Greg Stall Alumni Spotlight

Joseph A. Salem, Jr., Ph.D. – Alumni Spotlight

Joe Salem

iSchool Graduation Date

1999

Professional Organizations/Affiliations

American Library Association, Big Ten Academic Alliance, Association of Research Libraries

Current responsibilities/How are you using your information skills?

Dean of Libraries at Michigan State University. I am honored to serve in a leadership role within our profession and use information literacy, assessment, and research skills regularly in this role.

What is the best professional advice you can give?

The information professions in general and higher education-based librarianship in particular are opportunities to live a life of impact and to live your values. It may not be all that easy right out of school, but once you have experience and feel free to move about the cabin, be sure to find an organization that allows you to do both and where you thrive.

How do you encourage innovative ideas?

I was able to work directly on this in my last two roles. I try to listen and see my role in leadership as one where I am here to empower, resource, and to facilitate the environment where the colleagues with whom I work can thrive and innovate. I think by creating that environment where ideas can and are encouraged to come from everywhere and where I share leadership within the library, we do get much more innovation and problem-solving than in a top-down organization.

Do you have a mentor? How have they influenced you?

I am fortunate to have had several mentors throughout my career and several colleagues who have invested their time and energy into my development. I believe the best mentors for me have helped me to work through issues and opportunities and helped me to develop the confidence to take on new challenges. They have also modeled great mentorship and in an effort to repay their generosity of spirit, time, and expertise, I have tried to mentor colleagues throughout my career as well, especially as I have been fortunate to serve in leadership roles.

What do you wish you had done earlier or more often?

I wish I would have enjoyed every part of my career more fully. Work is fun for me and I do enjoy it on a daily basis, but I have also been very future-oriented and career-driven, so there have been significant times in my career where I did not take full advantage of the great opportunities of working or living in a great community. I also feel as though I rushed through a few portions of my career. I wish I would have slowed down and enjoyed the ride a bit more.

How and where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration watching my daughter grow and learn and become a young woman and in working with brilliant and talented colleagues who are spending their careers preserving the present and past to build the future she will live in.

To what values are you committed?

I have long been committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our profession and within the communities we serve. In my case, that is higher education writ-large and specifically the institutions that I have served. I am also committed to student success, which is a reflection of the same value placed on equity and inclusion, but with students as the main focus in particular. I am also committed to empathetic leadership and building and sustaining work environments that put people first.

How do you balance your work and home life?

This is difficult, especially in leadership roles, but I am fortunate to be sharing my life with my wife, Jamie, and our daughter, Summer, so I do try to balance things a bit. That means a work day that is not the same for me as it is for others. For example, I do try to get home for dinner with my family and spend some time together and then get back to work after my daughter gets to bed. I also try to make time for my own hobbies. I am an avid cyclist and enjoy several genres of music. It is best for all around when we get to enjoy all aspects of our lives.

What are some challenges that today’s information professionals will face? And tomorrow’s?

The continued polarization of the country and active disinformation campaigns make our profession more vital than ever and more challenged than ever as well.

How can the library remain important to the community?

The importance of the library in the community is not in question in my mind. If it were, library professionals would not be asked to risk their lives in a pandemic to provide services and materials to their communities. At its core, the library has always offered information resources, the space (virtual or physical) to use them, and the expertise needed to make the best use of those resources and that space. The mix of those three things will change as we go forward, but as long as we stay true to that mission and to that basic concept, we will remain vital to our communities.

What websites, apps, podcasts, or other resources would you recommend to explore?

I have two, recommendations. First, I recommend the Internet Archive as the one Web site to explore, both from a content perspective, but also for the idea of doing things at scale. There is good and bad with that approach. The good is the vast amount of archived and preserved content. The difficult part of scale is context, so I recommend flipping through a section or two and thinking about what a curated approach to some of that content would look like. That is the other end of scale. One app I love in my personal life is Discogs, which you can use to catalog your physical music media, particularly vinyl records for me. I like it for information professionals because so much of the metadata are “crowd-sourced” and yet the app is an extremely rich resource.

What is a book you like that you have to defend liking and what is a book you dislike that you have to defend disliking?

I must have found the right position. I serve as Dean of Libraries at Michigan State University, and one of the things for which we are known is the largest publicly-held collection of comic books and comic art. I like comic books and graphic novels as a genre and for a very long time seemed to have to defend that. I do not actively read many comics any longer, but it is nice to see them studied and taken more seriously. I am not sure I actively dislike a book enough that I have to defend that position very often.

Special thanks to the Kent State University iSchool Alumni Network for coordinating these profiles. Learn more about the Alumni Network on their Facebook page and group. Students are welcome to join and participate.

