What is your role on the committee?
I am the North American Representative.
When did you join and why?
I joined ILG just this summer, in June 2022. I first attended (and presented at) LILAC in 2018 and loved it! I’ve attended and presented every year since (at least, every year there has been a conference). It is the only annual conference I’ve found that focuses in on my area of expertise—information literacy and instruction—and it has become an invaluable aspect of my professional development as a teacher and librarian. I’ve also built a lovely community of like-minded colleagues through my attendance and participation in the conference. I was looking for ways to become even more engaged with that community in the UK, and that is what led me to ILG.
What do you do in your committee role?
Well, I’ve only just started, of course! So, I’m sure the role will evolve with time, but my understanding of it now is that I will mainly keep the committee appraised of what is happening in the U.S. around information literacy—developments and updates from bodies like ALA and ACRL, trends in practice, conversations we’re having, etc. This will happen via reports at our quarterly meetings and more informally through our email list serv. I also plan to contribute to this blog on a regular basis, so watch this space for more from me.
What is your day job?
I am an instruction librarian at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon in the U.S. We are relatively small (~5,000 students), but we are a comprehensive university—meaning we offer students the full range of undergraduate majors and programs, as well as some graduate degree programs. My main job role is to provide library instruction to students, but I also provide reference services, manage the library’s social media program, and manage and collect for our leisure reading collections. Librarians at WOU are faculty, which means that I have service responsibilities on campus (e.g. serving on faculty committees) and do my own research and academic publication. Most recently, I co-edited the book Critical Library Pedagogy in Practice with LILAC’s own Jess Haigh, a librarian at Leeds Beckett University, which features several chapters that had their beginnings as presentations at LILAC.
What are your other interests?
I am a fiction writer, writing mainly historical fiction and contemporary rom com. Although my aspirations of publishing a novel are yet unfulfilled, I did get accepted for the selective publishing mentorship program called PitchWars in 2019. I also read a lot (big surprise!), and enjoy staying active by doing yoga every morning—usually joined by my two cats—lifting weights at the campus gym, and hiking. I was recently married, and my husband is a Brit who just relocated to Oregon, so we’ve been doing a lot of camping and exploring of our beautiful state and have planted a possibly over-ambitious vegetable garden that keeps us busy.