Dear Scholarship Committee:

I am drawn to Legal Operations for the same reason I am drawn to the law: I am fundamentally interested in how people organize society. I am curious about how people access and organize information in furtherance of their ambitions, both organizational and personal. This lifelong interest led me to my first career as a librarian. While I enjoyed supporting library customers, I discovered I could have a greater impact by helping libraries improve their operations. I recognize the intrinsic value of operational work, and I wish to apply my technical management skills to help law firms and courts better serve their constituents.

Legal organizations are most interesting to me because they support the legal structure that allows our society to operate. As a resident of Cook County, Illinois, where the Clerk of Court’s office has been plagued by operational and cultural struggles, I have seen firsthand how the absence of effective systems can harm the most vulnerable residents of our society. My customer service orientation, paired with my strong technical skills and creativity, has prepared me to improve these organizations.

Although my primary interest is now in the law, I have six years of progressively responsible experience supporting information management systems in the government and private sector. At [federal agency], I led the agency’s transition to cloud computing. In this role, I implemented electronic records systems and modernized agency workflows to build an information management framework that collected programmatic data, incorporating at the same time federal privacy and data retention requirements. Through this experience, I came to see records management and business process management as two sides of the same coin, and I developed an interest in project management as well My growing curiosity about solving complex business problems led me to an internal records management role at [corporation], where I [redacted].

This exposure to other business functions sparked my interest in law. The most interesting projects I supported at [corporation] involved [redacted]. As I achieved mastery in the fields of project and records management, tasks like this one helped me realize that a law degree would open the door for me to deliver even more cutting-edge services to clients. I decided to pursue a JD at Northwestern University, a recognized leader in legal-services delivery technologies.

An operations role will allow me to have the greatest impact on the legal profession. My training as a librarian has given me a holistic perspective of information as a stand-alone entity, and I have endeavored to develop the technical skills to harness knowledge within organizations. I also have a strong background in IT procurement, facilities management, contract management, and direct customer service. My strong service ethic drives my desire to increase value for clients, and ultimately, downstream consumers.

I anticipate contributing to the Legal Operations field through active membership in the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. Since beginning graduate school in 2013, I have volunteered for leadership roles in [various professional associations]. In these roles, I helped to grow membership through innovative programs and outreach.

I was interested to learn from CLOC’s most recent member survey that practitioners see a need for information and resources addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion. These are long-standing personal and professional interests. I have worked on DEI initiatives and programming within several professional associations (including as a law school representative to Northwestern’s university-wide equity department). My own LSAT business has brought me into contact with diversity professionals at law schools and firms around the country, and my growing understanding of the environmental, social, and governance reporting landscape has given me familiarity with trends and procedures in related areas.

These experiences have positioned me to succeed as a legal operations professional and member of the CLOC community. Thank you for considering my application for your scholarship program.

Our final poster (minus ALSC logo)!

Our final report: Connecting Resources, Goals, Statistics, and Stories: Exploring Logic Models as a Means of Valuation in Youth Library Services

Hope to see you there. Please tell your friends.

Like I said, pretty much all the fun stuff I did at Midwinter was thanks to the Internet. I posted in ALATT looking for advice on finding money to get to Midwinter, and found a really cool librarian to share a room with for super cheap (thanks VK, you are the coolest!). This same post led me to my ALA Bestie, Tiff, who was just as excited as I was to be in Emerging Leaders and who promptly made a Facebook group for all of us and got at least half our cohort to join before Midwinter. Found out through our Facebook group that another woman from our group, Allie, was going to be in town early, too, so we made tentative plans to hang out and adjusted them when this stroke of luck came along:

My (old? new?) friend Amanda, who I haven’t heard from in years, figured out from Instagram that I was in Chicago for librarian shenanigans. We were on a message board together several years ago, and I had no idea she’d 1) left Austin 2) moved to Chicago 3) become a librarian. She was kind enough to offer to give me and another person from the Internet I’d never met a tour of the Newberry Library. (Allie, thanks for being such a great sport about meeting 2 Internet randos on the same day!)

I’ve been promising to share these pictures forever, so here they are. I’ve worked in some pretty cool libraries, but this one was really special (GET IT?).