Greg Stall Alumni Spotlight

Ash Faulkner, MLIS, MBA – Alumni Spotlight

Ash Faulkner

iSchool Graduation Date

2013

Professional Organizations/Affiliations

ALA, RUSA, ACRL, BRASS (Business and Reference Services Section), IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations)

Current responsibilities/How are you using your information skills?

I currently work as the Business Librarian at The Ohio State University Libraries.  It’s a subject librarian and liaison role so I basically serve as the contact point for anybody in the business college, visit classes for instruction sessions, and help researchers hunt down data.  I often joke about how funny it is that I got into librarianship because I love books but as a business librarian I work almost exclusively with databases, occasionally articles, and lots and lots of financial data.  Books?  Not so much.  (Don’t worry, I have lots at home.)

What is the best professional advice you can give?

Honestly?  I think networking is key, at least in academic librarianship.  Not that ‘who’ you know will necessarily get you places – the ‘what’ is still more important – but I think making connections within your specific field means you always have in mind someone who can help you crowdsource a particularly difficult reference question, and knowing people both in and outside the library on your campus means you might know someone else to connect the patron with, who might be able to help with the question better than you can.  Be friendly, be helpful without expecting anything in return, and keep in touch.  It’s really that simple.

How do you encourage innovative ideas?

I think the only way to really encourage innovative ideas is for there to be little negative consequence for failure; otherwise the risk is too high.  I’ve always been really lucky to work for institutions where I did feel comfortable to try to offer new services and when some of them did fail (as is inevitable) there was no downside to me.  Afterward, I would discuss with my supervisors what I learned from the experiment and whether it was worth iterating on the theme to try to improve success, or if it was an idea to scrap entirely.  And that’s okay too.

Do you have a mentor? How have they influenced you?

I have lots of informal mentors.  Back to my point on networking.  I love talking to people who have been in librarianship longer than I have, or have a deeper pool of knowledge in one area or another.  Mostly, I really just enjoy spending time with my mentors when I get a chance and getting their perspectives on things.  

For me, I never went out of my way to cultivate any sort of official ‘mentor’ outside of people that I just legitimately enjoy as friends also. Just these particular friends know more than me about this, that, or the other thing.  And I learn from them.  I guess the main ways I ‘use’ my mentors is mostly in helping me develop and fine tune outreach ideas or track down really obscure reference leads.  I suppose they’ve influenced me to think about where I’ll grow in librarianship as I get deeper into my career also.  I have consulted with one particular mentor, for instance, when I was considering each of my two job changes to date.  They helped me think through the pros and cons of moving into a new role.  Someone with twenty or thirty years in librarianship really has a different perspective to offer on something like that.

What do you wish you had done earlier or more often?

I wish I had learned a lot more about instruction and teaching theory before I started my first job because as a subject liaison in an academic library, you are actually expected to do a lot of one-shot class instruction sessions.  You can certainly just get up and lecture, but knowing how to provide really interactive and enjoyable instruction sessions is a huge plus.  Also, I so wish I had learned some basic statistics and coding.  I’m actually working on addressing that gap right now.  I took a stats class to get my MBA, but I need a serious refresher for my own research purposes and sometimes to help students understand what kind of data they need.  Coding?  Python, R, SAS, SPSS…  Any/all of those are gold in the job market right now.  Data librarianship is where it’s at.

How and where do you find inspiration?

As far as librarianship is concerned, I guess I’m inspired every time I work with a student to hunt down data and they come back to me and tell me how helpful I was and/or how they didn’t realize the library could do that for them.  I actually really enjoy super obscure data hunts; the hard to find, the better. 

To what values are you committed?

That’s kinda a big question.  If I had to choose one, I guess I go for ‘integrity’, as in my actions always match up to my words.  I say what I do and I do what I say.  I was always taught to consider with every single thing I do: Would I be happy if it was on the front page of the newspaper tomorrow?  (For more modern readers, maybe I should say, ‘gone viral online’ tomorrow.)  If the answer is ‘no’, maybe rethink that.

How do you balance your work and home life?

I’ve actually been really blessed to have only ever worked at institutions wherein work-life balance was valued.  (You can totally ask about this in your interviews!  And don’t just let them say ‘Oh, we value it.’  Ask how they support it.  I dropped out of the running for one job when they wouldn’t give me a concrete ‘how’.)  I’ve never had to struggle for this.  

