Position Expectations

This Positions Expectations essay has three main features that I hope will make it easier to read and easier to notice my argument for promotion to Associate Librarian.

First, for all the entries below, I have made it clear how they are connected to the “Position Expectations” guidelines in the Librarian Personnel Code, which are on page 26. I have linked every activity that I’ve documented to language cited directly from the Code.

Second, I have put the five activities that I think are most impressive at the top of this essay. Everything below is definitely important, but the Top 5 Activities are the ones that make my case for promotion to Associate Librarian strongest.

Third, for those Top 5 Activities, I have provided details about how they are substantial, sustained, and significant. In the Librarian Personnel Code, with regard to Associate Librarian, when I read the “Criteria for Appointment to Associate Librarian” and “Expectations for Rank” sections on page 8, those are the three words–substantial, sustained, significant–that stood out most to me. I am defining “substantial” as what I contributed to the activity, “sustained” as how long I’ve kept it going, and “significant” as the effect the activity has had on the UW Libraries and beyond.

Top 5 Activities for Promotion:

Title of Documented Activity: Research Commons Undergraduate Student Reflections

• Description: Once a quarter, the seven or eight undergraduate student workers who I supervise in the Research Commons reflect in writing about their work and their connection to that work. This activity is essential for three reasons: it improves communication between me and the people I supervise, it serves as a rich record of what it’s like to work in the Research Commons and the UW Libraries, and it provides narratives and cases for us to read together and discuss in group meetings.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”
• Substantial (as in my contribution): This is an activity that I devised, implemented, and, over the years, revised. With my supervisor, Madeline Mundt, I have also conducted research about this program and published about it in the peer-reviewed journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe.
• Sustained (as in over time): I started this program in 2017, and it continues today.
• Significant (as in to the UW Libraries and beyond): This activity completely changed how I, as a supervisor, interact with student employees and appreciate the work they do and their connection to it. While students are working in the Research Commons, their reflections give me a good idea about the successes they achieve and the challenges they face, and if these students choose to share their reflections with other people on our team (sharing reflections is always optional), then they help us all to understand patterns of similarity and divergence in our work. Furthermore, when students graduate and leave Research Commons employment, their reflections serve as a record of not just what they accomplished but how they thought and felt about their work. These reflections end up being incredibly useful to me when I write letters of recommendation and reference for former student workers–something that’s a big part of my job as a supervisor to students who go on to things like internships, graduate school, work in non-profits, and positions in competitive industries. I was inspired to implement this practice of reflective writing because, before I became a librarian, I taught college composition classes for ten years, and in the world of college writing, the practice and value of written reflection is well known and well researched. However, as far as I know, in academic library spaces, there is no other library that enmeshes written reflection into library work for student employees. That means that the UW Libraries are unique in valuing written reflection, compensating student workers for doing it, and presenting research about it to scholars in the field.  

Title of Documented Activity: Storytelling Fellows: Digital Storytelling, Podcasting, and Digital Exhibit Creating

