RUSA - STARGazing: Meet Jacob Long

RUSA - STARGazing: Meet Jacob Long

1. What is your institutional affiliation?
Bryn Mawr College.

2. What’s your OCLC / Docline symbol?
BMC

3. What's your job title?
Interlibrary Loan Coordinator.

4. How did you get involved in resource sharing (or access services, etc.)?
Well, my introduction to interlibrary loan was as a kid, when I used ILL services to read the Animorphs and various manga series (shoutout to my parents for driving me to the out-of-state public library every weekend!). But, professionally?

After years of deliberation, I decided to pursue a master's in LIS. First, I needed to finish my bachelor's after a rather long hiatus. I found an online program that would let me work on both degrees concurrently. At the time, I was working as a part-time Library Assistant (LA) in a public library and full-time as a general manager at a small business. Working two jobs and pursuing two degrees didn't seem tenable. The LA position wasn't enough to live on by itself, but I knew I didn't want to give up a position working in a library.

In the summer of 2023, a few months before my classes started, my partner sent me the posting for my current job. The role fit everything I was looking for: full-time, flexible schedule, and entry-level paraprofessional library work. Not only that, but Canaday Library, where I now work, is within walking distance of my apartment. A short commute meant more flexibility in regard to time management for coursework. The stars (ahem) aligned so that in August, my classes started, and then a month later, in September, I began work in my current job.

5. How has STARS helped you do your job?
The networking component is immensely helpful. As someone who has only been doing this for a couple of years and is surrounded by all of the superSTARS who have years, and in some instances decades, of wisdom, there is so much for me to learn from them. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity. Everyone has been gracious with me as I find my footing. If you want to do the work, people will make sure there's space for you to do it and provide the resources for you to do it well.

6. What's your typical workday like?
Assuming caffeine is available, I thrive in the morning. So, I usually arrive at the office around 7:30am. The morning hours, when the office is quiet, are often my most productive. I spend this time working on things that require the most focus. By mid-morning the day picks up and we're in full swing of processing requests. The first part of the day consists of collaborating with our students in processing, paging, and scanning borrowing/lending requests. The latter half of the day is opening mail, processing incoming physical borrows, and shipping. I'm usually out of the office by 3:30pm, barring afternoon meetings.

But really, every day is very different, which is one of the things I like so much about working in resource sharing. I might find myself managing months-long software migration projects (such as our ongoing implementation of Rapido), participating in professional committees (such as those in STARS) and keeping my foot on the ground processing requests and assisting patrons. It can be a lot. Including a lot of fun.

7. What are you passionate about? How does that passion inform your work?
I'm especially concerned with thinking beyond one's own nation. I think the world is quite large (while somehow so small) and beautifully diverse. This, accompanied by the reciprocal nature of resource sharing, has impacted how I view the specific work that I do as well as the very nature of what libraries can be. As the IDS Network has said, "my library is your library, and your library is my library." Framed another way: your patron is my patron, and my patron is your patron. I think this sentiment extends far beyond institutions, municipalities, states, and consortia to the global level (practicalities permitting, of course). I try to think of libraries as an overall ecosystem, especially in the context of resource sharing where all of our activities are explicitly interdependent.

This mindset, I think, may be what led to the kind invitation for a newcomer like me to join the STARS International ILL Committee as well as my recent election to IFLA's RSCVD Steering Committee. (This is my shameless plug encouraging everyone reading this to sign their library up for participation in RSCVD.) I also regularly volunteer with IFLA's New Professionals Special Interest Group (NPSIG) working to connect new LIS professionals with like-minded colleagues around the world. I recently volunteered to be on the review team for what will become the 4th edition of IFLA's MCULTP Multicultural Communities: Guidelines for Library Services. I think the earlier that library staff develop a globally-minded perspective, the better it is for us all, practitioners and patrons alike. I believe that the future of resource sharing (and perhaps the future in more general terms) is global, and I am both priviledged and grateful to have the chance to play a very small part in that.

8. What do you wish you'd known when you started out in resource sharing (access services, etc.)?
Coming from non-library spaces, I was initially looking for the way to run ILL operations, a form of hard-and-fast binary standard operating procedures. Of course, there are the RUSA Professional Competencies for Resource Sharing Practitioners, the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, and the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative's STAR checklist (new edition forthcoming) which function as the parameters for a sort of "choose your own adventure" experience. (Now please turn to page 42.) But in reality, every library and its institutional community is different with its own contextual needs. While the resource sharing community is more than happy to assist in problem solving, what works for one library might not work for another.

There's a lot of talk in the resource sharing community about practicalities (and rightly so!). Something that maybe isn't as discussed as often is the "soft skill" components of this work. This is an inherently reciprocal and interdependent field. I can only provide resources to my own patrons by maintaining and fostering healthy connections with other libraries by lending to (and collaborating with) their practitioners. Relationships are essential. This is particularly true when talking about the global resource sharing community wherein a multitude of cultures and perspectives come together to collaborate. In the first 6 months in my role, Ibrahim Farah and Peter Bae co-hosted a webinar for IFLA called, Relationships, Not Just Technologies: Why Connections Matter for Global Resource Sharing. Thanks to my attendance in this webinar, I connected with Ibrahim which is part of how I became involved with RSCVD, and, through circuitous events, ultimately a large reason why I'm even here doing this interview. I think ths collaborative nature has to extend beyond software systems, consortia, institutions, and so on. No insitution, library, organization, or vendor is an island unto itself. The goals of the IDS Network's Crosslink and the PALCI & BLC Consortial Collaboration Working Group (which is "charged with guiding and supporting the development of cross-consortial resource sharing strategies and tools between BLC and PALCI") really exemplify this.

Finally, while not necessary, a sense of humor is highly encouraged. :)

9. What would be the title of your autobiography?
It's Kind of a Long Story, or I Didn't Write this Autobiography Because There's So Much to Read and So Little Time. Perhaps I could hire Austin Bowers, who ghostwrote The Movement for Nathan Fielder's show, Nathan For You. (The Movement, while obviously satirical, offers an educational moment regarding information and media literacy, as does so much of the show. I find it interesting that Fielder was once married to a librarian!)

10. What are you reading?
Aside from course-required materials, I'm revisiting two of my favorite books:

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. In my humble opinion, this is Vonnegut at his absolute best. One of my favorite quotes is from the novel, a quintessential Vonnegutian moral: "a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living by Mari Ruti. It's an accessible existentialist's psychoanalytic critical theory self-help book (an amalgamatic contradiction in terms, yes...but what is life if not contradictory?). An anti-self-help-book, if you will. If you're looking for something more academic in nature, her monograph, Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychic Life, is one of the most beautiful things that I've ever read.

And, for the first time, I'm reading Critique of Cynical Reason by Peter Sloterdijk.

Finally, I've found that the resource sharing community has a great taste in music (and you're just as likely to find me listening as reading). So, if I may, I've had Ceschi's two-part farewell album, Bring Us The Head of Francisco False (Part one & two), on repeat through much of 2025. Others on repeat: Acoustic Ladyland, The Callous Daoboys, Die Spitz, Eloy, Esperanza Spalding, Flagman, Fleshwater, H ZETTRIO, Mdou Moctar, Melted Bodies, Mosaics, Sababa 5, Sibylle Baier, Sigh, and The Velveteers.

10. Share your favorite fun fact about yourself.
I grew up in Payne*. Which, on paper, reads just fine. Stated aloud, though, is something else entirely. I find the pun either lands very well or causes a bit of concerned confusion.

*Payne is a small village in Northwest, Ohio.