Hi, my name's Peter, and I'm a librarian.
Now, if you're watching this video, it's probably because you are looking for one of three things:
You want to know more about me, you want to know more about yourself, or you want to know
more about librarianship.
And I don't know if I have all the answers for any of those.
But I wanted to make a video about how I got to where I am now, because I think that it
is important context for who librarians as people are.
The truth is there's no single template for what makes a good librarian, or what makes
a bad librarian, so I just wanted to share with you
my own story of how I got here, in the hopes that it is helpful for you.
So.
Before I was a librarian, my other big career of my life was, I used to be an intelligence
analyst for the US Navy, very specifically I was a military linguist.
I speak Mandarin and I speak Spanish, and those are the things that I used when I was
in the Navy.
I was in the navy starting at age 21, I joined when I was 21, thinking that I didn't know
what I wanted to do with myself, but I knew that I had a few special things, a few skills.
One was that, well, I'm really good at language, so I wanted to do something with that.
And two, I really like people and understanding who they are, so I can help them.
Now the reason I ended up joining the Navy is because when I was growing up, I didn't
really come from a family of means, as it were,
and also I had horrible grades.
I was the kind of kid who went to class and participated in class, and 'got' everything
(obnoxiously), and also never did any homework,
which meant that for the first two years of my high school career, I failed, like, two
thirds of my courses.
And then what happened was, in December of 2003, my mom died fairly suddenly,
and that is as traumatic and life-changing as you would expect.
What happened as far as me and my, like, future goes, is
I went from failing like half my courses in my junior year of high school,
to passing all of my classes six months later when summer started, with A's and B's.
And that felt really good.
And that's when I learned that I dealt with grief by throwing myself at work.
I didn't go to the library as a child.
I think I went once.
And I borrowed a few books, and I think I got them back late, or I lost them, or something,
and I had forgotten about that until my local library sent a collections notice to my house.
And I was terrified.
If you didn't grow up poor, this...
welcome to the world of growing up poor: I felt personally responsible for my family's
lot in life.
I was the youngest, and so almost anything to do with money or where we were at, or what
we had or didn't have,
I felt that it was my fault -- to a degree, not completely -- because we had less than
everyone else.
And that was viscerally clear to me.
And so when we got the collections letter from the library, I decided at that point
that I could never go to the library again,
because I didn't want to risk it.
I didn't want to put my family through something they didn't have to go through.
This may seem a little extreme, but it's important to understand that, like, when you're poor,
you *know* that you're poor,
and there are a lot of messages in society that get sent to you, that you are a burden.
And kids are not stupid.
They pick up on these things as well.
And so I never went back to the library, because I didn't want to hurt my family.
So!
That was an aside.
Let's go back forward!
After I graduate high school, I went to a community college for... about two and a half
years and I worked a retail job
to put myself through that,
and I had a little bit of scholarship money because poor but smart,
but pretty quickly after starting community college, I started failing my courses again
because the skills that other people learn in high school -- you know, studying -- I
didn't get.
And so... about two and a half-- well, two years in; so I was 20 at the time, I'd just
turned 20,
I kind of had this early-life crisis where I realized that I don't know what I'm doing
with my life,
and I'm working in this retail, dead-end job, and I don't want to keep doing it for the
rest of my life
(although, like, I loved working with people.
Very important information.
Very relevant to what I do now.)
But by and large, I felt like I was wasting my life, and I wasn't sure what to do about
that, so I considered my options,
and that was when I realized that what I wanted to do with my life was...
Join the Navy.
[laughs at self]
Sorry, I thought that was hilarious.
So in 2007 I decided to join the Navy because at that point in my life, that was the only
way that I could see myself
getting out of where I was at.
The Navy promised me a roof over my head, food, clothing, a sense of belonging, education
which up to that point I had failed.
And not just college education, which was... cool, but at the time I didn't really care
about that.
What I DID care about was that the Navy told me that if I joined the Navy, they would teach
me another language.
And at that point in my life, I spoke Spanish and I spoke French -- French, passibly -- but
Spanish, fluently.
And so I knew that I had something going on with my language ability.
And I figured I should foster that.
So after that, 2007, I went to a recruiter and I talked to a Navy person, and I signed
my name on the dotted line,
and then in 2008 I shipped out to boot camp, and that's where I started my career.
And over the next six years, I learned that being an interpreter for the Navy is not what
people thought it was going to be,
which I'm not going to go into here!
But, I learned some really cool things: aside from now speaking Mandarin, I learned about
how people and information interact with each other.
I learned how sometimes the most important question you can ask is the clarifying question,
understanding what a person's trying to get at,
and I thought that that was super useful.
I learned how to be a part of a team; I found a huge sens of belonging that I haven't found
since getting out of the Navy,
and I probably will never have again, but that's part of life.
I got an Associate's, and then I got a Bachelor's, and I lived in Hawai'i for four and a half
years!
And that was a blast.
But I also got a sense that I didn't want to be in the Navy.
There are some cultural things about the US Military, and probably militaries around the
world, that I just...
[sigh]
I fundamentally disagree with, and they rub me the wrong way.
I applaud the people who decide to stay in the military and try to fix those, but I wasn't
one of those people.
And so between that, and a few other things -- and just a realization that office work
was not for me,
I got out of the Navy.