I do also think you manage some of these expectations yourself.  Generally, I don’t answer work emails outside of my regular working hours. Mainly, I will email you back when I get to it in the queue tomorrow.  If you start answering emails at all hours of the day and night, it’s a lot harder to take your time back later.  Begin as you mean to continue.  If you’re salaried, you’ve agreed that you aren’t necessarily off clock as soon as your eight hours are up (most of us aren’t), but you are always entitled to enough time to eat, sleep, see your family and maintain your sanity.  There might be a few weeks out of the year when things are extra special crazy, but that shouldn’t be the norm.  Don’t let it be the norm. 

What are some challenges that today’s information professionals will face? And tomorrow’s?

If you’re in academic librarianship, I think you’re going to have to know some coding at some point.  Not just the data-heavy areas like mine, but text mining etc. if you’re in the humanities.  Overall in librarianship, I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about what libraries are and what they should be able to do moving forward.  Continuous professional development is probably not a bad idea.  

How can the library remain important to the community?

I think libraries are important to communities.  People overwhelmingly say they support their local libraries.  It’s just that their support doesn’t always translate into monetary support.  When competing priorities are school, police, and fire, the library just doesn’t always reach the cutoff.  I also think we’re not always particularly good at marketing ourselves.  (Also, also, I might not be the best person to answer this question.  I went into academic librarianship partially because I thought there was better job security.  I had a hard time imagining a big university arguing they didn’t need a library.  It’s kinda, you know, part of the vibe.)

What websites, apps, podcasts, or other resources would you recommend to explore?

I recommend getting on the listserv for whatever professional organization is most relevant to you.  Those are the conversations you want to make sure you’re keeping up with.

What is a book you like that you have to defend liking and what is a book you dislike that you have to defend disliking?

Okay.  Legit this question is really hard for me to answer.  I read such an insane mix of stuff.  My kitchen table right now has: an Agatha Christie, a book on police procedure, a book on theories behind increasing dogs’ longevity, a mythology book, a book on caving, a Sylvia Brown book, a book on cadaver dogs, an Olga Broumas poetry collection, and book on detective fiction…. Would any of that cause either a need to champion or defend?

I read YA or even middle grade fiction, so I guess I feel like I have to defend liking that sometimes.  For YA, I really liked Blood Red Road by Moira Young or, for middle grade, I liked Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty.  I categorically refuse to publicly ‘boo’ any books.  (I secretly nurture a far-off dream of being a fiction author someday and my apocalypse brain is whispering to me that anything I ‘boo’ will inevitably lead to me meeting said author at a conference someday and being very shamed indeed.)

Special thanks to the Kent State University iSchool Alumni Network for coordinating these profiles. Learn more about the Alumni Network on their Facebook page and group. Students are welcome to join and participate.

Greg Stall Alumni Spotlight

Adam D’Alexander, M.L.I.S. – Alumni Spotlight

iSchool Graduation Date

2017

Current responsibilities/How are you using your information skills?

I currently work as a Development Associate at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a college in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. My team works with grants and sponsored research projects, so a lot of our work is writing proposals and reports, stewarding current donors, and cultivating new partnerships. My information skills play an important role in prospect research, which entails using research databases and search engines to seek potential donors who align with our institution’s mission and outreach initiatives. I was first introduced to prospect research while completing my MLIS practicum requirement as a research and development intern at the Centers for Families and Children, a non-profit in Cleveland, OH. 

Before entering the development field, I worked in public libraries for seven years. I had worked as a page, a circulation assistant, and a library associate before I was promoted to Adult Learning Information Services Librarian at Twinsburg Public Library in Twinsburg, OH upon receiving my MLIS degree. My work at this job, including collecting statistics and community feedback, writing summaries for grant proposals, managing a budget for purchasing materials, and running an outreach service for homebound residents provided important project management skills necessary to succeed at my current position. 

What is the best professional advice you can give?

There are always opportunities to transfer your skills and develop professionally in order to find a job you love. My career path thus far has not always been linear – but I picked up new responsibilities along the way while staying mindful of how my acquired skills can guide me toward new job prospects. I think this mentality can be especially empowering for Library and Information Science students – there are many ways to utilize your education and experience to enter careers that may not fall under the traditional library umbrella.

How do you encourage innovative ideas?

I am relatively new to the development field, but one thing that is consistent with this profession and the Library and Information Science field is that innovation is not only encouraged – it is necessary. In order to meet the needs of our most vulnerable community members and enact positive change in our world, we need to accept that the work we have done in the past is not always enough. Our society is at a paradigm shift, and it’s more important now than ever to use the wealth of information available to discuss the critical issues of our time. As I develop professionally, I hope to be more proactive in utilizing my creativity and love for information to share insights with my colleagues, friends, and family.

Do you have a mentor? How have they influenced you?