• Description: These are totally online workshops for UW graduate students in which, over the course of four online meetings in a month, they create short videos, podcasts, or digital exhibits. These digital creations could tell the story of the graduate students’ research–or their relationship to it–or they could do something entirely different, like cast a fictional narrative. It’s open for grad students to do what they choose. But the point of this program isn’t just the projects. It’s also about offering a course where graduate students can meet other graduate students in order to exchange information and experiences–not to mention make connections and friends.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”
• Substantial (as in my contribution): In late 2016, Perry Yee (Senior Online Learning Support Manager in Libraries Instructional Design) and I were challenged by our supervisors to put together an online digital storytelling workshop for graduate students, and we worked closely to offer a video-making version of it in 2017. (This was long before any kind of totally online workshops in digital storytelling existed. We are convinced we were one of the first to teach in such a way.) Then, following the success of that workshop–and getting feedback that graduate students were interested in podcasting–we created a podcasting workshop. After that, when the UW Libraries committed to the digital-hosting service Reclaim Hosting in 2019, we made a workshop in digital exhibit making with the tool Omeka. For all of these courses, I have been a lead designer, teacher, and reviser of teaching materials and learning platforms.  
• Sustained (as in over time): Perry and I started this program in 2017, and it continues to this day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, though, especially in 2021, we did not offer workshops solely for graduate students. We had to change the way we were working, which you’ll read more about in my entry below titled “Teaching Media Making in Undergraduate and Graduate Classes.” We brought the Storytelling Fellows: Podcasting course back in Summer 2022 and had 63 graduate students register from many different disciplines, schools, and programs. We plan to offer Storytelling Fellows: Digital Exhibit Making in Winter 2022.
• Significant (as in to the UW Libraries and beyond): This program has been significant in at least a few ways. First, it has made the UW Libraries a leader in digital storytelling on the UW campuses. Over the years, we’ve had hundreds of graduate students apply from dozens of programs, from all three campuses, and from online programs. In fact, just recently, in July 2022, I got an email from a student who wrote this: “Hi, Perry and Elliott. I’m a Ph.D. student in the Cinema and Media Studies department. I’ve heard about your podcasting workshop before and had friends who attended speak highly of it, but never had the time to devote to it. This year, it would finally work. Are there still open spots?” Second, because our program is so well known, we’ve had program directors and faculty members reach out to us, asking for our consultation. Over the years, we have met with people like Juliana Villegas (Associate Director of UW Honors), Patrick Christie (a professor in JSIS), Kristiina Vogt (a professor in Environmental & Forest Sciences), Becky Sladek (Associate Director of Communication & Strategic Initiatives in the Dept. of Psychiatry), and Stephanie Kerschbaum (Director of the Program in Writing & Rhetoric) in order to consult about digital storytelling at class and programmatic levels. Finally, this activity has been a significant contribution in that it pushed people in the UW Libraries to teach high-quality, high-interaction, community-based online classes years before the pandemic started. This meant that, when the pandemic did begin, we had people who were good at online teaching and that we could serve as examples, leaders, and helpers during a historically wicked time in higher education. Perry, Madeline Mundt, and I have written and published about Storytelling Fellows programs in two chapters for two different Association of College & Research Libraries books.

Title of Documented Activity: Accessibility Testing of the Manifold Publishing Platform

• Description: The Manifold Publishing platform is an exciting and affordable way to make digital books and has been implemented at colleges, university presses, and libraries like Brown University, the City University of New York, Cornell University Press, Gallaudet University Press, Michigan State University Libraries, and the University of Minnesota Press. Manifold was first released in 2017 to pilot-testing sites, which the University of Washington Libraries and Press were one of, and after piloting Manifold successfully, the UW Libraries and Press have gone on to commit to it long term. In 2018, I reached out to Hadi Rangin (the IT Accessibility Specialist at UW Accessible Technology) to ask if he and the team of undergraduate accessibility testers he trains and works with would like to examine Manifold for accessibility. Hadi and his team delivered an initial accessibility report to Manifold in 2018, and since then, we’ve gone on to help Manifold fix 50+ accessibility issues. In 2021/2022, we gave them a second report, identifying another 40 issues. In a recent video in which Manifold developers go over accessibility fixes and features, nearly everything they identify as a fixed accessibility issue or a developed accessibility feature is thanks to Hadi’s team and the UW Libraries and Press.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Initiation of New Projects that Improve Services of the Unit, University Libraries, or Other User Communities”
• Substantial (as in my contribution): This is a project that I initiated, that I took the lead on, and that I’ve continued to lead. I have been the Project Manager of this work–a role that entails communicating with UW Accessible Technology, setting regular meetings and agendas between the UW and Manifold, and meeting with and orienting new UW Accessible Technology student workers. This past year, I’ve also worked to incorporate a member from the UW Press (Beth Fuget, Grants & Digital Projects) as well as the former UW Libraries Accessibility Coordinator, Andy Andrews, into the team.
• Sustained (as in over time): This project started in 2018 and continues to this day.
• Significant (as in to the UW Libraries and beyond): With the hiring of Andy Andrews, the UW Libraries Accessibility Coordinator, the UW Libraries made a significant commitment to making its physical and digital spaces, resources, and services far more accessible for library users with disabilities. This Manifold-accessibility-testing program that I initiated and have diligently stuck with for years is a part of that commitment and is useful in ways far beyond just the improvement of Manifold. The work that I’ve been doing–and the processes I’ve established–could be applied to other digital platforms, tools, vendors, and developers in the future. Any accessibility testing in university libraries at all is already rare enough, but conducting long term testing and making meaningful changes with designers and developers of projects is even rarer. My hope is that this work is only beginning with Manifold and that I–or my colleagues–will be able to replicate it with other digital tools and developers. I also think that my forging a link with UW Accessible Technologies and Hadi Rangin is significant. In the past, Hadi assisted with the initial testing of the Ex Libris search discovery that we use on our UW Libraries homepage–and he has provided some tutorials and trainings for library workers in the basics of accessibility testing–but I am not aware of any other in-depth, focused, fastidious accessibility testing projects that he’s worked with the Libraries on. Just in the way that I hope the testing of Manifold is only the beginning, I wish, too, that our collaborations with Hadi have just begun. That being said, going back to Manifold itself, I want to stress that thanks to the UW Libraries and Press–and UW Accessible Technology and me–it is definitely far more accessible. The work that I’ve led has left an impact not just on this institution and not just Manifold but on universities and presses across the United States.

