According to Laura Nemeth, who joined the NYU Libraries in early May, the worst thing about starting a new job during the shutdown is having to meet everyone remotely. Also not so good, they say: “My dog wants to take part in all my meetings.” But there is an upside. “The best part is always getting to eat lunch with my wife! I really appreciate all the family time we have together and being able to walk our dog when I need a break from looking at code.”
Nemeth says they love working with their colleagues, who have been both kind and encouraging in a situation that had the potential to be extremely stressful. “This is my first job as a web developer,” they said, “so it’s great to have teammates who support my progress and help me when I get stuck.”
Not that Nemeth is new to programming; their education includes a 17-week immersive software engineering course at New York’s Fullstack Academy, and they have a string of complex web development projects to their credit. They also have a Master’s in Library and Information Studies from University College, Dublin, and a BA in Comparative Literature from Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. In addition, they earned 40 credits toward a Master of Arts in Film at the National University of Ireland Galway, and their resume lists several computer languages, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French.
What drew Nemeth to library science? “I’m interested in how libraries are a safe space for everyone, as well as a point of access to information,” they said. “I’m really passionate about the long-term maintenance of information and artifacts, so learning how to preserve both physical and digital items was fantastic!”
Nemeth, born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is loving New York. “It’s a place where I can still participate in the traditions of my culture whilst experiencing big city life,” they said. “I also love being in academic environments, and I can’t wait to be onsite at NYU. It’s so wild to me that I will have worked with my colleagues for months before I ever met them in person!”
Since 2012, when Chiu began their MLIS program in academic librarianship at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY, they have held a number of increasingly responsible library and library-related positions: children’s library assistant at the New York Society Library; information management intern at the U.N.; graduate assistant at St. John’s library; documentarian at the CUNY Research Foundation; EdLab services associate at Columbia’s Gottesman Libraries; resident librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia; and, for the past three years, cataloging & metadata Librarian at Stony Brook University.
With that experience atop a BA in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University in Connecticut, they might have gone into any of several specializations. So, what was the particular appeal of scholarly communications?
“I like that scholarly communications work in libraries deals with a full ecosystem,” they told us. “It’s holistically concerned with how scholarship is created, evaluated, and disseminated. This job offers opportunities and possibilities for me to leverage many of my experiences in both public-facing and technical work. It's a very exciting opportunity!”
Chiu, who joined the Libraries in late May, finds that the hardest thing about starting a new job remotely is, essentially, being here without being here. “I expect to build a personal and embodied sense of place at NYU and in the Libraries, but I have to put it off indefinitely,” they said. “I feel more grounded when I share a sense of place with others. I imagine many of our students may be missing that, too.”
But like Nemeth, Chiu finds an upside to working from home. “Every weekday morning when I sit down to work, my cat jumps into my lap and spends five to fifteen minutes there, purring, while I look through emails and chip away at various tasks,” they said. “It is cartoonishly cozy. In combination with not having to commute, I feel this has enhanced my morning work routine into something I enjoy, which is remarkable because I generally do not enjoy mornings.”
Chiu said their manager, April Hathcock, and the Libraries HR team put a great deal of effort into making their onboarding smooth. “I also appreciate that so many people have taken time to explain and contextualize how things work at NYU and in the Libraries for me,” they said.
“NYU Libraries is the largest library organization I’ve worked in,” they added. “The org chart is a bit more complex than I’m used to, and it’s taken me several months to understand it and to be able to visualize, at least in a rudimentary way, who does what work, and how different groups of people interact with one another.”
What do they look forward to when we’re back onsite? “One thing that springs to mind is being able to give and receive eye contact at the same time, and being able to read others’ body language,” they said. “I’ve always found that very helpful in building relationships, and I’ve missed it quite a lot.”
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