I have had many mentors throughout my career. Some have worked as direct supervisors, and others have been professionals that I have formed close working relationships with. The one thing they have all had in common is that they are encouraging and compassionate. Not only have they trained me to be resourceful and independent in my work, but helped me understand the scope and importance of what we do. I am so thankful for my mentors, especially those at Twinsburg Public Library, who motivated and supported me as I pursued my MLIS degree at Kent State.

What do you wish you had done earlier or more often?

One thing I picked up on while obtaining my MLIS degree is the importance of being open-minded about where your degree can take you. When I pursued my bachelor’s degree in writing at Ithaca College, my goal was to simply be a “writer.” When I began my Library Science degree, I wanted to be a “librarian.” However, I realized it wasn’t serving me to passively obtain credits in order to meet the degree’s requirements. I took MLIS courses that expanded my technological skills, took electives in economics, marketing, and knowledge management, and chose to complete my practicum outside of a traditional library setting so I could finish graduate school with multiple options to use my skills. I highly recommend all young students to be proactive in exploring every opportunity the field has to offer before setting your sights on one career.

How and where do you find inspiration?

I have and currently work with outstanding colleagues – they do not only achieve their team and individual goals, but always look for innovative ways to make the work we do more effective and meaningful. The Development and Alumni Affairs Team at The Cooper Union, as well as the school’s students and faculty, inspire me with their forward-thinking ideas and practices. I am also inspired by our leaders, activists, and library workers who advocate for their communities, even during this global pandemic. 

To what values are you committed?

Compassion, openness, reliability, positivity, and inclusivity.

How do you balance your work and home life?

It is very important for me professionally and mentally to fully unplug when I am not working. Though I may not be physically in my office or checking emails after work hours, I have to make a special effort to stay present and relax. I often do this by making plans with friends after work and setting time aside to explore my hobbies and interests.

What are some challenges that today’s information professionals will face? And tomorrow’s?

Information professionals are multi-faceted and work in diverse settings, including public, academic, and special libraries. However, no matter where they work, they are called to develop professionally and learn new skills to “keep up” in the technological age. Our education is ongoing, and though it is challenging, it is critical to maintain our level of expertise in order to lead our fields.

How can the library remain important to the community?

In my opinion, libraries are more important than ever, especially in this time when technological and educational accessibility play a critical role in our survival. However, library employees, administrators, major donors, community partners, and the government often have a different perception of what the library’s primary role is from their vantage points. It is important for them to put traditional beliefs and differences aside to fully understand what their communities need. I believe transparency between interested parties and increased level of engagement with library patrons will be key to their importance in the future.

What websites, apps, podcasts, or other resources would you recommend exploring?

I recently finished The Library Book by Susan Orlean, which provided an in-depth history of the Los Angeles Public Library. Orlean’s narrative about its importance to Los Angeles’ diverse community really resonated with my experience as a librarian. This profound (and fun) read truly captures the significance of libraries and the magic they bring to people’s lives. 

What is a book you like that you have to defend liking and what is a book you dislike that you have to defend disliking?

I have never been very interested in popular fantasy novels or series such as Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings. I like to read authors that really examine the human condition, even from its darkest angles. One that stands out in my mind is Hanya Yanagihara, who wrote A Little Life – my favorite book of the past few years. I was moved by this incredible novel, but would hesitate recommending it to friends and family due to its difficult subject matter.

Special thanks to the Kent State University iSchool Alumni Network for coordinating these profiles. Learn more about the Alumni Network on their Facebook page and group. Students are welcome to join and participate.

Lauren Zollinger Alumni Spotlight

Shelley Blundell, Ph.D., M.L.I.S – Alumni Spotlight

iSchool Graduation Date

2009 (MLIS), 2015 (Ph.D. in Communication and Information)

Professional Organizations/Affiliations

College Media Association
College Media Association Diversity and Inclusion Committee
Document Academy
National Education Association
National Organization for Student Success
Ohio Education Association
Proceedings from the Document Academy Editorial Board
Society for Collegiate Journalists
Society of Ohio Archivists

Current responsibilities/How are you using your information skills?

As an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Youngstown State University, I incorporate my “information skills” into every aspect of my position – which includes teaching, scholarship and service. This includes a) incorporating ‘academic research best practices’ presentations into all of my undergraduate and graduate courses in both fields, b) collaborating on numerous teaching and scholarly projects with librarians and archivists from the university’s Maag library, and c) serving in committee roles where I can put my information and research skills to the best use of the goals of the committee (e.g. I am currently Communications Chair for the faculty union and in this role, I spend a great deal of time crafting messages based on research conducted to support the goals and needs of union membership).