Title of Documented Activity: The UW Libraries High School Internship

• Description: In this highly unusual but absolutely essential program, ten local high school students participate in a 30-hour internship on the UW Seattle campus, where they experience college life and learn about academic libraries, academic librarianship, and the details of the college application process. They also make digital-media projects, like a video that tells a story, a podcast, and a digital map that tells a story with at least five location points. All the students who participate in this program are first-generation college students, the first people from their family to go to college in the United States, or from groups historically excluded from higher education and librarianship.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Initiation of New Projects that Improve Services of the Unit, University Libraries, or Other User Communities” and “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”
• Substantial (as in my contribution): This is a program that I envisioned and started assembling in 2017. Since then, I have co-designed and co-taught it with Kian Flynn, the Geography & Global Studies Librarian. I have been responsible for establishing systems of recruiting local high school students, making connections with public librarians and school librarians, developing lesson plans, and finding and extending funding. In the first three years of the internship, I applied for UW Libraries Allen Funds to fund the internship, and for the last two years, I’ve been able to secure $7000 from the Seattle Public Libraries. Every student who finishes the 30-hour internship gets a $530 stipend, and, starting in the July 2022 internship, we gave the students dining-hall cards charged with $160 each. Another substantial contribution I’ve made is that, if the high-school interns choose to attend UW Seattle–and if they want to work in the UW Libraries–then I interview, hire, and train them to work in the Research Commons, where I supervise student workers. Right now, on our team of seven student workers, five of them are graduates of the UW Libraries High School Internship.    
• Sustained (as in over time): This program started in 2017 and continues to this day.
• Significant (as in to the UW Libraries and beyond): This program has proven to begin to address a giant need in the State of Washington–a need that young people interested in higher education desperately have. Every year, we’ve had over forty students apply for the program, and over time, to meet this need as best we can, we’ve expanded the program, going from three interns in 2017, to six in 2018, to ten in 2019. We had to suspend the program in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we returned in 2021 by way of an online internship, and went back to ten student interns in-person on the Seattle campus in 2022. In addition to trying to meet a need and expanding with that need, we have also made significant connections with Seattle Public Schools, the Seattle Housing Authority, and, most of all, the Seattle Public Libraries. SPL librarians like Nancy Garrett (a Youth Services Librarian at the Lake City Public Library) have collaborated with us from the infancy of the program, and over the years, they’ve continued to guide and support us with their spirit, their labor, and their considerable funding. This program has had a reach far beyond the UW Seattle Libraries, and I challenge anyone to find programs with stronger collaborations amongst academic, school, and public libraries–let alone paid internships for high schoolers in academic libraries. (As far as we know, the only other paid internships for high schoolers in academic libraries that exist are at the libraries at The Ohio State University and at the libraries at Princeton University.) In short, this is a very special and very rare activity. We’ve run it for five iterations, and my hope is that we’ll get to fifty one day.

