When I walked into that fateful ILEAD session at the 2014 ULA Conference, I never could have predicted that it would bring me here, as a contributing editor, just a few days later. I mean, yes, I did send an email within minutes of Dustin saying that he was on the look-out for additional editors, but my imagination is really pretty shabby. So, first things first, I want to thank Dustin Fife and my fellow editors for letting me participate in this project (and share important photos of heart throbs from the 1990s).

Now, down to business. My name is Adriana Parker, and I’m an instruction librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. I earned a Master of Library and Information Science from Drexel University in 2007 (Go, Dragons!) and began teaching at the Marriott Library shortly after. My background, pre-library school, was in writing and editing, and I worked for several years in the private sector as a proposal writer. (That means that whenever I write a sentence fragment, you know that it’s willful and especially egregious.)

While I peddle my wares all over campus, I work primarily with our first-year engineering students. We have a great first-year cohort program at the U of U, and librarians are well-embedded into it. I get ten classes with these undergrads over the course of the academic year and help guide them through research for two major projects–one focusing on how to assess sustainable technologies and the other on literary research. It’s a real dream-come-true kind of scenario to be given so much time with a particular group of undergrads, as well as the ability to experiment with information literacy instruction in order to discover what works. I’ve also managed to weasel my way into the English Department and Gender Studies Program. For these reasons and a few others, I’m excited to be part of a community that values resource-sharing–especially those that are related to information literacy–and exchanging ideas. Plus, you’re a captive audience for my lame jokes.

Please feel free to contact me to talk shop any time (before bedtime, of course). You can reach me here or at [email protected].

(Image credit: Preston, Neal. “New Kids on the Block Circa 1989.” Photograph. People. New Kids on the Block Stage Comeback, 26 Jan. 2008. Web. 10 May 2014.)

New Kid on the Block by Creative Libraries Utah, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License.