Interview with Dr. Heather Moorefield-Lang

Meg Coker: This is Meg Coker on November 17th with Dr. Heather Moorefield-Lang. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Heather Moorefield-Lang: Sure. My name is Heather Moorefield-Lang. I am an assistant professor with the University of South Carolina.

MC: All right. How would you define your career?

HML: I would define my career as ... I have always seen myself as a librarian. Well, to say always, I have always seen myself as an educator. The name of my career is now a librarian but I also do a lot with teaching and education. A foundation of my career was education. Now I'm at a point where I actually teach future librarians but I still very much see myself as a librarian who now teaches. I'm continuously working with folks who're in libraries, I visit libraries, I see libraries, I go to libraries. I've only been out of a working library for a year, so I still very much relate to the role of a librarian because I was a school librarian, I was an academic librarian, just because now I'm teaching librarianship, I still very much still see myself as a librarian. I'm just now teaching classes.

MC: What training has led you to this point in your career?

HML: I've had quite a bit of training. I guess-

MC: Academic and otherwise, either way.

HML: I was about to say, academic and otherwise. Yeah. Academic, I have an interesting background. I actually was a theater teacher for 5 years before I became a librarian. My undergraduate degree is in theater and English education. I received that at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. About 4 years in I was trying to decide if I wanted to get my master's in librarianship or if I wanted to get my master's in theater. I actually applied to both programs. Librarianship I got offers for multiple library programs and actually none were available in theater at the time. I went with librarianship because that was very interesting to me. I graduated in 2000 in a degree with librarianship and went right into ...

Actually I stayed as a theater teacher for one more year and at the same middle school I was teaching theater they asked if I would become the librarian. I stayed there for another few years as a librarian until I decided I wanted to get my doctorate because I knew that I wanted to do something with academia. I knew I wanted to go into the college level because I'd always enjoyed being in college. I thought working in college would actually be a lot of fun. I decided to get my doctorate because I figured that was the way to go. That seemed to be the key.

A master's didn't seem to be enough at the moment in time, there's a mix of jobs you can at the master's level. I got my doctorate and graduated with my doctorate in 2008, but there's been a lot of other training. My doctorate is in education. I did not get it in library science actually, it's in curriculum and instruction, just in case I want to teach for a school of education or a school of library science, was my idea at the time. Could there have been some changes? Who knows. I actually can teach either way if I wish.

There's been other areas of training. For instance I have things such as my national boards in librarianship, which is a K-12 certification heavy on reflection. I have the association for college and research libraries training in instruction which is a program that you apply for to get accepted into for reference and instruction for reference librarians. I do a lot with professional development. I have professional development training and I in turn do a lot of training in those areas.

There's the training that you get in practice and the work that you get in life per say. There's the training you've ... I've been working now for almost 20 years in the field of either education or librarianship. There's a lot of training. There's the academic training but then there's also the workshops and the programs that you've done and the teaching that you've done and the reflection on the work that you've done and everything that you glean from that as well.

MC: What is your passion, or passions if you want to have multiples?

HML: I guess if you look at what I spend the most time doing, my passion is my job because interestingly it is the thing that takes up the most of my time. I guess my other passions would be my faith as a Christian, my family because I'm very close to my family, they're all in North Carolina. Other passions that I have, I do have a theater background, I thoroughly enjoy performing and acting when I have time, which I haven't had a lot of time lately. I also enjoy seeing theater, being a part of theater, viewing theater, television or film, going to the movies. Any type of thing with acting I thoroughly enjoy it and I take part in it, even if it is just being a part of the audience, these days very much part of the audience.

Whenever I get a chance to perform. With church I also perform in my church's band when I have that opportunity. Haven't had as many opportunities to do that as well. I am very passionate about being a good educator, delivering good instruction, whether that is face to face, online or otherwise. Being the best that I can be for my students, for my department, for whatever I'm doing, whether that's working with the American library association, whether that's working ... Whatever I'm doing in life I want to do well at it. I want to be professional. I want to deliver good on what I say I'm going to do, which is the reason why I'm always working, doing something, helping someone out.

