My name is Martha Hardy and I’m proud to be a Shover and Maker! Most recently, I’ve shoved myself through library school and endeavored to make myself a kickass librarian. During the past tumultuous year, I’ve obtained the MLIS, applied for professional jobs, wrenched myself away from my beloved peeps at the Bio-Medical Library at the U of MN and landed my dream job. Seriously, during my library school years I frequently said to myself, “Self, you know what would be the most awesome, cool, challenging, relevant, meaningful and fun job? Reference and instruction librarian at Metro State, that’s what!” With a multitude of service learning programs, constant outreach to the community, a mission to serve non-traditional and returning adult students and the most diverse student population in the state, Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN is the antithesis of an ivory tower institution. Many academic librarians espouse the gospel of empowering students as citizens and lifelong learners by teaching them to access information, but the Metro librarians make this manifest every day. As a proud Metro alum, I couldn’t be more pleased. I’m a lucky duck.

During the past couple of years, I’ve conducted a series of workshops, webinars and conference presentations on Extreme Googling (originally co-developed with Scott Domansky of Bio-Med). I meet the users where they are in the familiar territory of Googleland and teach them some basic search skills: to define their research questions, search broadly and narrowly, to consider which types of information resources best meet their information needs, to search iteratively, etc. I also market the hell out of the library collections and enthusiastically promote library services such as reference, RefWorks and ILL. I teach about the Deep or Invisible Web and emphasize what they will find on the open Web and what is still only available through the library. My next workshop is on using Google tools for current awareness. Wish me luck.

LSW may be a virtual, nebulous, anarchic organization, but its impact is real. My LSW Friends in the Computer have provided me with mentorship, support, context, friendship, feedback, and much-needed uber-silliness at exactly the right times. Just as we have shaped LSW into what we need and want, we can transmute Libraryland from the inside out. Go forth and transmogrify!