Alumni who work at the Library of Congress (from left) Mark Sweeney, Marybeth Wise, Abby Yochelson, David Mao, Susan Reyburn, Peter Goodman, Nicole Marcou, Adrija Henley, Tim Carlton, and Heather Wiggins are seen in Madison Hall during an October alumni event hosted by the Department of Library and Information Science.
By: Katie Bahr
Alumni of the Department of Library and Information Science have found unique and diverse careers at the Library of Congress.
Five days a week for the past eight years, Candice Townsend, M.L.I.S. 2000, has walked through the majestic halls and by the marble pillars of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building—a building some think of as the most beautiful in all of Washington, D.C. As the head of the library’s Reference and Collections Support Section, Townsend has an office located only steps from such national treasures as Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, and the more than 500-year-old Gutenberg Bible.
Before she came to the Library of Congress in 2006, Townsend worked in computer science and at a legal lobbying firm. After earning her master’s degree in library and information science from Catholic University, she spent several years as a branch manager for D.C. Public Libraries at Francis A. Gregory Library in Washington, D.C.
At the Library of Congress, Townsend and her team handle up to 300 daily requests for interlibrary loans to libraries all over the world. She also maintains a private collection exclusively for members of Congress. She keeps that collection stocked with travel and language guides, popular reading, and legal and reference books to help them more successfully fill their roles. In one day, she estimates her team will process between 100 and 150 requests from Congress.
“I understand that the politics and the laws made in this area affect the entire United States and if I can have a small role in that, that to me is very exciting,” Townsend said. “As a librarian, I’m just honored to be here. Whenever people ask me about it, I’m so happy. I have my dream job.”
Townsend is just one of many graduates from the CUA Department of Library and Information Science who have gone on to work at the Library of Congress. According to John Convey, professor and interim co-chair of the department, approximately 60 graduates from the program are now employed in all aspects of the library, from acquisitions, to preservation, to the highest levels of leadership. Alumni from the program have also found jobs at the Smithsonian Institution and other government libraries in the area.
“This is a good town for librarians and, of course, the Library of Congress is the center of the library system,” he said. “Libraries now are really information centers and every agency has an information center and an archive. All the federal agencies have those, churches have those, the archdiocese, so they need archivists, they need information specialists, and that’s what our program prepares people to do.”
Occupying three buildings on Capitol Hill, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, welcoming more than 1.6 million people per year. The library is home to millions of books and media items as well as the papers of 23 presidents, including George Washington, and rare books dating back to the 15th century.
Though the Library of Congress was established in 1800 by President John Adams, it is by no means stuck in history. In recent years, the library has been working to provide digital resources, including e-books and podcasts. The library’s website itself is a vast resource, with thousands of pages of articles, maps, recordings, and art that is accessible to anyone for no cost.
The high-tech changes seen at the Library of Congress are reflective of changes seen in libraries in general.
“Part of the training (for librarians) has become how to use technology to organize information and facilitate retrieval of that information,” Convey said. “A librarian knows where things are and they’re a facilitator. Some of them are specialists in different areas like rare books or special collections. We’ll always need people to do that and they need to have more and more technical training to keep up.”
The students in the Catholic University program vary widely in age, background, and interest, Convey said. He sees the number of alumni who have found jobs at the Library of Congress as evidence that the department attracts high-quality, ambitious students.
“They didn’t get there only because they have a degree in library and information science,” he said. “They got there because of their own personal initiatives, their own personal expertise. That’s the kind of student we enroll.”
Convey doesn’t give much credence to the stereotypes surrounding librarians. Librarians are not always bookish, he knows. Their lives involve much more than shushing people.
“I would say the one thing most librarians share is an interest in organization and an eye for detail,” he said. “Other than that, they can’t really be classified.”
The diversity of the field can be seen clearly when talking with senior instructor Tim Carlton, M.L.I.S. 1989, who has worked at the Library of Congress for 38 years.
Growing up, Carlton never would have anticipated becoming a librarian. When he was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he remembers taking a class on the history of Southeast Asia that was filled with library students.
“I thought, ‘Man, these people are nerds,’” he laughed. “That might have said more about me than them.”
After moving to D.C. and landing a job working in the stacks at the Library of Congress, Carlton eventually moved on to become a cataloger and editor. Now, he has a job he loves — providing job-related training, including lessons on technologies and cataloging, to Library of Congress staff. He said he now realizes how talented and critical those supposed “nerds” are.
“I like seeing that I’ve taught people something they didn’t know before,” he said. “I enjoy trying to come up with innovative ways of teaching.”
Similar is the story of Mark Sweeney, M.L.I.S. 1991, who began working at the Library of Congress in 1987, soon after earning his bachelor’s in history and political science from McGill University in Montreal. His first job was in the stacks as a technician.
“I thought this would give me time to look for the ‘real job’ we all look for when we get out of college,” Sweeney said. “I got a practical education about what libraries are really about and what the Library of Congress represents. It’s a unique institution with a special culture and I wanted to be a part of that.”
It wasn’t long before Sweeney decided to pursue a career at the Library of Congress. He enrolled in the M.L.I.S. program and got a part-time job working in circulation and loans at the John K. Mullen of Denver Memorial Library. Since graduating, Sweeney has worked in a wide variety of areas at the Library of Congress, including preservation, the newspaper division, and his current post as head of Library Services.
