Targeting My Dream Job

In the section “Mapping the Implicit”, Weinberger quotes the GIS director at Rand-McNally that “we’re targeting maps for specific audiences” (p. 158). Adapt the sentence to read for librarians as “we’re targeting information products for specific audiences”. Think about your past experience and education and how to combine it with an MLIS degree to create information products for specific audiences. What products would you create, what audiences would you target, what would be your niche?

Based on my past experiences, mainly with genealogy, I'd like to enter the preservation and archival field. I would like to preserve and create metadata - map out, in other words - a local history collection. Ideally, it would be somewhere abroad, because I love new cultures and I know a lot of areas of the world don't have adequate libraries; but if it isn't, preserving and archiving local history is still of great interest to me.

Obviously I would be targeting the local population; those who were interested in learning more of their ancestors or of the area's history. I think it would be fascinating to create an interactive exhibit, combined with local historical information, kind of like the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois - if you haven't been there, it's well worth the visit. It's attached to the official Lincoln Presidential Library, which makes it all the more interesting. The Abraham Lincoln museum is small, but it is hands-down the best museum I've ever been to (and museums are usually on my itinerary when we travel). It has one room for traveling exhibitions - we went once when they had a traveling exhibit that covered every first lady ever, complete with a biography and one of her original dresses - plus several permanent features. Some are the usual museum type - a children's play area with period toys; a walk-through life-size diorama of Lincoln's life - but the films, and the original documents, are fantastic. The films use state-of-the-art special effects and amazing photos of Lincoln to re-create the timeline of the Civil War. You can see him age so visibly over the years.

Then, if you want to do research, you just walk across the street to the archives. That's the kind of product that I would like to work with - something that documents and preserves local (or national) history, draws young people in with its state-of-the-art presentations and with interactive displays, and also has a serious and well-catalogued archive attached.