IACRL Member Spotlight: Lora Del Rio
September 26, 2024
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Interviewed by Sue Franzen, Illinois State University
Q: Tell me about your current position as Director for Research, Teaching, and Learning at Lovejoy Library. What kind of work do you do? What do you most enjoy about the work? What do you find challenging?
A: As Director for Research, Teaching, and Learning at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), I lead the teams of people in public services. I work with the fabulous folks at the Information Desk (which includes civil service staff and student workers) to maintain day-to-day operations of the library building and the main service point. These employees also provide tremendous support to our outreach and engagement to first semester/first-year students, including programming and marketing of services and events. I work with our excellent MakerLab manager to support the operations in that unit. Another group I work with is the liaison librarians; together we connect with faculty and students to identify needs – be it discipline specific or functional like online learning or OER/scholarly communications – and find ways this library team can best support their research goals. Additionally, I am part of the administrative team of deans and directors, and we work together to see how we can strategically plan for the future. The work I enjoy most is witnessing people’s growth, both students and the staff who directly or indirectly report to me. I think it’s so exciting to see someone try new things, make mistakes, learn, and transform; it’s why I work in education. I strive to be a leader in the library and part of that responsibility is helping others see themselves as leaders, no matter their position or role in the library. My favorite part of this work might also be the most challenging and maybe that’s because growth takes time and patience. Nothing in nature blooms all year so the saying goes.
Q: Tell me about your previous library work.
A: I have mostly worked in academic libraries and in public services. I started out as a student worker at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Music Library where I shelved books and worked at the circulation desk. After I graduated, I worked for Southwestern Illinois College’s campus library in Granite City, Illinois at the circulation/reference desk. From there, I found an opportunity to work at the U.S. Court of Appeals 8th Circuit Library in St. Louis, Missouri. I worked in the archives processing federal judges’ papers, and also in public services where I shelved materials and fulfilled interlibrary loan requests to all the satellite libraries in the 8th circuit. I got to meet Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she came to sit on the 8th Circuit Court once! I missed working with students and faculty, though, and went back to the University of Illinois for my master’s program and to work as a graduate assistant at the Undergraduate Library. I went on to work at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois for six months as part of a grant program, and then onto Heartland Community College for four years before settling into my job at SIUE.
Q: Please describe your participation in professional association activities?
A: I’ve been fortunate to be active in several associations. In 2014, I was a member of the ACRL/IS Conference Program Planning--Las Vegas, 2014 Committee. We organized a panel presentation on threshold concepts at the annual ALA conference that year. It was exciting to be part of that project as ACRL was evolving from the standards for information literacy to the threshold concept-based framework model we’re still using today. From 2014 – 2017 I served on the CARLI Instruction Committee, and I really enjoyed getting to know librarians from all over Illinois. For the Illinois Library Association, I served on the Conference Planning Committee in 2021 and 2022, the latter of which I was co-chair. I’ve presented several times at conferences and meetings of all of these associations and consortiums.
Q: What do you love most about the library profession?
A: What I love most about the library profession is helping people. Books are certainly the icing on the cake, but I came to this line of work because I wanted to help people tap into their curiosity and seek answers to their questions about the world around them. I also love how much the profession is evolving; I am challenged to continue learning and innovating.
Q: What is your librarianship philosophy?
A: My librarianship philosophy is not all that unique; it aligns with the core values you can read on ALA’s website. I believe in intellectual freedom, that is, the right to explore, discover, and share questions and information without limits. I think this is a key piece in democracy and what allows for our country and society to evolve and innovate. Information literacy is very important to me, and I believe librarians are the best equipped folks to teach these concepts. Most importantly, I am committed to seeing espoused diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism values as values in action. The work to identify and dismantle barriers and systems of oppression will always be central to my work in libraries.
Q: If time and money were no object, where would you love to travel this winter?
A: This is easy! I would take my family to Vienna, Austria to experience the city and all its culture, including the Wiener Christkindlmarkt am Rathausplatz! I was privileged to study abroad in Vienna in 2003-2004 and experienced the Christmas markets in Vienna (the one at City Hall being the biggest!). Winter is simply magical in Vienna, and I talk about it every year with my family. My husband and I watch two videos about Vienna at Christmas time every December: Christmas on the Danube (available for streaming on Apple TV+) and Season 7, Episode 4 of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations where he visits Vienna at Christmas time (spoiler alert: he starts off pessimistic about Vienna and falls in love with the city by the end of his trip). Last December we celebrated our anniversary with an authentic Sacher Torte from the Sacher Hotel in Vienna (they ship worldwide!).
Q: What have you read or listened to recently that you loved?
A: The titles that stick out most are the books I’m reading with my children. I really loved The Wolves Are Back by Jean Craighead George & Wendell Minor (Illustrator). Watercress by Andrea Wang & Jason Chin (Illustrator) was so beautifully done that it moved me to tears! I’ve read Leslie Patricelli’s Huggy Kissy no less than 150 times, but I love how much my children enjoy it, so I’ll read it 150 more. I’d be remiss not to mention Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin & James Dean (Illustrator). We love singing along to that book at bedtime; there’s always a lot of giggles, too!
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