Title of Documented Activity: Teaching Media Making in Undergraduate and Graduate Classes

• Description: Teaching media making in undergraduate and graduate classes has been a consistent part of my career as English Studies Librarian. In general, on the UW Seattle campus, there are few resources for in-person teaching and support of media making, and these past years I have been a dependable resource for students who are making videos, podcasts, and digital books as well as for teachers who want to know how to teach assignments related to those things. As much as possible, I try to support upper-level classes and graduate classes in the English Department, but because resources for media teaching are so scarce, I also help other classes in the Arts & Humanities and sometimes go into other disciplines and interdisciplinary zones, making sure to loop in my librarian colleagues.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Effective in Teaching and Communication Skills”
• Substantial (as in my contribution): At first, I thought this was a part of my job that’s grown over the years, but in reviewing my teaching numbers, it looks like it’s been consistently solid. In 2019, I visited 41 classes, and media making was the focus of 18 of those. In 2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I visited 26 classes–16 of which were about media making. In 2021, I visited 35 classes–21 of which had to do with media making. So far, in 2022, I’ve visited 30 classes, 18 of which have to do with media making. This has been a manageable workload for me alone, but in keeping sustainability and the potential for growth in mind, these past two years, I have initiated connections with Bryan Shipley and Gautam Malyala in the Open Scholarship Commons in order to share with them how I teach media making and also to teach with them as a team.
• Sustained (as in over time): I have been doing sustained media-teaching in the UW Libraries since 2017, when I came on as Assistant Research Commons Librarian. Since I became the English Studies & Research Commons Librarian in late 2017, I have consistently done this work. Going into the future, I see this part of my job continuing and expanding.
• Significant (as in to the UW Libraries and beyond): Taking a look at all the classes I’ve visited just from 2019 in order to help students with media making, I think it’s conservative to guess that I’ve interacted with over 1600 people in that time. That is a significant number of students for one librarian to help in a meaningful way, and in meeting with my colleagues–and in training them to help students in similar ways–I am doing the work to not only continue to support media making but also double or triple that support.

Other Important Documented Activities for Promotion:

Title of Documented Activity: Outreach and Orientation for Graduate Students and Faculty Members in the English Department

• Description: Over the entire course of my time as English Studies Librarian, I have made strong connections to faculty and graduate students through outreach and orientation. Oftentimes, my initial connection with new people in the English Dept doesn’t start with their first day of work or class. Instead, I meet many faculty members and graduate students when they are on the job market and visiting the University of Washington or when they have been accepted to the UW English Studies program and are deciding whether or not to come. Then, past that initial connection, I continue to stay in touch with new people by providing them with orientation to the UW Libraries as well as with the services and support that I offer. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, I had to be creative because I had to shift all of my tours to online ones.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”

Title of Documented Activity: Acknowledgements in English-Department Published Books and Dissertations

• Description: Over the years, via research help and some draft feedback, I’ve helped faculty and graduate students with their published books and dissertations, and they’ve thanked me in their acknowledgements. David Shields, a faculty member, acknowledged by help in Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump: An Intervention. EJ Koh, a graduate student, thanked me for my help with her memoir, The Magical Language of Others. Sarah Faulkner, Matt Poland, Laura DeVos, and Caitlin Palo have all thanked me in their dissertations for my help. Caitlin writes this in her dissertation: “I am grateful to Elliott Stevens, the English Department Librarian, who encouraged me to meet with and interview Dodie Bellamy – perhaps the most enjoyable highlight of writing and researching this dissertation.”
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”

Title of Documented Activity: Half-Day Conferences with English-Department Graduate Students

• Description: In 2018, I helped graduate students in the English Department organize a half-day conference celebrating the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It can be very hard for graduate students to find spaces for offering conferences–let alone spaces that don’t charge a fee–so I provided them with the 15,000 square-foot Research Commons and was in charge of making sure the space was safe, secure, and organized for the day. Because this event was successful, I later worked with students in 2019 on a half-day conference called March Madness, which focused on the publication of Little Women. In 2020, I helped organize the space for the English Department’s Praxis Conference, which, in the past, had been held in Haggatt Hall. The Research Commons proved to be a far better venue. With the COVID-19 pandemic–and with the limitations placed on meetings in the UW Libraries–I have put these collaborations on hold for 2021 and 2022. In my future as English Studies Librarian, I see these conferences as something I will continue to work on with English graduate students.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Initiation of New Projects that Improve Services of the Unit, University Libraries, or Other User Communities”

Title of Documented Activity: The Feral Atlas Event with the English Department and the Simpson Center

