I was born and raised in the West of Ireland. I took my undergraduate degree at the National University of Ireland, Galway studying Psychology and Philosophy. I subsequently worked as a tutor to children on the Autistic Spectrum Disorder where I helped design and deliver individualised education plans and multidimensional therapeutic interventions. During this time I completed the MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience with Swansea University, and it is also about this time that I began to consider a career as a librarian.
Being a lifelong lover of knowledge, I have always been drawn to libraries; as both providers and stewards of our shared cultural heritage. Recognizing further their critical importance in the “information age”, I decided to pursue a professional career as a librarian. I began by completing a voluntary placement with Galway City Libraries in 2018. I subsequently obtained a place on the MSc in Library and Information Management with Dublin Business School, which I successfully completed in 2021.
During this time, I was fortunate enough to obtain a position as Library Assistant (Grade 3) with Technological University (TU) Dublin. I have continued to pursue my career ambitions within TU Dublin Library, recently been appointed as the Faculty Liaison Librarian for Engineering and Built Environment.
This is a particularly exciting time to be working in the area of academic librarianship as the landscape, professionally as well as operationally, is continually evolving in response to the changes ushered in by the digital age. There has been a radical shift in focus with many academic libraries taking advantage of the new digital environment in order to support research and scholarly communication in interesting and innovative ways.There has been a corresponding shift in the professional profile and skill set of the academic librarian with increasing emphasis being put on information technologies and content creation (Huvila et al., 2013, p.199). Indeed the skills set and professional identities of academic librarians today, and librarians more generally, are “not located so much in certain qualities, but rather in their convergence and complexity” (Huvila et al., 2013, p.204). I hope that in the pages that follow you will find some insight into this “convergence and complexity.”
References
Huvila, I., Homlberg, K., Kronqvist-Berg, M., Nivakoski, O. (2013). ‘What is Librarian 2.0 – New competencies or interactive relations? A library professional viewpoint’, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 45(3), pp. 198-205. Available at DOI: 10.1177/0961000613477122
StewartKilleen 