I'm always telling my students this, we are in a service-based industry. We are people who are going to deliver a service to others. We are here to help. That also helps with my faith because I don't sit around expanding on this but it's an area where you can help people. That's a good thing, there's many worst things you could do in life, kicking kittens. There's a lot of other worst things you could do than helping people and being useful. There's a lot worst jobs that you could have out there.

MC: What would you call your greatest success?

HML: Yeah I've seen this question coming.

MC: Yeah, no pressure. Or some of your greatest successes. What are some things that you can look at and look back on and think positively about?

HML: Sure. I'm sure one of my greatest successes was actually getting my doctorate, just because while I was an average student in high school and college, I was by no means someone who knocked it out of the park. I am very much a person that proves that you do not have to be a straight A student to get your master's, to get your doctorate. I'm very much the kind of person who, if you're well organized and can get from point A to point B or figure out ways to get things done in small chunks. Organization is the key I've already figured out when it comes to your higher levels of education, when it comes to getting the degrees passed the undergrad.

Definitely the doctorate, because no one in my family ever has received a master's and no one in my family ever, any generation has received a doctorate. I'm actually the first generation of my family to receive a university degree. Now I have many cousins behind me who are starting to get those degrees. That was quite a moment of pride for me. Pride, a good success story I suppose. Yeah.

MC: Is there anything in your career, other professional things that you've done that also you'd consider a success?

HML: My national boards were outside of any degrees. Those were one of the things, because when you do the national boards, the national boards are 6 months of solid writing. It is a portfolio-based project. I finished my master's in 2000 and I received my national boards in ‘02. You have no direction, it's not like you have a class or a course or a professor, you're pretty much given the instructions and you complete them. You turn them in and then you find if you've received them or not. I received them on the first try. I was pretty pleased with that.

Of course there are other successes in life. I've played some great roles in theater and things along those lines. I'm married to a wonderful man and all those types of things. I'm very blessed by many, many things. I don't know. I definitely look at blessing and those types of things. I don't really think along lines of, this is a success. Getting the job here at the University of South Carolina, definitely a success. Being part of the faculty of Virginia Tech, having a job during the recession in 2008 was probably a big success. Those types of things. Hopefully there will be some successes to come. Those are some of the different things. I guess if I had to pick a couple it would probably be getting my national boards and my doctorate if I had to pick one in my career.

MC: Cool. What is your greatest challenge?

HML: One of my greatest challenges has always been to sit still and be quiet, because when I talk a lot and making sure that I sit still and listen to what people are saying, let them finish before I either answer or meet whatever need I think they might need because I don't even let them finish their sentence, or whatever the case may be, making sure that ... Mainly just sitting still, I'm not really good at that anyway. This is part of communication. When someone's talking to you, really listen as a opposed to you're thinking about the next thing to say. That sounds like an interview question, "What's your greatest weakness for this job?" But a challenge ... I am sure one of my major challenges is being in a moment or what's happening now as opposed to plan, plan, plan ahead, plan. That's also the nature of my job. Yeah, I'm sure that sitting still, being quiet, absorbing what is occurring, those types of things.

MC: What do you think of the current state of your field?

HML: Current state of our field. The current state of my field, which specifically is school librarianship because there's librarianship and there's all different types of librarianship. I think academic librarianship's doing pretty well. Public librarianship's doing pretty well. School librarianship, depending on where you are, is doing okay. If you're in California, they're struggling. If you're here in South Carolina they're considered a high need. The current state of our field in school librarianship, things are definitely changing with technology and have been changing for quite a while but what needs to occur with school librarianship is school librarians need to be acknowledged as peers in the field with teachers.

They need to be seen as instructional, not support staff. They need to be considered just as critical as any other teacher in the school. Every school needs to have a certified school librarian, just the same as anyone else. They need to be up there right along in line with every other need that we have with common core, no child left behind or anything else because outside of a national mandate that is the only way state by state we're going to make sure that our schools have school libraries and school librarians. Because right now our students are stuff- suffering. Students are suffering. Our students are suffering because they do not have certified librarians who can work with their teachers and who can help our students with their technology and their literacy in their library settings because trained, and there can be good and bad librarians don't get me wrong, but well trained librarians are irreplaceable.

