Lisa Gardinier '11
"Even as specialized as LAS librarianship appears, I still need to be enough of a generalist to support students and faculty from poetry to medical anthropology, and the MA prepared me for exactly that. I was able to take a broad spectrum of classes, from 19th-century independence movements to US Latino education. Just as importantly, my classmates were working on an even wider variety of projects and classes. The program can prepare you to go into a PhD program -- I certainly considered that -- but it can also be really powerful when combined with a professional degree."
Lisa Gardiner started her MA in LAS in fall 2009 part-time, while working full-time as a technical services librarian at Cochise College in Douglas. After a year, Lisa decided to finish the MA full-time and took time to consider how she wanted to shift her career as a librarian. As part of the program, Lisa completed an internship at the Hernán Santa Cruz Library of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. When searching for a job in her last semester, Lisa fully expected to find a job as an instruction librarian or a social sciences librarian, which are much more common jobs than specifically LAS librarians. Solid preparation and lucky timing contributed to Lisa’s hiring as the Latin American Studies Librarian at the University of Iowa in March 2012. Over the years, Lisa’s job has morphed into its current shape as Curator of International Literature, which led her to consider which lessons of LAS librarianship are applicable to other international collections and services (No surprise: many! But not all!)
"Even as specialized as LAS librarianship appears, I still need to be enough of a generalist to support students and faculty from poetry to medical anthropology, and the MA prepared me for exactly that. I was able to take a broad spectrum of classes, from 19th-century independence movements to US Latino education. Just as importantly, my classmates were working on an even wider variety of projects and classes. The program can prepare you to go into a PhD program -- I certainly considered that -- but it can also be really powerful when combined with a professional degree. Students interested in librarianship should look into professional organizations like SALALM and REFORMA. I previously did my library degree at Indiana, but UA offers a degree through the School of Information."