By Tara Murray
When I applied for this job, I had no idea what an Information Core Director was. (My first mental association was with a nuclear core.) A friend called my attention to the job ad and assured me that what the department was seeking was, in fact, a librarian. Indeed, near the end of the ad, they asked for an MLS.
This information core, it turns out, is the unit that provides information services to the Population Research Institute (PRI) at Penn State. The use of the term "core" to describe service units comes from our major funder, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). We also have an administrative core, a computer core, a geographic information analysis core, and a statistics core. These units provide support services to PRI as a research center, and also to individual faculty and graduate student researchers affiliated with the center.
A large part of my job is running the PRI library, a very small, very specialized library. While PRI is part of a large university system, the PRI library is independent of the university's library system. Access to the university libraries' collections is vital to our work, however, and our physical proximity to the main library building is beneficial. The PRI library is mostly contained in one room, and books are checked out by signing cards and dropping them in a wooden box in the center of the library. We rely on an honor system to ensure that materials are properly signed out and returned when recalled by another user. There aren't even any due dates on most items, and everything, including current journal issues, circulates. With a user base this small (approximately sixty faculty affiliates and sixty graduate students) this old-fashioned system is still feasible. The library's collection is focused on the current research interests of PRI faculty affiliates, and also includes core resources in the field of demography. I am the sole professional librarian, but our library assistant handles most of the day-to-day library operations.
The information core also includes PRI's data archive, web site design, and publications. Primarily, this involves promoting these services within PRI, and acting as gatekeeper for requests. Over time, though, I have learned many new skills in order to provide guidance and support for my staff.
One of the rewards (and also one of the challenges) of this job is that it is constantly changing. Some days I might do typical special librarian work, such as selecting books for the collection, answering reference questions, and doing literature searches. Other days, I might search for funding sources for a research proposal, assist a graduate student designing a research poster, or interview a co-worker for the staff newsletter. Because I supervise a staff of four people, I also have a fair amount of administrative work.
Our library and data archive catalog is in Microsoft Access, using ColdFusion to make it accessible via the web. This means that I can make changes and adjustments whenever I want, but it also means that I have to make them myself. (I have resisted purchasing library automation software because I like having complete control over my library catalog-something that is possible with a collection this small.) The summer after I first started this job, we did a complete inventory of the library and data archive collections, and I made major changes to the catalog database to improve search capabilities, expand circulation functions, and standardize bibliographic records. Our webmaster, herself a librarian, worked with me to improve the web interface, accessible at http://athens.pop.psu.edu/infocore/catalog/PriCatSrch.cfm.
I have been involved in several other special projects during my two and a half years with PRI. The information core also provides services to other units that are part of the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at Penn State, and I was part of the committee that oversaw the development of web sites for SSRI and all of its components. More recently, I was charged with organizing a committee to discuss PRI's role in the development and implementation of the Data Documentation Initiative, a new standard for metadata for social science data sets.
Because the PRI library is such a small operation, I rely heavily on connections I make through professional associations. Locally, I am an associate member of the Penn State Libraries Faculty Organization, which means I get to attend their meetings, where I learn about issues that affect libraries at Penn State and meet other librarians at Penn State. Nationally, I belong to two associations: the Special Libraries Association (SLA) and the Association for Population/Family Planning Libraries & Information Centers-International (APLIC-I). Initially, I only attended the meetings of my local chapter of SLA, but as my chapter involvement increased, I was able to convince my boss to fund a trip to New York City for the national meeting. APLIC-I is a small and very specialized group that I find absolutely essential to my work. In addition to the opportunities for learning from and collaborating with peers in similar jobs, APLIC-I is a resource for interlibrary loan. The membership is a mixture of librarians at academic research centers like PRI, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations in the fields of population and reproductive health.
Like most librarians, I've encountered more professional situations than I can list here that library school didn't prepare me for, but library school was a good base to start from. The management courses that I took only because they were required ("I'll never be a manager," I thought), have helped me on many occasions. The social sciences subject course was also extremely helpful, as I have a humanities background and find myself working with sociologists, economists, and anthropologists. In fact, I keep the textbook from that course, The Social Sciences: A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to Selected Sources, edited by Nancy Herron, in my office. If I had it to do over again, I would have also taken a cataloging course. Working in a library this small, a librarian can't be too well-rounded.
Relevant Links
Penn State Population Research Institute
http://www.pop.psu.edu
Special Libraries Association
http://www.sla.org
Association for Population/Family Planning Libraries and Information Centers-International
(APLIC-I)
http://www.aplici.org