I entered the San Jose State Library Science Program six years into my library career. At the time I was working two part time jobs in Southern California libraries. From the beginning I had some conception of what I wanted to focus on in the San Jose State program; public libraries generally. Since being hired on at the Napa City-County Library this focus has developed further. Early on in my current position I was tasked with managing Napa County’s Spanish collections. What I found when I began to look at the actual materials in the stacks was disturbing; a decaying collection crammed unrepresentative materials. There were outdated health books and a robust Cuban literature collection, but with no Cubans to speak of in the service area. There was a general state of disarray. To me it appeared to be in dire need of revitalization, but the state I found that collection in is something I have seen mirrored at several other libraries since. Luckily at that time we had the funding and the political will to overhaul the collection, which had the side effect of guiding my course work at SJSU from that point on.
I feel lucky to have had prior experience before starting the San Jose State program, and even luckier to have been involved with Spanish Language services in a way that I could let guide my studies within the program. In the framework of most classes at SJSU I had the ability to look at language services and collections as a subfacet of whatever assignment I was working on. This could be in the form of studies in Cross Language Information Retrieval, Spanish Language Collection Development and Programming, or in the impact of poor cataloging or indexing on Spanish language retrieval in OPACS or databases respectively. This added context within the coursework made it interesting to me and helped me apply what I was learning in real life terms rather quickly. I doubt I would have become such a subject expert in regards to Napa’s Latino community had it not been for my library science coursework, which encouraged me to explore deeply a number of topics I could relate to my focus population.
The combination of my previous experience and San Jose State’s instruction has been an effective combination. The mix of pragmatic experience with the concepts taught through the Master’s program has given me the important opportunity to explore each of the degree’s competencies in a real world context. The opportunity to provide needed services to Napa’s Spanish speakers has been rewarding as well. The university’s program has strengthened my ability to serve this community and in numerous cases aiding me in my role providing quality services, programs and collections to a service population long neglected in Napa County.
Statement of Affirmation
All introductory, reflective, and evidentiary work submitted is mine alone (except where indicated as a group or team project), and has been prepared solely by me. I have respected the privacy of others by removing mention in this e-Portfolio of information that could lead to the disclosure of the identity of students or employers, and I have made good effort to obtain permission from all group members for group projects submitted as evidence. I am protecting the privacy of the contents of my e-Portfolio by password protecting it or by sharing the URL only with my e-portfolio advisor.
John Thill
John Thill
