters from three different types of libraries.
Chatters were: Annette Haldeman, Legislative Librarian for the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis; Susan Herrick, Research Librarian at Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore; and Sara Witman, Research Librarian at Gordon, Feinblatt, Rothman, Hoffberger & Hollander, LLC in Baltimore.
They all spoke about their workplaces and what their jobs entailed, their customer base, and the varied types of research they did each day. Questions from the students were on the value of a JD in these environments, the future of the law library, the impact of electronic resources on their jobs, the value of teaching and training capabilities of libarians and opportunities for librarians in today’s legal arena.
It was a very well-attended chat and there were many questions from the floor. The Chat was taped and the Chapter will receive a copy for lending out to members.
The second Chat took place at the iSchool of the University of Maryland on March 30. This Chat celebrated the return of three 2009 iSchool graduates in what was originally called “1-Year Out” when it was first scheduled last fall. It became “almost two years out” when it was finally held a few weeks ago.
The three Chatters were: Chris Belter, Public Services Librarian at NOAA in Silver Spring; Rachel Sutcliffe, an Archivist at National Archives and Records Administration and adjunct assistant professor at UMUC teaching information literacy; and Yani Yancey, currently in the National Library of Medicine’s Associate Fellowship Program at UMD’s HSHSL in Baltimore.
They talked about life after school and the transition to the workplace; how unexpected things had happened that led them away from their career “plan.” They gave advice to the students to be flexible, to “think outside the box,” to go after every opportunity and to volunteer for things that had not been in the “job description.”
This Chat was also well attended with good questions from those present. This Chat was also taped and the Chapter will receive a copy in due course.
The last Chat of this school year will take place on Monday, April 11 at the iSchool. The topic will be “Special Collections in an Academic Library.”
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