Urban Poly Princess

Once Upon a Time there was a girl named Puanani who moved from Salt Lake City to Logan in the Valley of the Cows aka Cache Valley for her first full time Librarian job at Stevens-Henager College.

Puanani’s school director told her on her first day that she was the first full time professional librarian the campus had ever had and that she didn’t know exactly what the library or librarian were supposed to do. A little scared BUT more excited about creating her own duties, Puanani learned what the existing library and accompanying procedures were first then made changes.

Puanani’s director was a wise and kind administrator Sharla Lemon who supported her desire to improve herself and the library. Since Puanani’s experience was limited to the substitute librarian position she began and loved with Salt Lake County when she was still an MLS-student, professional development was particularly important to her.

She joined ULA and ALA. Membership in ALA gave her a librarian magazine but not much else. Puanani tried to get the Utah Academic Library Consortium to give her students access to Pioneer Academic without success. Her efforts to begin a ULA roundtable for proprietary or career college librarians also failed.

The third way Puanani tried to get professional development was to start a local librarian organization. She went out of her way to meet librarians in the community. One of the first of these was Joseph Anderson at the Logan Library. He was very positive about the idea from the start and helped Puanani identify libraries throughout the Valley of the Cows. Joseph was a sounding board for Puanani at every stage of CVLA’s development. It was extremely important for her to have his support and it encouraged her to continue to work on CVLA.

Puanani broached the subject with Joseph when she first moved to the Valley of the Cows. She included the organization in her formal list of work goals she shared with her director who she told what she wanted to do to achieve this. She decided to hold an initial meeting soon after Joseph created a CVLA Facebook page.

Puanani enjoyed the support of her director who let her use appropriate space at the school and paid for the refreshments she served. Puanani didn’t think this was unusual at all. She expected to be able to travel to different libraries during her work hours. She didn’t submit mileage reimbursements at first but that’s only because she didn’t think about it.

A graphic arts instructor at the college helped Puanani create professional-looking invitations she printed on the school’s printer and paper. Having the assistant dean of computer science available to help set up for presentations was also extremely valuable. When Joseph couldn’t make the initial meeting time, she found nothing strange about telling her Director she had to hold 2 initial meetings instead of 1.

Puanani didn’t find anything intimidating or unusual about starting an organization from scratch. She had been a full time LDS missionary before so talking to stangers was not a problem. She was once president of her church women’s organization in college and she had also been president of the University of Utah’s Pacific Islander Student Association.

Puanani enjoyed working with different people and throwing events. Again, this was not unusual or a big deal. She had produced a concert with a band from Hawaii, and convinced Channel 4 to have them on their morning show. Her Vice President handled and produced a high school education conference. Her secretary organized and produced an incredible luau. She also produced several Hip Hop dances to raise money for the organization that was used for different Pacific Islander Student activities.

Puanani was excited by the enthusiastic and kind reception CVLA received from local librarians. Many were happy to lend their support from the beginning. While she had ideas of what she hoped it would be, that didn’t matter. What did matter is that all the information professionals who joined the organization met and discussed what they wanted it to become.

The director of the Logan library was an important addition and his initial support cannot be dismissed. Robert Shupe was still a fairly new director who had helped start a similar local librarian organization in Arizona. His invitation to the state librarian was accepted and she attended our second initial meeting where we invited as many elementary, middle and high school librarians that we could. This is where decisions about CVLA were first made. Robert’s status and position as Logan Library’s director encouraged people to attend who otherwise wouldn’t. CVLA was also fortunate to have support from several USU librarians from the beginning.

Significant was also Robert’s insistence that we come up with bylaws. The Bylaws Committee officially made CVLA an organization.