Meet the New IACRL Secretary: Ted Schwitzner
September 26, 2024
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Interviewed by Kaitlyn Weger, Olney Central College
Ted Schwitzner is the newly-elected Secretary of the IACRL. He also serves as the Senior Library Services Coordinator at the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). In this role, Ted provides user support for technical services activities in Alma, the platform for I-Share. He has been a librarian in Illinois for thirty years. We wanted to welcome Ted to the IACRL board and find out more about him and his thoughts on librarianship.
Q: What does your typical day look like in your current position?
A: A typical day contains enough variety that a day may not feel all that typical. Some days involve assisting library staff with support questions, helping them get the most out of the Alma library services platform. These questions may range from sharing best practices to troubleshooting errors in data or in the platform. Questions may lead to more time spent investigating the platform, developing documentation and training materials, finding what is possible but also understanding the limits of what is realistic. A fair amount of time is spent collaborating with my colleagues at CARLI, as well as with librarians at our member libraries, trying to make sure that we get things right but also do the right things.
Q: What made you decide to be a librarian?
A: As an undergraduate, I worked in audio-visual services for my college library. It was about as back-room a job as I thought I could get, though I learned that every job interacts with the public and patrons in some way. When you’re the one with information that could help someone on their path, you want to be there to help.
A short time after graduation, and after spending some time trying on different jobs, my former library director pointed me towards librarianship, letting me know that I had skills—organization, curiosity, helpfulness—along with an interest in sharing what I know, that could mesh well with the profession. I looked more closely, and I saw the opportunity to do more with my talents and use them in concert: listening, guiding, teaching, and organizing. I got started with a part-time reference position, which led to a position in technical services with public services and instruction aspects.
Q: Why is professional service important to you?
A: I see professional service as a way to give back to the community that helped me get to this point of my career, while it also helps me stay relevant. Service offers a way to strengthen existing connections with colleagues and to make new connections and gain new perspectives. Service takes us out of our daily comfort zone, and it gives us opportunities to contribute to goals beyond what we can accomplish alone.
Q: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing libraries and librarians today and in the near future?
A: I’m deeply concerned about the erosion of respect for expertise and authority. For some, counts of views and likes and advertising revenue (i.e., popularity) mean more than validity and accuracy and effort. In this world, we need more librarians, not fewer. Librarians should be trusted members of every community, helping to make sense of a world of information both with biases clear and unknown. Maybe they’re not the authorities on each subject, but able to identify who the authorities on topics are.
On a more traditional level, I’m concerned that continuing budget difficulties will prevent libraries from providing resources and instructional materials in the formats that college students need to learn and succeed. The pandemic and its after-effects have demonstrated that more technology is not the solution for every class or student. Yet for some students, access to technology and resources in accessible formats is essential. The buffet is getting larger, but so is the price tag, unless we can continue to increase access to open educational resources and support the faculty and librarians that make them possible.
Q: What was the last book you read or listened to?
A: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Time travel plus magic plus some absurdly archetypal characters, possibly to the point of being tongue-in-cheek, results in a fun romp through alternate histories (or are they?). I picked this up while traveling for a conference, and it’s really stuck with me.
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