This lady knows how to give a tour. She lined us up for the obvious photo op right away:

A real Oscar! It was heavy.

There were some seriously cool maps up in there, but they were tricky to photograph, so this is the only one you’ll see. There were also the cool tiny globes that sailors could refer to.

expert-level cardigan-collection coordination

Next, some super-deluxe Milton:

Paradise Lost

I think those are emeralds and rubies.

This is DEFINITELY a snakeskin.

RIP, Kaa.

the lovely lady in action.

I don’t even understand how this is possible.

A few other highlights:

A witch’s spell book (miss lady was not even trying to hide her activities, no decoder ring to be found)

What may be the oldest existing copy of Francisco Ximénez’s transcription of the Popul Vuh…

Popul Vuh.

How do you take books in a covered wagon? Make the books ITTY BITTY. Tiny books (not to be confused with tiny hats)! Everyone’s favorite!

tiny books!

I wonder if people used magnifying glasses for these….

Thanks Amanda and the Newberry for a fantastic day!

cuties

My Emerging Leaders group is great (and adorable). We’re working for the Association for Library Services to Children to extend last year’s EL team’s research on valuation of library services.

2015 ALSC Emerging Leaders

Oh, and I met Cornell West. There were pictures on Courtney Young’s phone, but she probably deleted them because I was some rando who photo-bombed her. Still! Cornell West! He was just as awesome at speaking as you would imagine. Thanks for the photo, Mac!

I’ve been really freaked out about this whole anti-vaccination movement for a few years now (sooo glad I don’t live in Oregon anymore, whoa) and what’s really struck me is that this is fundamentally an information literacy issue. We talk a lot about information literacy in library school, but no one is driving home that right now, in our country, information literacy has become a life-or-death issue. Homeschoolers are more likely to skip vaccinations, and they’re also HUGE library users. I feel really strongly that libraries should be doing things like building vaccination PSAs into storytimes, or something, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, and that our professional commitment to “neutrality” shouldn’t overshadow our responsibility to ensure that our patrons are learning the information literacy skills they need to find reliable health information. I have been thinking about this a lot over the last 2 years and I hope to publish something soon. In the meantime, come to my panel on Sunday or Monday and we can start a conversation:

“Public Health and Public Libraries: Librarians as Health Literacy First Responders” will feature Lydia Collins and Christian Minter.

I asked Christian to collaborate with me on this panel because she is in the process of organizing “Collaborating For A Healthier Community,” an “unconference for librarians, public health professionals, community health workers, medical professionals, community organizers, and others interested in improving programs and services that promote community health and health information.”

This is still very much a work in progress but I think we’ll definitely address how to identify underserved communities and have some examples of really effective, low-cost public health interventions that will hopefully inspire people. Lydia will have a lot of training and information resources to share with everyone.

I’ve asked for a 90-minute slot at Annual, and I think we have room for a 3rd person, so I’d love to get some more geographic representation on here. There’s a consumer health librarian in a Kansas library that was supposed to get in touch with me about this panel, but I never heard from her! I’m so excited to be working with Lydia and Christian, but I hope you’ll share this with your networks and let me know if you can matchmake us with another person!

“The Washington, DC Department of Transportation (DDOT) is home to one of many transportation libraries throughout the United States. DDOT is unique because it is also home to a hidden collection of archival materials. Of particular historic interest are holdings related to urban renewal initiatives in the 20th century: similar records are also housed at the DC Archives and the National Archives, with varying levels of description. This paper gives an overview of DDOT’s archival collection, and presents the initiatives that staff have undertaken to improve the discoverability of these resources.”

So, get at me on twitter or something if you’d like to meet up.

At its core, embedded librarianship means superseding the traditional, standalone, transactional model of library service with information and knowledge services that are integrated into the curriculum and founded on strong relationships with students and instructional staff. The introduction of massively open online courses would seem to threaten our ability to build and sustain these relationships — or does it? This briefing identifies how academic librarians can use the principles of embedded librarianship to play an important role in evolving online education.

We’ll be presenting during the afternoon breakout sessions (1:45-3:00pm). I’m grateful to Professor Shumaker for giving me the opportunity to co-present and build off his presentation to the Amigos Library Council this past November.

