An information specialist? How boring is that? How I stopped worrying and started loving my job

Information Outlook, Oct, 2004 by Cybele Elaine Werts

A few years ago I was minding my own business as a graphic designer when I heard that a colleague from a nearby office was taking surgery leave. I was only working part-time, so they asked me to fill in for a few months. I was appalled. An information specialist? Some kind of high-tech librarian? How boring is that!

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Could I stand being mired in piles of decaying articles and moldy books for months? Maybe not, but money is honey, and a week later I morphed into the official information specialist for the Northeast Regional Resource Center (NERRC).

Did I have a clue about what being an information specialist entailed? No, I did not. Did I know one single thing about special education? No, I did not. Was I completely overwhelmed and freaked out? You bet I was. Fortunately, I have several gifts that saved the day. I am obsessively organized (or so my colleagues tell me), I am detail oriented, and, finally, I have a passion for information dissemination. By that I mean that I love sharing information in a concise and accessible format.

For the first six months my boss simply told me what to do, step by step, and I did it. It turned out to be not really so bad. I found the consistency relaxing and sometimes, dare I say it, even fun. There is a certain gentle cadence to this work that can be an oasis in an otherwise chaotic life.

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During this time I also started working with a career counselor because the funding for my graphic design position was almost gone. I took the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, and read some materials on which careers were best for my personality. Once again I was horror-struck to discover that "research librarian" headed the list.

The Big Surprise

How could that be? I thought of myself as a creative, artsy individual. Certainly I had been accused enough times of "not being a team player," which probably has something to do with my independent spirit. But there it was in black and white; those very gifts of being organized and detail oriented, not to mention introverted and thoughtful, are perfectly matched with being a librarian. And guess what? I already was a librarian!

This realization lit up that little bulb over my head, and I started taking my part-time information specialist position a lot more seriously than when I had thought of it as just something to survive for a few months. Once I got the hang of things, I was pleased to see how my natural skills dovetailed with the work.

Although my graduate work was in educational technology--not in education per se--I found that the operative word in researching education was "research," not "education." My sister information specialists in the regional resource centers around the country reflected that same approach, and only a few of them actually have degrees in special education. In other words, I could be researching how to make strawberry shortcake or how to airbrush highlights into my hair, and the process would be the same.

It turns out there wasn't a lot of dessert research involved, but there are a lot of complex questions about education issues that people need answers to. So what do I actually do? If you want the long-winded answer, I suggest you read the article on the Regional Resource Network, "At Your Service--RRFC Information Specialists Provide the Right Information from the Right Source at the Right Time in the Right Format" (Information Outlook, August 2003). I'll give you the low-carb version here:

I work with people on the state level who need information on special education. This includes state special education directors and other people who support the school system, plus both regular and special education teachers. For example, one special education director recently asked me to find out how other states pay for exceptionally high-cost special education students. Did I know what an exceptionally high-cost special education student was? Of course not, but I can look it up (and so can you, of course). I belong to a national network of Regional Resource Centers, so I used our protocol to contact all of them and collect a variety of responses from states. This helped my client figure out how to manage his own funding situation.

Another time I helped a teacher in New Hampshire figure out which school to apply to for certification in special education. She was wonderful with children, but didn't have many research skills, so she was thrilled to have the information I sent her.

Could both these people have done their own research? Of course. But it would have been a long and frustrating job for them versus a quick and painless one for me. I also do some related work in numbers crunching, development of graphs and charts for our progress reports, and some evaluation work.

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Rewards

Over time I've really come to appreciate this job. One reason is that unlike many technical assistance jobs that are several steps separated from actual students, I can often see the impact of what I'm doing on the people I serve. I usually have a product like a report to show off when the request is complete, and so I have a nice sense of closure as well. Last of all, I've found that each day there is something new and interesting to research, so I'm never bored. Myers-Briggs sure had me pegged.