{"id":81169,"date":"2014-09-16T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=81169"},"modified":"2014-09-16T11:06:17","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T16:06:17","slug":"so-you-transferred-to-a-new-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=81169","title":{"rendered":"So you transferred to a new position…"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Jennifer Quier<\/em><\/p>\n

So you transferred to a new position…<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"jennifer-quier\"<\/a>First, go you! Finding your first library\/museum\/archives job was hard enough, but\u00a0now you have a few years under your belt. You are (hopefully) pretty familiar with your\u00a0institution, collections, and people, and you may be thinking \u201cWhat next?\u201d<\/strong> What follows\u00a0is a tale of making a lateral move to a new institution and my experiences so far.<\/p>\n

I moved to Nashville in 2010 to work for the Special Collections Division of the Nashville\u00a0Public Library as Education and Outreach Librarian. Whoa, say that four times\u00a0fast! I primarily gave tours of the Civil Rights Room, a space and archival collection\u00a0documenting Nashville\u2019s role in the Civil Rights Movement. If you haven\u2019t been, leave\u00a0now and head to Nashville. I am totally biased, but it\u2019s a pretty awesome space and\u00a0collection I came to NPL and to Nashville primarily because the library had (and still\u00a0has) a \u201cmountain goes to Muhammad\u201d attitude: the library exists for the community.\u00a0Over the course of 3 and 1\u20442 years, I spoke to thousands of school kids, teachers,\u00a0churches, and community organizations.<\/p>\n

Just after my 3 year anniversary in Nashville, I began feeling a little restless. Internal\u00a0changes in the library and external changes in Nashville left me unsure of my role as\u00a0Education and Outreach Librarian. The library adopted a new strategic plan, the state\u00a0adopted Common Core, and the Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) moved to\u00a0Project Based Learning, or PBL. For a few months over the spring and summer of 2013,\u00a0I found myself with no tour groups on the schedule, no programs on the calendar, and\u00a0wondering where I would fit into the \u201cnew vision\u201d of NPL.<\/p>\n

In April of 2014 (and I\u2019m telescoping here, to spare you the details), I transferred to the\u00a0Metro Government Archives of Nashville and Davidson County. Same position, new\u00a0agency. But again, I found myself with no tours and no programs to schedule and plan.\u00a0The Archives was scheduled to move to the Main branch downtown, and everything\u00a0was on hold until we made that move.* Five months into this position, I can definitely\u00a0say there have been some challenges.<\/p>\n

First, Metro Archives is a repository for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and\u00a0Davidson County.<\/strong> I had no previous experience working with government records (other\u00a0than filing my taxes every year). Metro is…byzantine, for lack of a better word. I can\u00a0speak levels of arrangement all day, but the size and scope of records in our collections\u00a0left me a little overwhelmed (it still does, to be totally honest). The Archives has a fair\u00a0number of manuscript collections as well, with which I feel much more comfortable\u00a0working. Those collections are pretty user-friendly, which is not the case for our\u00a0government records.<\/p>\n

Second, I joined a much smaller staff than that of the Special Collections Division.<\/strong>\u00a0Each person in that Division did one primary and specific thing, and maybe one or two\u00a0extra things. There are five people in the Archives, and in theory, each of us does one\u00a0specific thing, but in reality we really do several things and sometimes, we do work\u00a0based on personal interest. In my case, my primary focus is education and outreach,\u00a0but I have mainly spent the last few months processing and arranging collections while\u00a0planning a program or two.<\/p>\n

Third, the Archives have moved to a totally new space in the Main branch.<\/strong> This has\u00a0been a huge change for my coworkers, but not for me. I left Main to work at the old\u00a0Archives building, and for me the adjustment has been figuring out where Metro\u00a0Archives fits into the library structure (and explaining it to my manager and coworkers).\u00a0The Archives is technically a separate and distinct agency, but housed in the library and\u00a0commonly thought of as a library branch. If you are looking for a copy of your marriage\u00a0license, a will, a deed, or a plat, you come to the Archives.<\/p>\n

My biggest challenge will be not only familiarizing myself with the Archives and its\u00a0collections, but also developing programs and activities that make these records\u00a0accessible, informative, and exciting to researchers…I\u2019ll keep INALJ updated!<\/p>\n

Education and Outreach Librarian, Metro Government of Nashville and Davidson County Archives, Nashville, Tennessee. Jennifer’s favorite part of being a librarian: teaching children and adults how to use archival materials in their daily lives….and free coffee!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Jennifer Quier So you transferred to a new position… First, go you! Finding your first library\/museum\/archives job was hard enough, but\u00a0now you have a few years under your belt. You are (hopefully) pretty familiar with your\u00a0institution, collections, and people, and you may be thinking \u201cWhat next?\u201d What follows\u00a0is a tale of making a lateral move…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":81253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,6433,6267,6570,6571,3047,3048],"class_list":["post-81169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-change","tag-changes-in-libraries","tag-jennifer-quier","tag-metro-government-archives-of-nashville-and-davidson-county","tag-nashville-public-library","tag-nashville-tennessee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/jenniferQ.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-l7b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}