Today’s blog post is an interview with Tori Culler of the Digital Services Directorate here at the Library of Congress. You can read other interviews with digital collections staff here.
Carlyn: Hi Tori, could you tell us a bit about what you do in the Digital Services Directorate? How would you explain your job to someone outside the Library of Congress? What do you like most about your job?
Tori: The way I typically summarize what I do at family reunions is to say that “I help get e-books and other digital resources onto the Library’s website so that the public, researchers, and members of Congress can access and learn from them.”
The longer version is that I am a Digital Collections Specialist within the Digital Collections Workflow (DCW) Section of the directorate. Here in DCW, we are concerned with establishing, documenting, and continuously improving workflows to acquire, preserve, and deliver the Library’s digital content in our general collections.
Some of my current processing projects include the Open Access Books and Open Access Journals collections as well as e-books acquired via the Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) program. I am also a member of the administrative team that maintains the Digital Collections Management Compendium and puts on the internal Digital Library Practitioners discussion series. As a division liaison, some of my highlights this year include working with the Music Division to release a set of silent film scores that recently entered the public domain and partnering with the Hispanic Division to release a new batch of recordings to the PALABRA archive for National Poetry Month in April.
What I like most about my job is that it involves meditative processes that invite creative problem solving. While some may not think that working through large backlogs of e-resources to be processed would be very exciting, I find it quite gratifying to steadily chip away at these continuous acquisition streams. Each new batch offers an opportunity to consider how I might use my knowledge of Python programming and other data wrangling tools to automate parts of our workflows. It’s always really satisfying to be able to turn a manual step that takes minutes, hours, or even days to complete into a Python script that only takes a second to run!
C: Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and journey. In particular, what professional or educational experiences prepared you for your role?
T: I’ve been working in libraries and archives in some capacity since I was an undergrad. My first library job was as a Desk Assistant at the Special Collections Research Center of Belk Library at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. After earning my B.S. in Psychology and Social Work, I took a year off of school and worked as a Book Shelver and Circulation Assistant at the Watauga County Public Library in Boone. While I was originally considering a Master’s in Social Work, these early part time experiences were a great first exposure to the library and archives world and ultimately inspired me to apply to graduate programs in Library and Information Science instead. I was heartened to see how much of an overlap there is between the equity-minded values that had drawn me to Social Work and the values espoused by libraries as community hubs dedicated to democratizing access to information.
I ended up at the University of Michigan for graduate school and will be forever grateful for the amazing opportunities I had while there. Going in, I was strongly considering sticking with public librarianship and had a particular affinity for the makerspace movement and the ways in which it encourages kids and teens to explore new ways of thinking and creating that they might not otherwise have access to. I was able to nurture this interest by working on the Making in Michigan Libraries program headed by Kristin Fontichiaro and contributing to the CompuGirls program and an associated research project led by Dr. Patricia Garcia. Meanwhile, in the classroom, I was being asked to learn how to code myself for the first time. While intimidated at first, I found that I actually really enjoyed it and wasn’t half bad at it! I ultimately chose a concentration in Digital Curation.
These interests and experiences led me pretty naturally to the North Carolina State University Libraries Fellows program post graduate school. I was drawn to the fellowship because the NC State University Libraries are well known for their spirit of technological experimentation and innovation in academic libraries, and I had the chance to contribute to some of these efforts while there. Some project highlights include developing a futures thinking workshop series that accompanied the new Innovation Studio, completing a major update to the Special Collections website, and leading the Library Technology Career Jumpstart Program (more on that in a moment!).
As my fellowship drew to a close, I knew that I wanted to specialize in digital collections work, specifically the processing and metadata side of things. When I saw a posting for a Digital Collections Technician here at the Library, it struck me as the perfect next step. I was pleased to be selected, and began in that position in April of 2023 before moving into the Specialist role I currently occupy this past January. It’s been quite the journey! I now feel that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be professionally and look forward to continuing to contribute to the lifecycle management of digital collections materials here at the Library.
C: What part of your work do you find most meaningful or engaging?
T: In terms of my own work, I am proud to be contributing to open access collections here at the Library. One of the aims of the Library’s current strategic plan is to strive for all Americans to be connected to the Library of Congress by expanding access to our materials. Providing an ever-growing number of open access e-books and journals online so that anyone with an internet connection can view them from where they are is a pretty neat way to support this goal.
Beyond my own day-to-day tasks, it’s also just really inspiring to be adjacent to so many smart and hard-working colleagues who are leading impactful projects and initiatives. Some examples that I get to see up close in my division that I really admire include the By the People team, who run our crowdsourcing transcription program, and the Web Archiving Section, who combat the ephemerality of the Internet by curating collections of crawled websites for posterity.
C: What do you think is the biggest thing you’ve learned so far in working at the Library of Congress?
T: So far, the scale of everything has been mind boggling! It’s one thing to have grown up hearing that the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, and another to experience it in practice. The depth and breadth of both our physical and digital collections as well as our spaces and services is greater than I even realized coming in, and I really enjoy connecting people to all of these resources as I learn about them myself. Just a couple of things I like to point to for people who are unfamiliar with the Library and want to start exploring what we have to offer include the Live! At the Library event series, during which you can now take in our new Treasures Gallery. And for those interested in getting to know our digital collections, LC Labs has a number of great experiments you can read about in addition to some data packages you can play around with.
C: Do you have any advice for people interested in getting into the kind of work you do? Are there any skills or competencies that you think are really important for folks that want to get into this field to develop?
T: As it turns out, I used to run a whole program dedicated to helping students develop the skills they need to pursue a career in library technology! The Library Technology Career Jumpstart Program that I led at NC State University Libraries set out to accomplish this through a week long series of technical workshops in things like Python, Git, and web development alongside informational sessions on resume writing, interview tips, and Q&A panels featuring folks currently working in library technology. What we tried to stress to students is that while picking up and maintaining the tech skills is of course essential, not expecting yourself to know how to do everything at an expert level is also key. No matter where you end up, there’s so much learning on the job that happens just due to the unique nature of each institution and each project you’ll encounter. Being able to collaborate effectively and ask thoughtful questions to plug yourself and your unique strengths into a new project or team will get you a long way.
C: Aside from work, what sorts of things are you passionate about? Do you have any hobbies or interests that you’re up for sharing out with folks?
T: Running? Which I say with a question mark because I’ve historically hated running. And yet, somehow, I’ve gotten into it enough over the past year or so that I’ve run several races and have set a new personal goal of running a half-marathon (eventually). I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and so used to think that the only way to be a “Real Runner” was to go at your max pace, nonstop, for however long your target distance may be. But then I finally figured out how to let myself be bad at something and go at a pace that I, personally, can actually sustain for long distances – i.e. veryyy slow. And with that change of perspective, something clicked. While it’s definitely not always easy – it’s now at least doable. Which seems like an apt metaphor for life, too.
When I’m not running (or philosophizing on why I’m running), I enjoy all things knitting and crochet, reading and playing video games at home with my cat Ellen, and visiting our National Parks to hike and collect passport stamps and enamel pins with my husband Chris.
Comments
Great interview! This was so cool to read.