When we started doing the research for his last webinar in late summer, I said emphatically that MOOCs were a trend: shortly thereafter, Udacity altered its entire business model. Out of the mouths of babes: check out this great article from FastCompany’s December 13/January 14 issue about Sebastian Thrun walking back from MOOCs in a big way. (I believe my exact words were that “a lot of these companies seem like a gambit to test content delivery systems so these companies can bid on contracts with the UC/CSU system. Didn’t UCSD SJSU’s experiment with offering MOOCs for credit have an abysmally low pass rate?  There’s the writing on the wall.”)

So, to recap: MOOCs, embedded librarianship, librarians as your trusty companions through the ups and downs of the Gartner Hype Cycle.

$20 gets you lunch and admission to some cool posters and solid morning breakout sessions.

There are still a few tickets left so register today. It is totally going to sell out.

We met a really cool librarian from TRB, who gave Katie and I some ideas about setting up interlibrary loan without being members of OCLC. (One of my goals for the new year is to spend more time meeting with established librarians.) Also enjoyed getting to use my Portuguese skills to speak with a woman from some transit institute in São Paulo.  I wish I had known before the conference that there is a transit history committee, in addition to the archaelogical preservation committee, which is a little outside my field.

I went to the bike and pedestrian counts paper session, which was underwhelming. I’m pretty sure one presenter just admitted to throwing out 1/4 of his data. I’m pretty sure I heard that right, since I checked with 3 other people and they left with the same impression. The other paper I remember in great detail was about an equation used to correct the number of bikes observed on a given day with the total number that likely used the intersection/infrastructure observed. This equation was derived by tracking cycle traffic on Portland, OR’s Hawthorne Bridge,  which has over 8,000 cyclists cross it daily. Like one of the women in the audience, I’m also skeptical that conclusions drawn from one of the busiest spots for bike traffic in the country can be extrapolated to low traffic areas. (But of course, because a woman asked the question, the white male presenter was super dismissive. All the substantive questions at the Bike and Ped Counts sessions were asked by women, and all were dismissed, although I was annoyed and peaced out by the time the last presenter – a woman – came around. Why was the woman scheduled last, I wonder?)

I also worked the DDOT booth with these two. Well, I stood around for a few hours while Samantha and Katie did the heavy lifting. Look how cute they look!

The coolest booth I saw (besides the sweet Hummer, that was cool, the DDOT one was cool too because bike share) was one about Virginia’s Smart Road. They can control the weather, lighting, and pretty much every variable on this road to analyze impacts on vehicular traffic. I described it as “The Truman Show for roads,” and was told that this was accurate, so I’ll stick with that. Seriously though, how cool is this? Wikipedia does not make it sound nearly as cool as it is. (Pavement testing, really? Communications people, manage your Wikipedia presence! I totally want to go to Blacksburg just to see it!)

Finally, via Twitter I discovered this paper: “The Role of Gender and Attitudes on Public Transportation Use,” published by a pair of (presumably men) out of Ohio State University (maybe I should upload it?). I haven’t read all the way through yet, but @phxdowntowner had these quotes: “Men tend to enjoy interacting on buses more than women.” “Women tend to have a more negative view of #transit than men.”

I asked on Twitter whether there was much discussion of sexual harassment, since this seems to me a clear instance of a time when men would enjoy interacting more on busses than women. Didn’t get a clear response, but would be interested in speaking with anyone who attended the session. I didn’t find any explicit mention of harassment in the paper with a cursory search. (Note: TRB paper 14-1807 evidently deals more directly with harassment.)

I’ll definitely be looking on TRID to see whether there is any scholarly work on the extension of street harassment that occurs on public transit. I’m disappointed that the version of the paper provided on the TRB flash drive didn’t seem to delve much into the reasons for these gender-based attitudinal differences. It really bothered me that “comfort” was mentioned as a deciding factor for women in transit decisions, but this was not defined in the paper. My impression was that comfort could refer to things like ambient temperature, seating, etc. but obviously the most important definition of comfort is a sense of personal safety. Perhaps women are less inclined to wait for transfers because of the risk of sexual harassment and/or straight-up assault.

