Week 18: Librarian as Supporter, or Scholar in her own right?

This week I was feeling much better, but I decided to take Monday off to fully recover.  On Wednesday I attended the Digital Library Brown Bag talk.  This week it was presented by my supervisor Michelle Dalmau and she talked about her experience at a Digital Humanities and Libraries THATCamp.   Many of the participants felt that their discussions and experiences would help other digital librarians to better define and promote their unique roles as information professionals.  I was particularly struck by how many librarians, digital librarians specifically, seem to want to get away from the notion or idea that we are solely in a service position.  They seem to want to prove to faculty members and professors that they can participate in research in addition to supporting research.  This active role is what I desire to have and I loved that this was brought up.  However, I don’t think being in a service role is necessarily a bad thing.  This is what at first drew me to librarianship.  My views and emphasis have shifted a bit as I have become a more skilled and experienced librarian, but we can’t forget our duty to our patrons and information seekers at large. 

After attending the talk, I edited the Schematron I have been writing.  There were a few issues with it and so I spent some time editing it for the body, encoder and editor versions.  I also worked on MODS mapping for the core fields.  There was a bit of a template to work with, but most of it I had to do from scratch.   When there were some lulls in the day I continued reading on electronic resources.