O. Carteaux
Librarian, archivist
Student Learning Outcome No. 5: Professional Developement
These last few years have added quite a bit to my professional development, to say the least. I feel that I have gained more practical experience in subjects and disciplines in which I have an interest in the last 2 years than I have my whole adult life in the workplace, despite the variety of positions that I have held. Mainly this is because what I have been doing in the last several years have been things that I have been passionate about, and for the first time, in this semester, I am gaining experience doing what I want to do professionally for as long as I am able. This may not seem like such a huge deal to some, who have had this figured out for years, but the elation of having something click in an almost audible way regarding what you want to do with your professional life is something that I have not experienced before.
It has been a long road of coincidences and choices that I have made that brought me to this point. From May of 2012 to May of 2014 I was General Manager at the campus radio station at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, WUAG 103.1 fm. Although I had radio experience before in a commercial setting and with much less responsibility, nothing could have prepared me for my time at the station. I learned much in my 2 years there, and feel that my experiences there have shaped me professionally as well as personally. Not only did I learn about the inner workings of a non-profit educational station and the trials and tribulations that it goes through, but also crafted my own skills in relation to management, organization, and started building on my already present (although relatively subdued) professional persona. When I was General Manager, I had the opportunity to work with many different people in many different ways, and much of that experience in public relations grew because of that, as well as my understanding of the business world and expectations regarding certain aspects of holding a position of such responsibility which I had not before been held accountable for.
I am immensely thankful I was able to merge my experiences at WUAG with my experiences in the LIS department regarding my coursework as well as taking cues from my library studies to help me be a better General Manager. At some points I am unsure whether the skills that I have come from my position at the station, or my experience in the LIS program, especially during my first year at the station. Taking LIS 650 Library Management and Administration helped me quite a bit in putting ideas into practice at the station, and my experiences with the radio shaped my projects that I worked on at WUAG - right up until this point, as I continue working on my independent study, the subject which is the vinyl archives at the station. I loved working at the station so much that had considered looking into doing so professionally elsewhere - until this semester, when everything coalesced and clicked for me, and I decided that without a doubt, I wanted to be an audiovisual archivist.
I am hoping to be a part of the WUAG Vinyl Digitization Project after my graduation - my proposal includes looking at grants to fund the project, and it is my goal apply to these grants for the station, as well as to stay on as the project supervisor once it does in fact get off the ground. Since I don't have experience as of yet regarding applying for grants, I am looking forward to this experience, as well as continuing to work with the station and the project that I have put together, as well as publishing a paper about the experience and perhaps even presenting at a conference if able. I believe these things, as well as continuing to work as an intern with the Duke Archives, will only give me more experience and make me even more equipped to go out into the workforce and lend my skills to an audiovisual archive.
This semester I have been doing my practicum at Duke University in the Audiovisual department of the Rubenstein Library. What started off as a 10 hour a week practicum has blossomed into a 20 hour a week internship, and although the hours are double what is required for the course, the experience that I have gained since being there is fantastic. Thus far, I have worked with only a few kinds of audiovisual materials, but have been, and continue to be, an active part of organizing collections and making materials available to patrons. My experiences to this point could have not been better.
LIS 640 Information Organization and Access: WUAG 103.1 FM Heirarchtical Classification Paper
LIS 644 Digital Libraries: Letter of intent WUAG Digital Collection Project
LIS 644 Digital Libraries: WUAG Digital Collection Project powerpoint slides
LIS 650 Library Management and Administration: Final Treatise
LIS 690 Independent Study: WUAG Vinyl Archive Digitization Plan
Associations interested in being part of:
Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)