Monique Woroniak
Customer Services Librarian (Information Services), Winnipeg Public Libraries
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Favourite aspect of your job? Connecting with people on a personal level while helping them with their information needs. I love learning about peoples’ stories and finding common ground.
Most exciting part of your job? I’ve loved having the opportunity to travel for meetings with Indigenous library workers. While I acknowledge that I sit in those spaces while benefiting from a range of different privileges, being part of a tiny minority of non-Indigenous people in those rooms has provided me with some of the most transcendent learning experiences of my career.
Proudest moment so far? My proudest moments have been when library staff members who were previously not involved in Indigenous-focused work have shown an interest to learn more and come to me with questions.
In your professional life, do you consider yourself to be a systems thinker? Someone who thinks outside the box? Does this carry over into your personal life? I would definitely consider myself to be a systems thinker. I’m interested in impacts and outcomes (both likely and unlikely!) and making connections between service areas that may not otherwise be considered as having an effect on one another. I like to think I’m someone who thinks outside the box and it’s a quality that informs the projects I choose to be a part of outside of work. As someone who most often focuses on a vision of what something could be or look like, I’m open to most ways of “getting there.”
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? I graduated having received some solid advice thanks to great professors and relationships I worked to build with those in the field. The best piece I received, and which I would give to any new grad today, is: be prepared for change. Expect it. Learn to get comfortable with it. Learn how to best manage it.