1st Week, Let’s start!

By Yunjin Choi

Finally, the Mortenson Associates Program has grandly started in Champaign, Illinois! The scenery at the University of Illinois at Champaign in June, the most beautiful season, is exceedingly lovely. The air is fresh, and the adorable squirrels freely scampering around the campus bring a smile to my face. From now on, I will briefly share what I gained and learned through the program during the first week of June.

Networking

Meeting librarians from diverse backgrounds from various countries and those researching advanced technologies and services at the University of Illinois, exchanging professional knowledge and networking, has been even more diverse and beneficial than I expected. While working in South Korea, I was often lazy and passive to communicate and exchange with librarians from other libraries and countries, using the excuse of focusing solely on immediate tasks as a practitioner.

Here, the proactive atmosphere, where all participants are fully immersed in each session, generously sharing their experiences related to the topics and actively asking questions, allows me to learn and get inspired every moment. When will there be another time to focus intensively on learning and thinking about libraries? Remembering the saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,” I am trying hard to share my information and thoughts with librarians from various countries. I am already excited to see how I will have grown by the end of the program.

Learning

The program planned by the Mortenson Center is so systematic and well-organized than I imagined. Before the start of each lecture session, I diagnosed my work styles through the DiSC assessment and learned strategies and mindsets for adapting flexibly and generously to changing environments. Based on this, various lecture-style sessions were structured around this year’s theme, “Transforming Libraries: New Roles and Impact.“

In particular, the sessions covered the application and cases of AI technology, which brings the most significant changes to libraries worldwide, and digital literacy and citizenship necessary for adapting to changing environments. Through lectures by librarian experts, I learned new principles and contents of actual technologies, and the various activities that involved contemplating and sharing thoughts on how these could be applied to library settings both philosophically and practically. Those lectures motivated me to further research related literature and develop my interests even after the classes ended.

Benchmarking

During this one week, we toured the Main Library, Oak Street Library, and Grainger Engineering Library at the University of Illinois, exploring each library’s facilities and listening to detailed explanations about their services. When there were facilities and services similar to our university library, it was fun to make detailed comparisons between the two, and when there were differences, I thought about why they were different, whether there were inevitable reasons for the differences, and whether users would like it if we introduced those differences to our library.

Particularly when visiting the Urbana Free Library, I wondered what aspects I could benchmark as a university library librarian. Touring the Teen Open Lab and having detailed Q&A sessions made me realize that beyond excellent facilities and services, I had been neglecting fundamental aspects like the great sense of responsibility, passion, and proactive work attitude that individual librarians possess. It was an opportunity to reflect on the attitude and mindset that librarians should have while working in libraries.

Additionally, I have learned so much over the past week. Although I have not yet fully grasped or set a clear vision for the overall theme of the program, “Transforming Libraries: New Roles and Impact,” I am eager to continue exploring this question and engage more deeply in the upcoming sessions. I look forward to the journey ahead.