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It\u2019s not unusual for students to take a meandering path that ends with them entering the MSIS program\u2014some wander a little, and others even make hard turns into a drastic career change. But rarely do those paths intersect the way that those of three current MSIS students have: Carolyn\u00a0Shafer, Jenny Huffman, and William Judd.<\/p>\n
Not only are the trio all enrolled in the program at the same time, they\u2019re also all working at the same library branch, Putnam County Library in Cookeville, Tenn. But to top it off, they knew each other even before they worked together and they didn\u2019t all plan on going to school together at the same time. Here are their stories:<\/p>\n
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Huffman has a two-year accounting associates degree that she earned in 2006, but it was a degree she was never able to fully utilize. She didn\u2019t know what was next, and she had graduated just prior to giving birth to her now 13-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
Inspiration struck one evening while watching \u201cFalling Skies\u201d and observing a character in the show who is a history teacher. The way history was relayed in the show made Huffman want to learn more and she started delving into documentaries and nonfiction books. She decided to go to Tennessee Tech in August 2017 to earn her history degree.<\/p>\n
Huffman actually met Shafer when she was a supervisor at Kroger and Shafer was a bagger, but they also ended up in one of Huffman\u2019s favorite classes, the History of England. And yet one more layer of crossing paths was added when Shafer and\u00a0Judd all became members of the school\u2019s History Club, of which Huffman was president.<\/p>\n
Around the same time that Huffman started getting her history degree she also landed a job as a library clerk at the Putnam County Library, making her the first of the bunch to start working there.<\/p>\n
Despite their similar interests, it was still a surprise when she realized they\u2019d all be in the School of Information Sciences master\u2019s program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found out that we were all going to school together by happenstance. I didn\u2019t know that they were going into the same program until it happened, so that was crazy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While Judd and Shafer have their own information sciences interests, Huffman quickly realized hers highlighted her love of historical artifacts: archiving. She\u2019d had the opportunity to volunteer at the Cookeville History Museum helping to enter items into their system and researching the items\u2019 historical significance for exhibits. She thought museums would be her focus, until she landed an internship at the Tennessee Tech Archives and Special Collections. Huffman found her true passion was being \u201cneck deep in historical things that were so cool to me\u201d and she decided to pursue archives as a career.<\/p>\n
Huffman is currently the president of the Knoxville student chapter of the Society of American Archivists, an organization resurrected in spring 2020. In fact, Huffman created a poster proposal called \u201cPhoenix from the Ashes: Reviving Our Student Chapter,\u201d and submitted it to the SAA and it was one of three chosen to be presented at SAA\u2019s annual conference. She also was a first-year representative to the American Library Association in her 2020, along with Judd. Between school, work, and student chapter activities, Huffman also homeschools her daughter; the distance education classes work well with her busy schedule, even though she loves taking classes in person. But, she does have the advantage of already knowing two of her classmates outside of online classes.<\/p>\n
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Judd went through several possible career trajectories before having a lightbulb moment that led to entering the MSIS program. He started out certain he would go into ministry, but then wanted to be a professor of theology and entered grad school to pursue that. That\u2019s when he had the opportunity to work at the Divinity School Library at Vanderbilt University as a shift supervisor doing reference work. It was there that (he says, jokingly, at the risk of dating himself) a coworker first showed to him a new search engine called Google.<\/p>\n
While that job was one Judd said he \u201cimmediately fell in love with\u201d it wasn\u2019t the moment he decided to become a librarian. When he finished his master\u2019s degree, he decided academia wasn\u2019t his future and decided to become an ordained minister in a different denomination and went to a seminary in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I told them my background at the library in Vanderbilt, they immediately put me in the library there, \u201che said, noting that visiting the library was one of the first things he did upon arriving there. \u201cI went to the stacks, that\u2019s the most holy place for me. It was one of those moments where I thought hmm, I am a little bit different.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stayed at that school for a year and tried his hand at ministry one more time before briefly pursuing a career as an insurance agent. Finally, he decided to see what it would take to become a librarian.