They're so important to a school, to help students with all areas. It's not just the person who can check up the books or the person who can help with checking out the iPads, these are the people who have the fingers on the pulse of what is happening in our field. They're also with their eyes to the future of what can really occur and what's coming down the line. They can spread that information to every classroom. They can be that focal point. When a librarian is truly loved by their school they're used. This is an important person in the school and everybody wants to be on the collaboration list and the friend list as it were of the librarian. That's the current state of the field, we're important but we're not being realized as such. Librarians have been around for thousands of years but it is hoped that school librarians will continue to be as important as we know they are.

MC: You started to touch on this, would you like to elaborate on where you think your field is headed in the near future?

HML: In the near future we're going to continue to see more changes in technology. One of the things I am concerned about, is that people with the ... I do a lot of research in makerspaces, which is great. They are awesome spaces, learning commons, information commons, spaces for students who collaborate and work with their technology. All these are great. They are not meant to take the place of all print and books and material. They're supposed to work with. One of the things that I am seeing is some schools, not all, not a bunch but some schools are removing all of the books. They're removing all of the print and they're turning the library in essentially to a shop class, or to a hacker space, or to a computer lab. That's what they are. That's not a library anymore.

It's no wonder that a librarian's being replaced because now you need someone who's a shop teacher or a IT specialist or a computer instructor. A library needs to have all of these things. If you want to have an information commons, great. If you want to have a hacker space, fine. If you want to have a makerspace, that's great. These are all wonderful things and there's going to be new things that are going to come along. I'm seeing things like libratories, where you have a library and a laboratory in one space, but that's just it, it's a combination of where you have all of those things together.

While it's very exciting, what can happen in a library in the near future, and yes a lot of places might need to change what they might be and how we deliver. People also tell me that makerspaces are a fad, I'm totally fine if makerspaces are a fad, they're still going to change how we create information and how we deliver our services in libraries. I'm totally fine if makerspaces are a fad, it's going to make our libraries more user centric. But getting rid of the books when studies are showing again and again and again that students need print books, they need their hands on books, they prefer print books and the tactile sensation of working with print books, while we're taking them out we're just hurting our students. There's a bit of a mix. Folks are getting their signals crosses when it comes to what they think a school library should be and what a school librarian's role is.

MC: What do you think future professionals in your field need to learn?

HML: Future professionals in the field need to learn that it is ever changing. If you leave school now you're going to be ... When you graduate from our program now you're going to have an understanding of things like ... You're going to be aware of things like robotics and makerspaces and coding and all different types of things. 10 years down the line there's going to be new stuff, there's going to be updates in the internet of things, and augmented reality and all new types of devices and all sorts of things that we don't even have on our radar yet. The knowledge that you have the foundations from your library program are there but also knowing that you can't just say, "I have my library degree, I'm done."

You have to be, just like your students, a continuous learner. You have to be a person who wants to be hungry for that learning to be able to sign up for a class, to be able to watch a free webinar, to partake in professional development, to grab a hold of ... Yes it takes extra time. Yes it means it outside of school. Yes it might take up a Saturday. But to serve your students in the best way possible you have to be a person who wants to continue learning and staying on top of and being a part of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or whatever, having a professional learning network. It can't just be anymore that, "I don't want to be in that. I don't want to be part of a professional learning network. I don't want to be part of social media." Yeah, I understand that. Yeah you might not want your digital footprint but you've got to have a way to have your finger on the pulse of what's happening because there's a lot of stuff happening.

You can't just keep your blinders on in whatever county, big or small it may be, you have to be willing to keep growing with what's happening because times are going to change. We have some folks who are retiring in our field who have had no growth and no change and that's hurting our schools and it's hurting our reputation as librarians. What's happening is when some of these folks retire they're not being replaced by librarians. That's hurting us. That's severely hurting us. A librarian who hasn't done anything for 10, 15 years and they just don't care, they think that's what a librarian is, some '90s or '80s mindset. They have no desire to replace a librarian who doesn't want to grow.

MC: All right. You have touched on this a little bit in mentioning different things but if you wouldn't mind elaborating further, how has your field been impacted by digital tools? Feel free to specify by types, I know you know different types.

