Post Reappointment
When the librarian in charge of the legacy Canadian documents collection left MSU, I approached the AD for Collections and requested that Canadian documents be added to my area of expertise. Since myself and my student employees were already maintaining the physical collection, it made the most sense to have me in charge of this area and to work with patrons on their research in Canadian government. While questions in this area are not incredibly frequent, the physical collection does need a lot of work, which included shifting the books and consolidating the shelves (summer 2014) and removing remaining Canadian documents from Remote Storage (summer 2016). The items that were in Remote Storage may or may not be cataloged, which is also true for the items that are in the collection on 3 West, and I intend to work with getting these items processed by the appropriate staff fall and spring 2017/2018 and also weeding this collection.
In a similar vein to my acquisition of the Canadian documents collection, the librarian I charge of the European Union documents shifted responsibilities. With this vacancy, I expressed interest to the AD of Collections to be in charge of this area. I collaborate with Mary Jo Zeter, who is in charge of non-governmental European Union materials, to maintain our European Union collection and assist any researchers in this area. As we are an European Union government documents depository, I ensure that we are in compliance with the rules and regulations, especially in regards to weeding.
In March 2015 the Library received a generous donation of media items, including approximately 17,0000 video games, from the Rovi Corporation. I have always enjoyed video games and I seized this opportunity to work with this massive video game collection and requested the opportunity to make these games findable to our researchers. This change was approved by the AD of Collections and the Head of Cataloging and Metadata. In August 2015, I officially became the Video Game Cataloger, and while I had a lot to learn since I lacked experience with cataloging, especially in a non-print format, I was eager to take on this expansion of my position and went to work learning about cataloging best practices.
In May 2017 I asked the Michigan Documents specialist at that time, Shawn Nicholson, if he minded if I added that collection to my purview. Shawn agreed to this and this addition to my responsibilities was approved by the AD for Collections. My rationale for wanting this legacy collection was that it made the most sense to me to have all government information under one person so that it would be easier for patrons who might have over-lapping areas of interest (for example an examination of Canadian provincial government policies compared to the state of Michigan). It would also be easier for librarians at the Reference Desk to just remember one subject specialist when referring instead of having to refer to multiple librarians.
Pre Reappointment
In March 2012, I began purchasing relevant and useful books for the Library Office of Copyright. I met with Jon Harrison to receive training on searching and purchasing books through GOBI. Once trained, I was able to develop a collection of reference materials for the Library Office of Copyright.
On June 1, 2012, I created a blog on Copyright to aggregate relevant and timely copyright information from around the web.
I developed a workshop, LibGuide, and supporting documentation for Turnitin and iThenticate, which was taught for the IT Services’ Spartans Learn professional development program. This workshop was also taught at Faculty Seminars.
In April 2013, I expressed interest in the vacant Government Information Librarian position at the MSUL. While copyright is an important issue in academia, there was greater need, as well as room for growth and expansion of responsibilities with the Government Information Librarian position. I successfully expanded my responsibilities from providing subject expertise in the area of copyright and general reference services, to providing subject expertise and reference services for U.S. government and international government information. I also became responsible for managing our federal depository collection, including ensuring compliance with the legal requirements of that program, as well as providing communication between our library and our new regional depository at the University of Minnesota and the Government Publishing Office (GPO). I also manage our international documents collection, selecting and purchasing relevant materials that fall within this category, such as United Nations publications. Additionally, I took on liaison responsibilities for James Madison College (JMC).