There is one office on the third floor of the main College library — you may have seen it. My name is on the door above my uber-fancy title: Mellon Library Associate. My position is a component of the Andrew Mellon Librarian Recruitment Program. It is essentially a one-year experience for a recent graduate to work in an academic library.

Since I started in September, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of several interesting projects that have led me to adore the staff of the library system and their absolute commitment to the mission of the organization as a whole: supporting the curriculum and furthering educational opportunities for the students at Oberlin.

The library system runs a tight ship. It is a well-oiled machine, and the vast majority of its functions take place behind the scenes. When I was a student, I saw just a tiny fraction of the complicated and elaborate processes that are the prerequisites of making materials accessible to the public. There are many resources in the libraries that I wish I had utilized during my undergrad years.

During college, I was intimidated by the size of the library and, honestly, afraid of the reference desk. I was familiar with libraries — I worked at the public library for four years before college — but nothing on the scale of Mudd. Mudd was a behemoth. Sure, I used OhioLink a lot, but that was because it was easy. I could request a book online and just pick it up at the desk, which was about the only thing in Mudd I could consistently locate when I walked through the door. But the stacks confused me, and I was afraid to bother librarians at the reference desk.

I went through reference training at Mudd this fall and have been amazed at what I missed out on. Reference librarians are just that — reference librarians. They’re there to help connect you with the information you need. They’ve got masters degrees in library and information science and often an additional M.A. in something else. They’re savvy, they publish, they know technology, and they know the library inside and out. They are committed to your access of materials. You are supposed to bother them. They went through years and years of schooling in order to be bothered by you.

I went through a lot of personal research kicks as a student, OhioLinking all the relevant materials I could find about, say, Finnish prison reform (seriously). I hit a wall — I thought the information just simply wasn’t available. When I trained in reference this year, it was hammered into my head that I should “never assume the information isn’t available,” and that there are techniques, databases and all sorts of fancy things that can help when you hit that wall. I just didn’t know where to look, and that was why I should have made a research appointment with a librarian.

Librarians are probably different than you think. In fact, the majority of the librarians in the Oberlin library system work completely out of sight of the public. For example, you’ve got cataloguing, which is a concentration in library science. At Oberlin, a number of people catalog materials all day, nine to five, so you can find those materials on OBIS. And let me tell you, it is an art form. It is a precise science, requiring extensive training and considerable skill, and it’s fundamental to the services the library offers.

There isn’t a member of the library staff that falls into the shushing, bun-wearing, stern librarian stereotype. We’re talking about brilliant publishers. Ladies who ride motorcycles on the weekends. World-renowned cataloguers. Amateur astronomers. World travelers. Union leaders. People with radio shows. And most of all, advocates. Librarians and members of the library staff are advocates for your access to information.

Through this series of columns, I hope to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the library system and the library profession through the eyes of a very recent graduate of Oberlin. I welcome your questions and comments at ghammond@oberlin.edu. Stay tuned next week for a trip into the vault in Special Collections.