Marvel Maring interview paper

Reference Librarian Marvel Maring has been working at the UNO Criss Library for the past six years as the department liaison for Art, Theatre, English, the Humanities, and most recently, Communication programs. Let’s stop to process that before we even continue: Ms. Maring has as many seven departments that she interacts with on a weekly basis. Coming from a small liberal arts college, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but after seeing just how much traffic comes through the Criss library in one day has made me a believer that Ms. Maring works miracles over and over and over again. I can see, however, that you are not going to take me at my word; and that’s fine by me. Allow me to share with you unequivocal proof that Ms. Marvel Maring is a reference librarian superhero.
To begin, a little background on our super librarian. Marvel Maring is a second career librarian. She originally received an MFA in Chicago and was teaching at Kansas State. She left KU to get masters in book arts from the University of Alabama. Coincidentally, the library science program runs the book art program at Alabama. Maring because a graduate assistant for a library science professor and began working some hours in the library, as well as sharing some classes with MLS students. Maring only had to take an extra semester of classes in order to graduate with a double masters in book art and library science. Of the career path, she had to say, “I didn’t have a guidance counselor telling me I had these skills and I’d like this. I just fell in love with it.”
During the hour-long interview, Ms. Maring was able to explain what she does at the Criss library and some of the challenges and joys of working at the library. One of her main roles at the library is to be a liaison to the English, Humanities, Art, Theatre and Communications departments. This job keeps her pretty busy. She does about 40 BI sessions a semester and usually about 7 face-to-face reference encounters a week. She explained that one of the perks about working with the English department is that there is an inherent relationship with the library early on. Librarian Melissa Caste-Brede helped create a collaboration piece with the freshman composition classes 7 years ago. That has lead to a buy-in by the English department to bring students to the library and to bring librarians to the classrooms. Ms. Maring says one of her favorite activities as a reference librarian is going into the classroom as students are just beginning the topic process for papers or projects. She says that she might not do any direct teaching, but she enjoys the time because it gives her a chance to connect with the students as well as get some baseline ideas for what types of resources the students are going to need.
Since the University of Nebraska-Omaha is a state institution, is has quite a lot of materials. More than this reporter could ever hope to maintain. Ms. Maring’s favorite electronic choice for her students and faculty was a three-way tie of sorts. Her first choice for electronic resources is the MLA International bibliography. It’s the core bibliography reference work for the humanities, her area of expertise. Her close second was a tie between Jstor and Project Muse because of their accessibility and the full text and user-friendly formats. For her communication students (a whole different animal than Art and Humanities students), Ms. Maring had three databases that she especially liked: Linguistics database, Sage full text, and Artstor. She mentions that Artstor is “a visual juggernaut” and “a really powerful and neat database” because it contains material gathered from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Ms. Maring’s favorite print resource is the contemporary authors cumulative index. Even though some of the information is digitized in Gale, she thinks the print “is much more accessible and user friendly. Once the students get to see what’s available, they get over the hurdle of working in print.”
Maring showed a deft knowledge of both print and electronic resources, but one of her challenges within the library is dealing with the professors and their hunger for format. She said, “The English department can get a little grumpy about the print versus the digital resource.” She went on the explain that as a bookmaker, she understands the need for the tactile book as object, but that even some of the more persnickety English professors love electronic databases like Jstor with its full text articles and super simple interface. Another challenge she has in the library is the ethical considerations she has toward the community users. As a public institution, the Criss library also serves basic library needs for the public, but Maring noted that she has to remember to prioritize the level of service with regard to the mission of the students and the community patrons. One instance she described was a community user taking an online course and it was his first experience with a computer. He did not know how to log on or open an internet browser or many of the other basic skills needed for an online course. Service is one thing, but holding hands and walking them through the entire process is time consuming, especially when the patron is not a university student or faculty member.
As per the assignment parameters, I found a website with information pertinent to the reference interview. What I found to be most helpful were the notes concerning the reference interview. It gives a breakdown of the steps you need for a reference interview. They are approachability, Responsiveness, Listening/inquiring, finding, and follow-up (http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/531_lec_interview.html). Maring had given us a rundown of her steps of a reference interview, and they matched up pretty well, but she ended her list saying, “Reference librarians enjoy the search. We have to remind ourselves that the patron just wants the answer. They might not be as thrilled with the process as we are. Sometimes we might just have to get their email address and start sending them stuff.” What she said made sense. We had been discussing some of her most favorite reference questions, like the changes in country music since 9/11 and comparing religious broadcasters today with those from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. She explained how all of the information was fascinating and complex and how she loved going down different avenues of discovery, but then would have to stop and remember that somebody was waiting for her to send them something with substance. The part of the reference service I love is looking for diverse sets of information on a daily basis. I think I too would have to remind myself that I couldn’t be caught up in the search, but instead have to keep the patron in mind.
We closed our discussion with how she deals with changes in the library. She told us that the biggest concern is that libraries are increasingly trying to do more with less money. Her liaison with the communications department is one such move. It was someone else’s responsibility, but when that position was vacated, the responsibilities were split up among the other librarians. While it turned out to be a great match for Maring, others might not have been so lucky.
So to conclude this summary of our conversation, I will again state for the record that Marvel Maring is a reference librarian superhero. She comes to the aid of faculty and students, she serves the community, she finds what cant’ be found and mines the databases for long lost information. She is the Professor Xavier/Reed Richards/Tony Stark of reference, and with a name like Marvel, you can’t really go wrong.