Karen Clay
Director, Pierce Library, Eastern Oregon University
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Has serendipity played a role in your career? Definitely yes! For example, I applied to Stanford at the height of the dot com boom - librarians in Silicon Valley were fleeing the institutions like Stanford to go pursue their own start-ups, so as a result Stanford was casting a wide net and was willing to take a chance on a relatively inexperienced librarian like me. Working for them got me some credibility and put me in a position where I felt like I could be competitive for a wide variety of jobs.
Words of advice for MLIS students? Is there anything you wish you had known when you entered your professional that would be helpful to someone entering it today? The field is so different today than when I got my MLIS, and there are so many varied pathways to success in libraries, that you probably shouldn't listen to any advice I give you!