• Description: In the Winter 2020 quarter, the last in-person event I attended before the UW closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic was Dr. Anna Tsing’s unforgettable Katz Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities. At this event, she spoke about a project she organized and contributed to called The Feral Atlas, which is a complex, layered, and fascinating Digital Humanities website that leads visitors through Anthropocene-focused scenarios in which the environments of humans and non humans entangle. Through 2020-2022, a number of English-Department graduate students referenced this project–in particular in Professor Jesse Oak Taylor’s classes–so Jesse and I organized an online event about the making of The Feral Atlas for May 2022. For this event, my contribution is that I reached out to the speakers who were editors of the project–Drs Jennifer Deger and  Alder Keleman Saxena–and organized the session. I wrote up the description of the event, helped with marketing it, and facilitated the Q&A period during it.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”

Title of Documented Activity: Helping to Organize the New TXTDS Minor and Sitting in on Classes

• Description: During the 2021 academic year, I was part of an organizing committee responsible for the new Textual Studies & Digital Humanities minor (TXTDS). This group was led by Dr. Geoffrey Turnovsky, Chair of French & Italian Studies, and included faculty from the English Department, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, the Information School, Art History, and the Libraries. Once the minor was approved, I decided I wanted to learn about it further–and my potential connection to it as a librarian in the Arts & Humanities Team–by auditing Dr. Turnovsky’s TXTDS 404: Texts, Publics, and Publications. In the course, I contributed to discussions and made my own digital edition of one of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s letters, going through the process of examining those letters in UW Libraries Special Collections, digitizing them, transcribing them, encoding them with Text Encoding Initiative XML methods, and putting it all together for exhibition in a Manifold digital book. Though I was auditing this class, I also supported Dr. Turnovsky in it by helping him manage Zoom (he was doing hybrid teaching) and giving a presentation to students about library research methods. I think he appreciated this assistance during a very difficult time of teaching. (This was during the Winter 2022 quarter.) During this Fall 2022 quarter, I have been auditing Dr. Anna Preus’s TXTDS 267: Data Science and the Humanities course. Similar to what I did in Dr. Turnovsky’s course, I have been providing a librarian’s perspective on topics in the course, and two students have met with me outside of class to talk about MLIS programs and the career of librarianship. I am also offering a standalone TEI workshop for this class because TEI was something that Dr. Preus covered briefly in the course but also thinks I could go into in further depth as an extra-credit opportunity for students.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Professional Growth with an On-going Commitment to Mastery of New Skills in One’s Specialty and Knowledge of Current Developments in the Profession”

Title of Documented Activity: Text-Encoding-Initiative (TEI) Workshops

• Description: In 2020, Erika Bailey (Data & Digital Scholarship Librarian at UWT) and I were so inspired by a workshop in text encoding that we took–a workshop that introduced us to encoding with XML using Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) methods–that we decided to investigate offering workshops of our own. We chose to undertake such a project because we recognized that TEI was being used in the UW Libraries, and it was also something being taught and implemented in UW courses in the Arts & Humanities, in particular in the UW Seattle English Department, French & Italian Studies, Information School, and Near Eastern Languages & Culture. Through 2021, we put together lesson plans for one-shot and two-session courses of instruction. We did a two-session course for the Tateuchi East Asia Library and a one-shot session for UW Libraries workers. With the new TXTDS minor–and with the formation of the new Open Scholarship Commons–we plan to offer more workshops in the future.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Initiation of New Projects that Improve Services of the Unit, University Libraries, or Other User Communities”

Title of Documented Activity: Manifold and Omeka Workshops

• Description: From 2019 until today, I have worked closely with Verletta Kern, the Digital Scholarship Librarian at UWS, in offering one-and-a-half-hour workshops in Omeka Exhibits and Manifold digital books. I have also been working with Verletta to create shorter, 30-minute Manifold workshops that will help Manifold users deepen their skills. We hope to offer those in the 2022-2023 academic year.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Effective in Teaching and Communication Skills”

Title of Documented Activity: The Digital Scholarship Summer Immersion Program

• Description: The Digital Scholarship Summer Immersion Program has been organized by Verletta Kern, the Digital Scholarship Librarian at UWS, and is an opportunity for UW faculty members and graduate students to improve their digital scholarship skills. I have been helping with DSSI since 2019, mostly teaching podcasting courses and developing materials in teaching how to make Omeka Exhibits.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Effective in Teaching and Communication Skills”

