Follow UsWestPac Election - Vice President/President-Elect
Stacey Gordon, University of Montana School of Law
"One of the things I learned in library school is that when people have an information need, they'll always ask people they know before they ask a librarian. The trick is making sure that librarians are some of the people they know. "*
I once met somebody who told me I was the first librarian he had ever met. I didn't actually believe him since I've always known librarians (one of my Facebook friends was the librarian in my Jr. High). I'm pretty sure he meant he'd never met a librarian outside a library. But even so, I can't help but think that anybody who doesn't have at least one librarian in his or her circle of friends is missing out. At a dinner party last week somebody asked me about the future of libraries. We talked about how libraries will be different but there will still be librarians, which I was happy to be able to tell her and she was happy to hear. I have been a member of WestPac as long as I've been a law librarian -- I actually attended my first WestPac annual meeting when it was in Missoula and I was a second-year law student. Although I'm also a member of other professional organizations (AALL, ABA, the Montana Bar Association, the Montana Library Association, and -- when I first started my career -- the Montana Inter-Tribal Libraries Group) and I think librarians in general are pretty great people to hang out with and learn from, WestPac has a character that I haven't been struck with in other organizations -- our territory is large, but our organization feels connected; we are good at welcoming new librarians into the profession and new-to-WestPac librarians into the organization; we are active and involved in our profession and outside our work lives in interesting ways. Plus, WestPac country has the most beautiful and inviting locations in the country in which to hold our annual meetings! With all that going for WestPac, it is definitely an honor to be nominated for Vice President/President-Elect. If I am elected, I hope that by the end of my term I will know many more WestPac members that I already do. After all, nobody can know too many librarians, especially WestPac librarians!
Although I do hope to know more of you soon, I don't know everybody yet. Until I get meet you, you can find much more information about me on the University of Montana law school faculty website: http://www.umt.edu/law/faculty/gordon.htm.
* Jessamyn West, Metafilter: Going Your Way, Library J. 88 (Oct. 15, 2006) (available at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6379558.html).