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I started the process of looking at library schools, I knew this was it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He had initial trepidation about the online SIS program, but that quickly dissipated once he found a thriving community at the School.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all have that passion for information sciences and information literacy, and there\u2019s that commonality and sense of community. I show up for my classes five or 10 minutes beforehand and there\u2019s always a chat going on,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the professors are intensely invested in your success.\u201d When COVID19 hit his life hard in2020, Judd experienced firsthand how the SIS faculty was willing to support students. Both his parents contracted it and his mother spent a month in the hospital and he was forced to withdraw from a class to help care for them. His professor alleviated his concerns about the withdraw and gave him flexibility\u00a0the next semester to finish his work.<\/p>\n
In the midst of the pandemic, he received an email from the director of the Putnam County Library asking if he\u2019d be interested in a position there. While he wants to be an academic librarian, Judd said that working at a public library would give him additional experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been really rewarding to see all the things you can do in a public library that you cannot necessarily do at an academic library, and vice-versa. Working with people and what they\u2019re interested in is what I like,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for working and going to school with two people he\u2019d already befriended, Judd said it\u2019s been a fun bonus. He says Huffman is a kindred spirit, and also noted that he and Shafer worked together at Barnes & Noble while they both were attending Tennessee Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really fun working with people that not only are friends but are on the same career trajectory as well; it\u2019s almost as if we\u2019re all interns and someday we\u2019ll all have our big jobs. There\u2019s some camaraderie there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Shafer\u2019s journey to SIS was more direct, but she intentionally took her time to get there. She volunteered at a library as a teenager and asked how she could become a librarian someday and was told she\u2019d need to earn a master\u2019s degree\u2014this put librarianship on her radar. She graduated high school in 2010 and earned her undergraduate degree in English in 2018, but decided to take a couple of years off before going to graduate school.<\/p>\n
Shafer said it was actually Judd who encouraged her to check out the program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he was applying. She was initially on the fence but his push was exactly what she needed and she hasn\u2019t looked back.<\/p>\n
She said it\u2019s been awesome taking the same classes with Judd and Huffman, neither of whom she typically gets to see at their library jobs, as they work different shifts. But all of them took their three core classes together and that really helped her with entering a new school and program.<\/p>\n
As the previous stories mentioned, Shafer has worked several jobs during and in between her time at school. She still works at the bookstore and the library, and she added on another position at Publix, so finding balance while at tending classes has been a challenge. But working as a clerk at the library is by far what she enjoys doing the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really love talking to the kids, they have all sorts of interesting questions. My path at UT is school librarian because I love working with kids and I love teaching and I love libraries, so I feel that\u2019s a really good fit for me, \u201cshe said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d actually been applying at the library for some time but nothing ever panned out. It was by happenstance that she walked into the library once during 2020 for a school assignment and ran into the children\u2019s librarian there, who \u00a0she knew.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe walked up to me and asked me if I wanted an interview and I was just like, sure. It was kind of at a drop of the hat, so that\u2019s how that happened. So I got an interview and I got hired, that was really random and I was surprised,\u201d Shafer said.<\/p>\n
Working at the library has helped her to see the scope of what libraries and librarians do for their communities, and she said it\u2019s been akin to social work in some ways. There have been opportunities where she was able to help people that have left her feeling really fulfilled and excited about her career choice. For example, a recent instance wherein she helped an older man who labeled himself as technologically illiterate to apply online for a pastor position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hit apply and he was just like, oh my goodness, this is amazing, thank you so much. To me, that was the easiest thing ever, but for him, that really made his day. He was able to apply for a job and he was happy and that\u2019s a really good piece of library work people don\u2019t think about,\u201d she said. \u201cLibraries really bring communities and families together.\u201d<\/p>\n
And sometimes, they also bring friends together.<\/p>\n