United States of America
Douglas Academic Center (Mercer University)
Academic Library
My name is Annierra Matthews, and I am from Douglasville, Georgia in the United States of America. I am a Research Services Librarian for Mercer University, a private college. I help students and faculty with research, particularly, non-traditional or older students returning to school. There are different Mercer library campuses, and my library does not have any books. However, students can read electronic books online and borrow print books from other Mercer library campuses.
During this program, I enjoyed learning about my partner, Farhana, and her life as a librarian in Dhaka, Bangladesh. We mostly communicated through e-mail and also used Facebook Messenger. We completed our poster in Google Sheets, so we could collaborate on the project at the same time.
I learned that Farhana is an Assistant Librarian at the International Hope School, where she helps students and faculty find books and provides services, like research. Farhana loves learning from other librarians in the field, who can teach her new aspects about librarianship. I learned that Farhana has the same tasks as librarians in the U.S., such as creating book fairs, helping students, and implementing new technology. I admire Farhana’s passion for the field, especially her interest in technology. I also learned that Farhana uses the same resources as me, such as Google Scholar.
Furthermore, the both of us attended school to become librarians, and we both work with students. Farhana’s students are much younger than mine though. We both use technology at our jobs but have different goals for it. At my job, I want to help older students get comfortable with technology, since it is what they struggle with the most. In Farhana’s case, she wants the Internet and technology to be more accessible in her country. In Bangladesh, librarianship is not taken seriously, and men do not think women should be librarians. In my country, people have misconceptions about our jobs as librarians and often stereotype us, but they tend to think positively of librarians. They normally think we are really smart and love to read. In my country, women mostly dominate the library field instead of men. More work is being done to bring librarians from different cultural backgrounds into the field.
Lastly, we had another partner, but we never heard from them throughout the duration of the program unfortunately. I really wished that Farhana and I were able to speak with them about their experience in librarianship. However, I am glad that Farhana and I were still able to make the best of the program.
Overall, I had a wonderful experience in the International Librarians Networking Program (ILNP), and I would love to participate again next year. It was really awesome to know the similarities between me and Farhana as librarians, even though we live in different countries. I would definitely recommend this program to other librarians moving forward.
