(via ACRL)
Brandi Hart is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences. She has been a member of ACRL for one year and is the ACRL Member of the Week for October 25, 2021.
Her responses to some questions on her involvement in ACRL and her professional goals are below.
Describe ACRL in three words:
Inspirational, educational, empowering.
What prompted you as a student to join ACRL?
I was given the honor of being awarded the ACRL Spectrum Scholarship this year. I am so grateful and appreciative to the ACRL for all of the support and generosity they have shown me, including providing me membership. I am very excited be a member of the ACRL to be surrounded by and learn from such a welcoming and intelligent community.
What are your career goals? How might ACRL help you achieve those goals?
I hope to become a research librarian at a small liberal arts college assisting undergraduate students with their research. I am particularly interested in doing outreach programming and developing services to help international students and first-generation college students. The ACRL provides so many helpful resources that I believe will help me achieve my career goals, such as the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion LibGuide and the e-learning ACRL webinars (to name a few) that provide useful strategies and training to help implement library services and programs. I haven’t had the chance yet to read the First Year Academic Librarian Experience Blog, but it looks like such an amazing resource, especially given that I have no experience working in libraries. It will be really great to read about others’ experiences as first year librarians, what they learned, and how they navigated the profession.
To read the full interview, please go here.