I have a few other complaints about general sexism at TRB (the old white men sure felt comfortable interrupting women when they spoke, and it seemed like men got more in-depth answers and ego stoking when they asked less challenging questions than women, who were pretty much dismissed). But of course there is nothing new under the sun in academia. On the other hand, I’m thrilled that my colleagues had the same observations, and that we were able to have productive conversations about how women in our generation can support each other. I made at least 2 new friends at this conference, and definitely connected with some colleagues in the transportation librarianship field, and got to know folks at my agency better, so that was great.

But yeah – the complaints about TRB are pretty much totally valid, and the conference was way too big for my personal comfort. The venues weren’t great, either. And I have some general complaints about the app (no addresses for the actual hotels?), and the poor signage/logistics at the conference (really, you have been having it for 93 years and can’t figure out how to get the trash taken out at the hotel?), not to mention accessibility (there really ought to have been a shuttle from Dupont Circle to the Hilton, and they should not claim that it’s 4 blocks when it’s actually .4 miles, uphill. Maybe the blocks on Connecticut Avenue are super long; I’ve never noticed before. But if I were a wheelchair user, I sure would have felt misled. There should be easy ADA accessible venue instructions in the app, too. Boo, TRB).

A friend told me that I could have checked my bag at the hotel without being a guest, which I wish I had thought of, I would have totally ridden my bike from CUA to Dupont Circle and checked my panniers. Woodley Park wasn’t terrible, although signage from the hotel to the train would not have been remiss (ditto signage for wheelchair users since the elevators are at a different entrance/exit!)

In other, less obnoxious news: a coworker called me our agency’s “super commuter” today. I may, officially, bike more than anyone in the office. It is bumming me out that I have ridden only once this year, though. Ugh, weather!

For more on sexism at TRB, check out Katie’s fantastic post here: “Feminism and My First Professional Conference.”

Finally got to see the Clean Girls play (can I just say how cool it is that I have friends who get written up in Rolling Stone? Congrats to you, and to Sean Gray for all his work supporting local music), and met everyone cool from William & Mary who didn’t go to TJ. What a fun night.

Friday night: an unexpected visit with an old friend, followed by a sleepover at the O’Connor’s house replete with sleepy time tea, Futurama, lovely gifts from the Philippines, and a little folk magic.

Saturday: helped Sam’s boyfriend move, followed by a pretty gluttonous breakfast with Sam and Mr. and Mrs. O’Connor over at ye olde Original Pancake House. 

Evening was Kristen’s 26th birthday at a succession of increasingly ridiculous Clarendon bars. I am threatening to get back on Yelp because the DJ at this one was so bad, and kept playing such terrible house music while insisting that she didn’t have any Britney. The only saving grace was the bar’s manager, Tony, who told me I was “rocking that Persian attitude.” I was also truly entertained by the overzealous bouncer stationed inside the women’s bathroom. Big ups to Katie, who endured my texts from Sam’s phone about how I was entertaining myself by pretending that the bar manager was actually Tony Stark.

Sunday: blew off a party and a reception for young professionals at the Transportation Research Board conference to watch The Good Wife, set up my website, and catch up on some work (read: making my mom do all my new employee paperwork for the National Archives. Thanks mom, you’re the best).

I’m not sure I made the best call: on the one hand, I had a really solid night of sleep and felt super relaxed this morning, but on the other hand, this was the weakest Good Wife episode of the season (I am not watching Downton Abbey because last week’s premiere put me to sleep). A convoluted case plus heavy handed plot development in the governor’s mansion does not make me a happy camper. Maybe Will and Mr. Big will hash it out more next week and it will be juicy?

Tomorrow I start a new job and TRB begins in earnest. Can’t wait to connect with colleagues in the transportation library subcommittee meeting, and to get settled in at the National Archives!

Weekend jams:

Sam turned me onto this:

and downloaded this to cheer me up before we went out.

The time off has been a blast, but I’m ready to get back to work(ing 65 hours a week). It should be a great term. The student chapter of SLA is finally meeting on a day when I’m on campus with free time! But I gotta chill out with taking on new obligations.

Things I’m looking forward to: covering the Washington Auto Show for Asian Fortune, going to see Speedy Ortiz this Friday.