But, when I was getting ready to get out of the Navy -- that was around the same time
that I discovered this thing called 'Crash Course,'
which is another channel on YouTube, which you should go check out; very interesting.
And I found someone named Lindsey Doe, who had a YouTube channel all about sex education,
and I thought to myself, "wow, these -- this YouTube thing is really cool, and it gives
a lot of really good opportunities for people to
share the knowledge that they have with the world.
And it's a really good way to help people in the world get knowledge that they wouldn't
otherwise have access to!"
Um, a reminder: I didn't have a Bachelors degree at that time; I could not afford college,
and I only but by the grace of my rich Uncle Sam could afford to go to school,
and get that Bachelor's.
Which is in Mandarin, if you were curious.
Bachelor's in Mandarin.
So I got that degree when I got out of the Navy, and I started thinking to myself, what
can I do with my particular set of skills to help this information that's out there
to help these folks who are making educational YouTube channels -- what can I do to help
make them succeed?
Because I really really really admired what they were doing for the world.
I knew that I had a particular set of skills that not everybody had, and it was important
to me to pass those on.
So, in 2014, the year that I got out of the Navy -- cuz I got out in February --
I then spent that summer traveling around North America and Europe, talking to folks
who make educational YouTube channels.
If you want to see the end result of that, you can go check out the channel; it's still
up, I don't update it anymore,
but it's called Go Verb a Noun.
And as I did that project, I realized that...
honestly, the folks who were making the educational YouTube channels were pretty well taken care
of.
So I re-thought about what my idea was and what I wanted to do, and what the problem
was.
I asked a clarifying question.
If the people who were making this content were already being taken care of,
then is it a problem of supply, or is it a problem of demand?
And so I stopped asking what can I do to help these people making content, and I started
asking myself,
what can I do to help people *find* this content, and how can I help make it meaningfully accessible
to them?
So, I looked at various Masters' programs because I hadn't used up all of my education
benefits at that point -- I hadn't started yet,
and I found this field called 'information science,' which I thought was really interesting,
whose main concern was how people and information interact with each other.
And I thought, 'oh, huh, THAT sounds familiar!'
So I started looking at schools, and I learned that most information science programs were
co-located with library science programs,
and at the time I was like, 'oh, libraries -- yeah, libraries are cool I guess,' still
very skeptical of them because childhood stuff sticks with you for a long time,
but I thought, you know, at the very least, if I go for this Masters degree I can go for
one that is accredited both in library science and in information science,
because you know what, maybe librarianship will be the fallback.
It's always good to have something to fall back on.
So I got out of the Navy in 2014, worked another job in tech for a little while from 2014-2016,
and then I started my Masters in Library and Information Science here in Vancouver in 2016.
Uh, and...
Then things got a little wild.
In September of 2016 is when I started, and at UBC the way it works is everyone takes
the same four core classes.
And one of them was like, 'Contemporary Issues in Information and Society,' something like
that,
and in that class we talked about how information and people interact, for better or worse.
And then I learned about all of the really cool things that libraries, and librarians,
were doing.
And that was the first moment that I realized that, 'oh, you know?
Actually, this librarianship stuff,
I think this might be for me!'
So I went through my university degree, and you can learn more about that in this video,
yeah, link's there,
and the more I learned about librarianship and what librarians were doing around the
world,
the more I got a better understanding of what librarians do *broadly,* the more I fell in
love with the profession
to the point that, gosh, a year after starting my Masters, I was like,
"I'm going to be a librarian."
Full stop.
That's it.
That's the joke.
Except it turns out that all the way up until even I graduated, I was definitely banking
on being an academic librarian.
I wanted to work in a university, and help people do research, and I wanted to maintain
access
to those sweet, sweet journal databases,
and so that's what I spent most of my MLIS doing is learning how academic libraries work.
And so because of that, my education ended up being a little more technical-heavy, and
because my background,
I focused a little bit more on the tech side of things.
And then I graduated.
And then I needed a job.
[laughs]
And then I got hired at a public library as an auxiliary librarian.
And...
Holy [bleep].
[laughs]
I love the job so much.
All I do right now in my job is, I make myself accessible to my community
and I help them answer any question that they can think of.
We talk about things like finding jobs.
We talk about things like finding something good to read.
We talk about early literacy skills, and how to parent, and how parents can facilitate
those early literacy skills.
I facilitate ESL Conversation circles -- I help people for whom English is a second language
learn English,
which as somebody who speaks multiple languages, is incredibly gratifying because I know what
it's like to have to go and learn another language.
And how hard it is!
I talk to the community -- I just go out on the streets, and I talk to folks cuz I'm trying
to find resources for entrepreneurs and small businesses,
I love my job.
And none of that was really expected, and I think that that's important to put out there:
is that,
there's -- again, there's no single idea of what a librarian is.
So that's how I got to where I am today.
If you're a librarian, maybe leave a comment below and tell us how you got here?
Let us know your own journey, cuz I think's worth sharing these stories.
I am so in love with my profession and what it lets me do for other people, and I feel
so grateful to be here.
That's not to say that the career doesn't have its downsides, because it definitely
does;
librarianship is in a bit of an upheaval at the moment, for better AND for worse,
but I'm so glad that I am an accidental librarian; that I ended up where I am,
because I honestly can't imagine myself doing anything else.
So.
That's it, thanks for watching as always,
and don't forget to ask questions.
Okay, bye!
[outro music]