Service

During my tenure at the iSchool I volunteered with two organizations. I would not have been able to do either without the knowledge I gained through my studies.

My more significant contribution was to the library of Hillel UW, the Jewish student union adjacent to the University of Washington. When I first entered the library I recognized its need of a caretaker. I offered my help and it was warmly greeted. I conducted interviews with both the Rabbi Will Berkovitz and the manager, Kathy Kripps, to assess the needs of the organization. Based on their input I drew up a basic development plan. It included selecting a computer cataloging tool, installing and configuring it, inputting the books already cataloged and cataloging the previously non-cataloged books.

For the selection of the tool I compared dozens of tools, based on the previously established criteria (PDF) and the available budget. I narrowed the choices to three tools, and wrote a comparative analysis (PDF) and from these Kathy and I opted for ReaderWare as the most suitable,. Once it was installed by Hillel's on staff technical person I entered all the books in Hillel's library into the new system. About three-fourths of the 800+ books had ISBN or LCCN. For those, catalog data was pulled in automatically from online sources. Those lacking ISBN or LCCN I entered the bibliographic information manually.

This library was using the Weine catalog system, a variation of the Dewey Decimal System, specifically modified for Jewish libraries. 80% of the books were already classified by a previous MLIS student. I classified the rest, which required me to familiarize myself with this classification system and attach the labels to the spine of the books. The last task I did in this year long project was to reshelf the books making sure that the books that I had just cataloged were displayed correctly.

The other volunteer project I was involved in was also at a Jewish organization, at the Seattle Hebrew Academy. There, under the auspices of the librarian and iSchool alum, Janine Rosenbaum, I entered their books into the library automation software they recently purchased, Destiny by Follett. For most of the 2007 summer quarter I spent an afternoon pe week doing this, while a fellow dMLIS student, Roni Rhys Greenwood, also worked on the same project.

In my home country, Hungary, I spent several years as a community organizer of a small Jewish congregation. Since I moved to the US 13 years ago, I have not done much volunteer work. The experiences above helped me to remember how good it feels to serve others without monetary compensation. Furthermore, as an information professional with library sciences skills I could provide higher caliber service. I could help in ways that I would not have been able to do a few years ago. I believe I significantly contributed to both organizations' library. In the process I learned a lot about the technical aspects of cataloging. I also managed to step out of my comfort zone by working for the very first time in my life in any library.

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