Educator + Infonista + Historian

Over the last 6th months I have gradually gained more responsibilities and completed a few small projects to help out my fellow librarians: Reference - Every week I do approximately 10 hours per week on the reference desk. General reference is very challenging. I enjoy just about every humanities and social science question, can adeptly handle most questions about sciences, but frequently feel out of my depth when confronted by business questions (especially those doing background research into a company). Instruction  - 20-30 instruction sessions per semester of all types (English, Communications, Criminal Justice, etc). I thrive on instruction sessions, referred to Research Skills Instruction rather than Library or Bibliographic Instruction. Overall I have fewer instruction sessions per semester than I did at the University of Maryland Libraries, but offering discipline based instruction sessions in so many different subjects is a rewarding challenge. Collection Development - I

On December 31st, I left my position at the University of Maryland Libraries. This was a very hard decision. I loved my work and had a wonderful group of colleagues in Special Collections, however I was not able to afford to live in MD on an interim position. My coworkers understood this and encouraged me to seek out full-time, permanent employment which would provide a livable salary, benefits, and a retirement plan. Fortunately, I was offered a full-time, tenure-track position as the Instruction & User Services Librarian at the University Library of California State University, Stanislaus . I am very excited to start this new position (today). I will be moving out of my comfort zone of Special Collections and into the larger arena of  academic librarianship. This new job is in a much smaller library than the University of Maryland Libraries and so I will have the opportunity to do a little bit of everything: reference, instruction, collection development, outreach, etc. I