LAMP Spotlight – Bojana Skarich

Libraries have made a huge impact on my life and have given me many tools to succeed. I believe I am a successful person today because of them. My family were immigrants and we didn’t have a lot of money to spend on books, movies or CDs. I remember that my mom would take me to the library and show me that you could borrow all of these materials for free. Her taking me every Sunday to the library gave me an abundance of knowledge and curiosity. Libraries supplied me with the stories, adventures and with educational materials that I could not have obtained otherwise, and with the joy at knowledge for its own sake.

All throughout college, I relied on the Interlibrary Loan system to provide me with text books and this also helped me grow and develop. I loved searching for materials and shelf browsing to develop ideas for my senior thesis. I remember when I graduated from college and was looking for work, I would use the Internet at the local public library in order to send resumes and look up available jobs. There were not many jobs beyond minimum wage -even for college graduates – in Portland, OR where I lived, and I was growing anxious over what I could do to support myself. I worked a couple of retail jobs, and although I could serve people, I felt that I wanted something more to stimulate my intellect. I communicated with several of my friends over email, and one of them, who is a librarian, recommended that I too, become a librarian.

She gave me information about LAMP’s scholarship program and I thought, Why not? I’ll give it a try! When I won the scholarship a few months later, I was ecstatic. I literally jumped for joy. I was flown out to Milwaukee, in Wisconsin for a summer seminar in order to meet with the other scholarship recipients. It was great to get a chance to meet everyone and the scholarship coordinators were so personable and generous. I was later accepted into the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the nation’s premiere Library Science program. I was delighted. My brother was very proud of me and said he was glad I had decided to “stay close to the books.” I have truly found a niche here at Illinois. I’m working as a Graduate Assistant in reference services at the Education and Social Sciences Library, and am also interning at Illinois’s institutional repository. As I help patrons with their research, or think critically about how technology can better serve the academic community, I feel like for the first time in my life I am a professional and that my talents are being recognized, utilized and refined by my classroom and work experiences.

I am interested in digital libraries, metadata standards, and the development of effective and integrated information networks that highlight a university’s intellectual output. I want to continue to grow both professionally and personally in my career and would like to be an academic Digital Services Librarian in Northern California. I want to work in libraries because they are a part of my spirit, and encourage me to continue growing, questioning and discovering.