Last Quarter as Student Chapter President

Hi Everyone,
I think it is amazing how quickly time flies when you are in your second year of the program. I honestly cannot believe that I will be presenting/defending my issue paper in a couple of weeks and that soon, I will be thrown out into the real world. As weird as it may sound, I am actually going to miss being a student here. It really is amazing how many leadership opportunities that our program provides to students. For me, this has manifested in leading the ALA for the 2013-14 year. Over the past year, ALA has helped formed relationships between first-year and second-year students through a mentor/mentee program, introduced students to academic librarians on campus, sat in on planning meetings of and volunteered at a library-themed event organized by Powell, learned about Open Access, and has even met the City Librarian for all of Los Angeles! Despite all of these events, I think am most proud of being able to help and interact with my fellow students. Despite what we all may think, the people sitting next to you in Management and Ethics will be your future colleagues...so get to know your classmates!

Although there was so much that I wanted to accomplish this last year, I now realize that being a manager/leader requires much more than planning social events. In the beginning, we had difficulty getting our money and even getting our own members named as signatories for the group but all of these bureaucratic hurdles were necessary for our group to function. Hopefully this will better prepare me for the bureaucratic work environments that typically characterize libraries. Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned was the importance of putting together an amazing group members (The ALA Angels) who are committed to making the ALA Student Chapter an active, profession-building (and also fun!) organization within our department.

There is no way that I can take credit for everything that ALA has been able to accomplish within the last year because EVERYONE has been instrumental in reviving this group. I came in with the notion of trying to put my own stamp on this student organization but I now realize that this can never be because ALA is for EVERYONE and the product of the hard work and dedication of so many people! I am happy to announce that Francesca Marineo has agreed to lead ALA for the next crop of information professionals and she is already hard at work. Our group is proud to announce that she was able to get the City Archives to give our students a tour on May 15th so be sure to look for our announcements on the listserv and our flyers in the commons.

Thank you so much for this opportunity and I wish you all the best in both the program and the profession.

Nick Auricchio