HML: Sure. When I first got started in school librarianship I was asked to join ... I started in 2000, that's when more of the web 1.0, the one sided version of information delivery, was given to us. You had the internet but you weren't really getting to interact with it. Then a few years later, I'm thinking maybe about 2004 if I'm not mistaken, was more when of the web 2.0, maybe in 2006, the web 2.0 tools were being released. This is where you're having a two-way interaction, where you could share and collaborate and do all different types ... This is where your social media type stuff was coming out. All of those types of things.

Then you have, they call it web 3.0, but that's more mobile web. That was coming in 2010 where you could have your applications, you could take stuff with you. All of this type of stuff has changed everything that we do in libraries. It's changed everything from how we catalog our books, to what we have on our shelves, to our e-readers that came out in 2009, to the way we deliver our material. Not everybody likes e-readers, that's fine, but the fact that we had millions of books on our academic library shelves and you could see, just a case in point, I'm rambling a little bit, I'm sorry.

MC: Totally fine.

HML: You can transcribe this. Case in point, when I first started working at Virginia Tech we had 6 rows of print journals. By the time I left Virginia Tech we had one row of print journals because they were all online. We had 700 different databases with millions of articles with thousands and thousands of journals. We had access to over 30,000 different journals, or 35,000 different journals. Before I was ever there they were telling me that the entire fourth floor, one half of it was all print journals and it just kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. How are you able to deliver? Virginia Tech itself had 5 off campus locations.

The students don't want a paper print article, they want it online and they want it now. That's definitely, just from my master's to where I was sitting there reviewing bound copies of print journals to my doctorate where I could access everything through databases to now where that's the only way I get my information is through all the different databases, how we can get our information. Digital tools, and you're specifically asking about digital tools, how we can present, how we can give our information, we started out with our PowerPoints and moving on to Keynote but now we have so many other different presentation tools, both online and offline.

We have all of our different ways that we can use tools to teach, to present and not to replace what we're doing but to enhance what we're doing. We've got a whole arsenal of tools with which we can deliver and instruct and work with our students and manage and organize and do all different types of things. There's definitely a lot of things that have changed. Now is it for the good or is it for the bad? That's hard to say, it depends. I have a lot of fun using a lot of the tools that I do, for others it's a big headache. For a lot of people it's very overwhelming. It depends on how much you want to embrace them.

I recommend to a lot of students and a lot of folks who come to my professional development workshops to try one or two each year. Maybe try a new one each month. Master one thing and do it well. Anything like that, especially if it's something that you know you're going to get overwhelmed. They are there and instructing on the stage we need to be looking at a much more student centric, student led way of, how do our students learn and how can we best deliver what we are giving our students. If we're doing anything else we're not being diligent in what we should be doing as teachers. I don't care if that's ... We've been following the same methods for education for a really long time. It's time to change some things up.

MC: If you wouldn't mind following up on that, one of my questions is what is a weakness that needs to be addressed in your field?

HML: Should I answer 11?

MC: Yeah we can go in order, either way.

HML: Okay. Let's see.

MC: Whatever helps your flow of thought.

HML: All right. What is a weakness that needs to be addressed in the field? I'm choosing.

MC: Yeah.

HML: I'm sure there could be more than one.

MC: Yeah, or weaknesses. Any of those, this is just to help you think through things.

HML: One weakness that I am working ... I've alluded to some of them already. Librarians at all levels are not known as a ... Not all of them, the face of the stereotype of librarians is definitely changing and there's tons of articles out there about that. They're not all known as get out there, loud and boisterous type people. Hopefully that's changing because that is a weakness, because these days president after president of AASL, the American Association of School Librarians, and ALA, the American Library Association, is talking about advocacy, advocacy, advocacy because we have to prove our importance. May be fair, may not be fair. That's beside the point.

You have to leave the library to show people why they should come to the library. That's not the way it's always been. It used to be there was a library, it was a resource, people came to you. Now you have to say, "Hey, we've got this great tool. We are better than the internet. By the way we can help you use the internet in a better way. We've got all these books, we've got all these tools, we've got workshops, we've got story time. We've got all this stuff." We have to let them know what's happening, either through social media or be in the streets or book mobiles or however we get out there, community outreach, whatever the case may be.

