By Norman E. Anderson
My accomplishments as a librarian have been many and varied. Just to highlight some of them:
As an associate librarian over the reference and technical services departments at Goddard Library, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I established a well respected reference department; I built a strong reference collection, which thereupon came to be intensively used by students; I developed many research guides, several of which were compiled into a book on researching New Testament backgrounds; I introduced computer research services, expanding them over time; I developed plans that enabled the library to cope with the revolutionary changes brought about by major revision of the cataloging code; I taught AACR2 to catalogers in the Boston area theological consortium; I cataloged the "tough stuff," including rare books and manuscripts; and I streamlined the reference, circulation, and cataloging departments.
As an interim librarian I guided the library through extremely lean years; I built links between the various learning resource modules of the school; I instituted valuable mechanisms of budgetary analysis and expenditure control, which resulted in my becoming one of the most trusted budget managers in the school; and I enlisted the help of the administration in putting the library on sounder footing.
As a head librarian, I developed the institution's first written collection development policy; I overhauled other library policies; I played a major role in establishing and developing branch libraries, one of which was 800 miles away; I automated the library catalog, raising most of the funds for the task myself; I supervised the retrospective conversion of catalog records for 95% of the collection, the processing of several newly acquired libraries, and the elimination of most of a large cataloging backlog that had been with the school for decades; I personally developed the seminary's first Web pages; I initiated the development of an electronic collection; I built major databases for public use; I participated heavily in the computer networking of the seminary, myself operating a WindowsNT server; and I established a conservation department.
During my years as interim and then head librarian, I nearly doubled the size of the institution's collections. However, over that period probably my greatest accomplishment was invisible. That was to put the library on a sound steady progressive course over a long term, which meant that, despite many a setback, the library program was always moving towards a definite vision, a vision which inspired great resourcefulness on the part of many.
These accomplishments were, of course, in addition to the routines of serving people; hiring, training, managing, and, when necessary, reorganizing the staff; submitting self-study reports and planning documents, for example, for renovation; exercising tight budgetary control; engaging in institutional committee work, where I became involved in such matters as curriculum revision; teaching seminars; participating on thesis committees; representing the library within and without the school; participating in consortial decision-making; and, in between all of the other activities, contributing to the nitty-gritty of library work. That nitty-gritty included such tasks as the selection of titles for acquisition, the weeding of the collection, the rebinding of dilapidated books, and the careful listing and description of archival papers.
Posted, November 4, 1997; new url, January 28, 2004
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