What is the best professional advice you can give?

Librarianship and archival work is changing and so must you – be open to a variety of different positions and be on the lookout for ‘out of the norm’ professional development opportunities that could give you a leg up on the competition in newly created positions (such as digital content manager, social media manager, etc.). There are many exceptional and free professional development resources, and you have access to many of pay resources as an alum of the iSchool, so be sure to look into these and bolster your skills and talents whenever possible.

How do you encourage innovative ideas?

Through critical thinking and problem-based learning activities – many ‘innovative ideas’ come from a simple assessment of problems we face on a daily basis, so giving people the ability to consider these problems from an informed, research-based perspective often leads to fascinating, implementable results. For me, truly meaningful innovation comes not from thinking of something no one has ever thought about before in an area that doesn’t yet exist – it comes from considering problems we experience daily or frequently from the perspective of different people, and using our skills, knowledge, and research ability to find constructive and implementable solutions to those problems for the benefit of the whole.

Do you have a mentor? How have they influenced you?

I am fortunate enough to have ‘accumulated’ many mentors over my life (or as Patrick Wilson would call them, ‘cognitive authorities,’), and they all influence me in different ways. Those who influence me the most encourage me to keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep pushing forward on my ideals and motivations, inspiring others to do the same, while never losing the ability to be ‘open-minded’ and to admit that I am wrong and have more learning to do.

What do you wish you had done earlier or more often?

Found a way to cultivate my many passions in constructive and daily ways. Sometimes life gets so busy affording time to developing research in areas about which I am most passionate seems impossible – but I must make time. I am working on that now. As my favorite Edward Norton character “Smoochy” once said: You can’t change the world, but you can make a dent.

How and where do you find inspiration?

From the incredible work and projects of my colleagues (such as KSU iSchool Alumni Network President Greg Stall) – I love hearing about the great works of others and how they are having numerous positive impacts on different people – success is inspiring but so too, in its way, is failure – learning what doesn’t work to me is just as valuable as learning what does.

To what values are you committed?

Integrity, follow-through, and open-minded collaboration.

How do you balance your work and home life?

I’ll let you know when I figure that out. 🙂

What are some challenges that today’s information professionals will face? And tomorrow’s?

Teaching others how to be critical thinkers and curious, responsible consumers (and proliferators) of information – misinformation and ‘fake news’ have been around forever, but social media and the 24-hour news cycle have given it a power and mass dissemination ability not previously experienced and this is causing chaos and, in the case of COVID-19 misinformation, great illness and even death. We cannot approach those who continue to proliferate misinformation as ‘snobs’ or ‘arrogant know-it-alls’ – we must always endeavor to find common ground and to be willing to understand the ecological information-seeking processes of others, so that we can learn how best to engage with others in imparting the skills of responsible information stewardship and acquisition.

How can the library remain important to the community?

By being responsive to the needs of its communities – and that means the WHOLE community. Encouraging participation of those in communities who are at-risk or in the minority is just as important as serving the needs of the majority within a community, and libraries must continually seek to be places of learning, where information can be explored from multiple perspectives and with the benefit of available resources that people can use to inform their personal decision-making. However, libraries cannot ‘shirk’ their duties by saying ‘all information is equal’ and by remaining passive or neutral on critical issues influencing and shaping today’s societies (see comment: Encouraging participation of those in communities who are at-risk or in the minority) – libraries ARE political and they are not neutral. Racism and hate speech are not ‘informed positions’ – indeed, it is the lack of information that leads to ignorant perspectives and opinions. We do not have to actively change people’s minds (for such is nigh impossible) but we must take an active role in providing people with many different information resources that could lead them to change their minds on their own, in a place where their ignorance is not ‘shamed’ but rather, explored – in this, we are neutral: Our charge must be to provide people with the resources to inform themselves and as such, we cannot pass judgment on those coming to us seeking to learn.

What websites, apps, podcasts, or other resources would you recommend to explore?

From a knowledge perspective? Not quite sure – I’m a huge fan of historical and true-crime podcasts, so in the “history” category, I recommend “Lore,” “Imagined Life,” and “Disgraceland” – really compelling takes on learning more about history!

What is a book you like that you have to defend liking and what is a book you dislike that you have to defend disliking?

This may sound like a cop-out, but I don’t embarrass anyone for their reading choices (myself included) – if you are reading, you are learning, so I would rather recommend people read as often and as many different types of books and genres as they can.

Special thanks to the Kent State University iSchool Alumni Network for coordinating these profiles. Learn more about the Alumni Network on their Facebook page and group. Students are welcome to join and participate.