That means people have to go out and they actually have to talk to people. One way or the other, virtually or face to face. Not everybody is real comfortable with that. There's still a lot of people who are pretty shy in the field of librarianship, and that doesn't work anymore. You've got to get out there. That works for school, because that means you've got to collaborate and talk to teachers and find out what they're doing. Not every teacher might want to work with a librarian but you know what, you need to get out there and tell people what you're doing and get people to work with you and collaborate and share and spread the word. That's everybody.

That's just one weakness. The other is that with the onslaught of social media and presentations and conferences and everything else, we've gotten over the last 10 years this, because we're having to speak up for ourselves so much, we are ... Now there's this thing of popular or rock star librarians, which there's nothing wrong with that but, if the egos are getting so much in the way of us doing our jobs or giving good service or doing what we should be doing for our students or our patrons ... I'm not trying to sound like I have any problem with people being well known in the field, it's just that it's standing in the way of doing what's right for the field. That's a problem. That can be a weakness. There's others as well but I guess that would be one. There are a lot of strength in the field as well…

MC: Yes, and that would be the other question.

HML: There are the stereotype of librarians are changing because what we do in librarianship is changing. We have people now who are in librarianship who don't have a degree in librarianship. We have folks who are in IT and sociology and human development and education and all sorts of areas. They might get a certification or they're just hired or whatever the case may be. Who we are as librarians is changing. It's a wide, diverse crowd and that's awesome. There's a lot of people who will speak up and will get out and will advocate, but we've got to keep pushing because at the national level we're still not seen as critical. Until we are seen as critical ... Like I said, every university has a library and they've got certified librarians working in there but doggone it ... Public libraries, most of them have certified librarians but not every school library has a certified librarian in it. But there are a lot more schools and not every school can find or get a certified librarian.

There are school systems that are choosing not to have a certified librarian. They're putting in a IT, information technology teachers, or they're replacing them with a teaching assistant. You cannot replace a master's level trained person with a teaching assistant and say, "Oh it's the same thing." No, it's not. If it is indeed the same thing, then the previous media specialist or librarian was not doing a good job. That bothers me. I don't have case in point, nor will I name names but it's the type of situation where if the former librarian was replaced by a teaching assistant and you can't tell the difference, I'm concerned.

MC: One of my next questions is, is there a specific word or term you like to use to describe people who use libraries or go to museums, et cetera? There's always the debate between patron or customer or client?

HML: I like the term patron. I actually worked for a gentleman who had a very entrepreneur spirit, I think he called them customers. I don't really like customers very much because I used to work in retail. Patron is usually what I use, unless I am talking about students, then it's students. But patrons.

MC: How would you define the relationship between patrons and students and professionals in your field?

HML: It goes back to service. I have had people who do not agree, but we are there as librarians to serve the patrons that we work for. Of course with school librarians, it's not bow down to the students but we are there to meet their needs. Teachers as well, they are also our patrons, administrators, guidance counselors, everybody who's in the school. The school population as a whole, parents, they are your patrons, they're your population, that's another way you can put it. We're there to look at, see, assess and meet the needs of the people who are there. That's finding out what people teach, making sure you've got their materials. Finding out what the students want to read, making sure we've got the materials. Reporting to the principal, letting them know what you need, getting the money and getting the materials.

If you don't have enough money, hopefully applying for grants and then once again getting what you need for the students and the teachers. We are there to meet the needs of, and it is a service based situation. Like I said not everybody sees it the same way as I do but I don't see how it can be otherwise. You can partner, that's fine. You can collaborate, that's great. But still it's meeting the needs, it's still a service based situation.

MC: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's all for these questions, is there anything else that you'd like to say, either elaborating on something you said previously or adding something in?

HML: Not particularly. If you want to take out the piece about the egos, or the popular librarians, I don't have a problem with that. I don't know. I always feel weird talking about that, but it's true. Anyway ...

MC: True is good.

HML: All right. Good luck.

MC: Thanks