Title of Documented Activity: Managing the Research Commons Help Desk after COVID Lockdown

• Description: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UW Libraries Research Commons was closed in March of 2020 and opened again with limited capacity in March of 2021. During this time, seven of the eight student workers that I hired and trained to work at the Research Commons help desk graduated. In mid-September of 2021, I returned to on-campus work, and in preparation for that, I quickly and efficiently hired and trained six new student workers in a totally online environment in order to work in a physical space. (This was no easy feat.) Then, during the Fall 2021 quarter, I worked closely with this team, navigating myriad COVID concerns that they had and that our library users had. In the Winter 2021 quarter, though COVID restrictions loosened, our work in the Libraries didn’t get any easier, and I played a key role in keeping our team safe and updated about new COVID guidelines. In the Spring quarter, the guidelines became even looser, and I continued to work with them, and I am proud that throughout all this our team in the Research Commons kept safe (no one tested positive for COVID), remained up to date about best practices in not spreading the virus, and provided top service in a historically horrible time.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”

Title of Documented Activity: Revisions to Research Commons Hiring Materials

• Description: In 2018, I attended a UW professional development session for hiring a diverse workforce, and it inspired me to overhaul our undergraduate-student job application materials, our interview questions, and our reference-check questions. I revised our application notice, adding a diversity statement and making clear what the required and desired qualifications are. I then updated the interview questions so that they all tie only to required qualifications, and I made it a point to email prospective workers these questions before their interview with me. I made a rubric based on these questions for scoring applicants. Finally, I updated the questions for references to link directly to required qualifications.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Demonstrated Ability in Report Writing and Analytical Skills”

Title of Documented Activity: Making Connections and Offering Services with the Open Scholarship Commons

• Description: The Open Scholarship Commons is a new online (and soon-to-be physical) space in the UWS Libraries, and it offers many consultations to library users, a couple of which are digital-book making and podcasting. In 2021, I worked closely with Bryan Shipley in the OSC in order to provide support for people interested in sound recording and making podcasts. In 2022, when Gautam Malyala was hired to work in the OSC, I offered for him to observe and pitch in with my podcasting teaching, and we have gone on to co-teach workshops and courses in podcasting. I have helped Verletta Kern, the Head of the Open Scholarship Commons, with interviewing graduate student workers.
• Connection to the Librarian Code: “Creative Responses to Assigned Responsibilities and Emergent Needs”

Title of Documented Activity: Before the UW Libraries: Ten Years of Teaching College Classes, Teaching Young People, and Starting Out at the Providence College Library

• Description: Though I have done a lot of work in the UW Libraries these past five years, and though I have learned a lot from my work and developed from it, every day, I draw heavily on my ten years of experience–from 2006 to 2016–teaching classes to a diverse range of people. During that time, I taught intensive summer writing courses to middle schoolers through the Duke University Talent Identification Program, and I taught a video-game making course to high schoolers in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and I rely on those experiences every time I work with high-school students in the UW Libraries High School Internship. During that time, I also taught college composition, research-paper writing, English literature and drama, and creative writing classes to students at the University of Kansas, Highland Community College, the Kansas City Art Institute, and Providence College. All of that experience–and all of the knowledge I gained from it–has helped me in the 100+ classes I’ve visited as a UW Librarian and the dozens of workshops and one-month courses I’ve taught in the Libraries in person and online. It’s also helped me to be an empathetic, knowledgeable teaching resource to English-Department graduate students, many of whom are teaching college classes for the first time. Further, before I came to the UW, I worked for one year part-time in the Providence College Library (I was spending the other half of my time teaching English classes at Providence College) and one year full-time as a Research & Education Librarian at Providence College. (At this time, I still taught one English class a semester as well as a summer writing class for First Generation college students who were part of the Friar Foundations program.) The Providence College Library did not have subject-specialist librarians, but I was for all purposes an English Studies Librarian in that I made sure the English Department had the print and electronic resources they needed, I visited nearly all the ENG 100-level classes and many upper-division ones, and I helped faculty to incorporate more library research resources into their lesson plans and into their own research processes and agendas. On paper, I might have come to the UW Libraries with one year of full-time academic librarianship, but in the context of academic experience, I actually arrived with a deep, layered skillset in teaching and pedagogy that few academic librarians have.