“This program has given me the opportunity to do something that I have always wanted to do in a structured way and also provided me with the framework for my sabbatical project.”

Anthony Lin
Librarian, Irvine Valley College
Irvine, CA

Anthony Lin is taking time away from his studies as a Post-Master’s Certificate student to present at the 2018 California Library Association conference. He was invited to give a short presentation on a Book to Action program he helped implement as well as a poster session on the same topic for SJSU. The Digital Archives and Records Management at SJSU’s School of Information.

Returning to School Once Again

Lin currently works at Irvine Valley College as a librarian and taking a one year sabbatical to complete his post-master’s certificate at SJSU. “I get to experience the perspective of a student. Sometimes I lose track of what being a student is like nowadays. It’s not completely different, but there are some things that have changed in the last 10 years,” said Lin. He received his MIS from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor School of Information approximately 10 years ago. Lin is currently taking 15 hours of coursework in the SJSU program and expects to complete the certificate this fall. He started the program this summer with the introductory class INFO 203.

Successful Community Partnership Program

Lin recently collaborated with iSchool alumna Susan Pina (‘07) from the Orange County Public Library for the Book to Action program offered by the California Center for the Book. This program offers grant opportunities for librarians to start programs within their libraries that center on a book and create action within the community. Grant recipients are awarded $1000 in seed money to start their program. Lin and Pina chose to create a program based upon genealogy and personal histories in Orange County. They chose the book ‘Orange County: A Literary Field Guide’ written by Lisa Alvarez, a professor at Irvine Valley College, and Andrew Tonkovich, a professor from UC Irvine. This book is a collection of short stories from people from all walks of life in Orange County. After reading this book, Lin and Pina encouraged their program participants to tell their story based upon their own experiences in Orange County. They shared the events for this program between the Orange County Public Library and the Irvine Valley College Library. After completing the program, Lin and Pina were invited to participate in a presentation titled ‘Using #BookToAction to Break Down Barriers – Stories from 4 Different Librarians/Staff Who Did It!’. This takes place on November 10th at 8 a.m. at the CLA conference.

Real World Benefits

Aside from the excitement of being a part of the CLA conference, Lin is looking forward to applying the knowledge he is gaining at SJSU in his work as a librarian. The Irvine Valley College Library is approaching capacity, so they are looking to expand their virtual collection. “We were thinking that this virtual collection would be able to serve some needs so that is pretty much my project [for his sabbatical] in a nutshell. In the springtime, I will create the workflows, the metadata practices and the framework to start our online archival network.”

Overall, Lin has enjoyed his time at SJSU. “It has been awhile since I studied archival work. It’s really neat to learn about the different metadata styles. I also really like the flexibility. You can do your work at your own pace to a certain degree and it is really nice to do that,” said Lin. He enjoys all aspects of being a community college librarian, from archives management to presentations and community engagement, and is looking forward to putting his skills into action.