The Wizard of FLoP

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James DeWalt is the head librarian of the Social Sciences & History Department. He has worked as the department head since 1995. He holds a masters degree in library science from the University of Illinois and a masters of history from Temple University. He has been a member of ALA since 1977 and a member of RUSA for fifteen years. He is also a member of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL).

James DeWalt, now head of the Social Sciences & History Department, began his career as Young Adult Librarian at the Paschalville branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. He worked there for eight months before being transferred to the central library as an adult reference librarian.

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Mr. DeWalt says the area of library science is changing. Where academic libraries tend to become more and more specialized, the public library tends to generalize. Mr. DeWalt was originally interested in becoming an academic librarian, but began his career in the public library and felt he had already committed to the Free Library. In this position though, he has achieve his career goals he might not have reached in the academic setting.

Mr. DeWalt uses RUSA’s “Best Bibliographies in History”, Library Journal, Booklist, and Choice to make selections for the department collection and YBL Library Services and University Press for the less popular materials.

He uses ISI Web of Knowledge to find the most cited materials to add to the collection.

Eight librarians and two library assistants work in the Social Sciences & History Department. Requirements for working as a librarian are a MLIS from

an ALA accredited school. Subject specialization is preferred.

Mr. DeWalt says the most difficult aspect of his job is “keeping focused on the real everyday needs of the users, which are changing over time, not building a collection around what I would like, and being Sensitive and responsive to the needs of less capable users.”

His personal interests have changed from

linguistics when he began to

history.

“I was influenced mostly by friends and associates in the library science at the University of Illinois, especially several who made librarianship seem like a worthwhile and fascinating profession, not at all like the stereotype that most folks are used to. Also, early supervisors and administrators gave me a sense of standards and excellence in service and collection building.”

“The room holds about 200,000 volumes including bound periodicals. This is down from about 250,000 from about ten years ago after a period of collection downsizing.”

“Librarians serve to explain search strategies and distinguish reliable from unreliable sources of information.”

Reference librarians in the department find themselves typically using encyclopedias, Internet resources, each other, experience and intuition.

“I advise [library and information ] students to now focus on information technology generally, not to think too narrowly within the field of

librarianship. Learn skills that can be adapted to several career paths.”

He recommends memberships to ALA and RUSA, especially for “small towns with few libraries.” Local organizations, such as PACSCL that serves the

Philadelphia region, are very important.