One of his favorite projects over the years has been working with newspapers. In 2002, Sweeney became involved with the United States Newspaper Program, a nationwide project intended to locate, catalog, and preserve microfilmed newspapers published in the United States since the 18th century.
“It was a 20-year project and I came in toward the tail end to help identify 140,000 newspapers that had been published in the United States,” Sweeney said. “That resulted in the creation of 900,000 holdings records nationwide, and more than 70 million pages preserved on microfilm.
“Now we’re applying emerging digital technology to that by scanning the film, making it accessible online,” Sweeney said. “It’s gratifying to be able to see the thousands of newspaper titles, with 10 million pages of newspapers from around the country, available for free without any restrictions.”
Sweeney thinks of the library as “a storehouse of the world’s knowledge and Creativity.”
“What people are going to be able to do in the future will depend on what we’re acquiring and caring for today,” he said. It’s about legacy in that way, and keeping up with history.”
Some alumni were drawn to the Library of Congress as a place where they could pursue their individual passions. Angela Kinney, M.L.I.S. 1993, who is now the chief of the African, Latin American, and Western European Division, started working at the Library of Congress in 1981. She earned her bachelor’s degree in foreign languages from Georgetown University. Her first job was in the library gift shop.
“They hired me because of the languages,” Kinney said. “I could speak Spanish very fluently and had a good grasp of Italian and French. We have lots of visitors from overseas, including dignitaries, and the first or last place they often visit is the gift shop.”
Kinney worked in the gift shop for two years and learned a lot about the library’s collections and what they had to offer. When her position expired, she found a job as a cataloging technician and later as a cataloger, working with monographs from all over Latin America and Western Europe. She held that job for the next 16 years, expanding into other languages as she got promoted.
Since completing her degree in 1993, Kinney has continued to rise in the library ranks. Now she works daily with vendors that purchase materials from Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Western Europe. She also works as a liaison with the library’s overseas offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Nairobi, Kenya.
“We feel a huge responsibility to ensure that members of Congress have what they need to be able to do their job and that our other customers — the American community — have the materials necessary to do their work and complete their studies,” she said.
Since Oct. 1, David Mao, M.L.I.S. 1999, has served as acting Librarian of Congress. Prior to that, he was second-in-command as the deputy librarian since January 2015. He first developed an interest in becoming a librarian while pursuing his law degree at Georgetown University. While there, he participated in a work-study program in the law library.
After graduating, Mao worked for a few years practicing law in New Jersey before landing a position in the law library of Georgetown University in 1996. At the same time, he began the master’s program at CUA.
“I had to quit my job and move back to Washington in one summer,” Mao said. “I remember my parents thought I was crazy.” While at CUA, Mao met longtime Library of Congress staffer Roberta Shaffer, who was teaching a class. She helped him find a job as legislative librarian for the law firm of Covington & Burling, where he worked for eight years before coming to the Library of Congress in 2005.
Mao worked for several years in the library’s Congressional Research Service (CRS), an office that provides policy and legal analysis to committees and members of both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He was promoted to deputy law librarian in 2010, law librarian in 2012, and deputy librarian in January 2015.
As deputy librarian, Mao managed all the offices at the Library of Congress, including the Copyright office, CRS, and the Law Library. He also managed events, like the National Book Festival, and the awarding of the Killjoy Prize and the Gershwin Prize — this year, the prize went to Willie Nelson.
“One of the things that is interesting about the Library of Congress is the staff — you have foreign lawyers in the Law Library, attorneys from around the world, subject matter specialists in all fields in our reading room, and scientists who are studying preservation,” he said. “When you think about it, the caliber of people here is amazing.”
Kim Caulder, M.L.I.S. 2012, also loves working at the cultural institution. As a cataloging technician in the Literature Section, she catalogs and processes books that are assigned to the library’s general collection. “I find it personally gratifying to get books on the shelf so patrons can access them,” Caulder said. “It drives me crazy to see books on backlogs.”
She began working at the Library of Congress in 2002 soon after graduating with her bachelor’s in history from the University of Maryland. After spending a few years working at the library, she decided to study at CUA simply because she wanted to know more about the world of libraries.
“Getting my master’s was one of the best decisions I ever made,” Caulder said. “Ultimately, it wasn’t about earning promotions. I just had this absolute desire to get a degree. I think, because it’s a lot of work, you have to have that desire.”
As part of her job, Caulder has access to the stacks, which are closed to the general public, and looks forward to any opportunity to explore the collections. One of the many benefits of working at the Library of Congress, according to Caulder, is the opportunity to attend cultural events, concerts, or lectures, which she tries to do whenever possible.
“I’ve always been extremely happy and content with what I do,” she said. “I’m just surrounded by things that make me happy. It feels like home.”
Catholic University’s Department of Library and Information Science, which has been in existence in various forms since 1939, allows students to earn master’s degrees in several areas, including cultural heritage, digital libraries, health sciences, information architecture, law librarianship, organization of information, school library media, and user services.
According to Convey, there are approximately 100 students enrolled in the department. Since many students attend school while also working full time, classes are available in-person, online, and during the weekends. For more information, visit lis.cua.edu.