An ongoing look at people who work in libraries and information services around the Bay Area.

How did you become a librarian?

Well, I was one of those kids who spent weekends in the library, participated in summer reading, and loved to read, so I thought maybe I’d want to be a librarian when I grew up. However, later on, when I started researching librarianship as a career and found out it required a Master’s Degree, I didn’t think that was for me.

So, I pursued a B.A. in English and planned to become a technical writer. When I was a senior I got a part-time job as a library assistant in a corporate library in a semiconductor company and was hooked! As soon as I finished by B.A. I enrolled immediately in library school at SJSU. I then spent the next 20+ years in high tech, managing research libraries at Apple Inc. and Nortel Networks, and was then Director of Operations for a small telecommunications market research firm.

After getting laid off from my last company, I decided I wanted to make a career change and got hired by the Santa Clara County Library as a part-time substitute reference librarian. I found that I loved serving the public and was lucky enough to be hired full-time, eventually managing libraries in Morgan Hill and Cupertino.

Did you aspire to become a director of a library? If not, how did you come into this position?

I never aspired to management early in my career, but always seemed to get promoted to supervisory positions. After managing a variety of different departments in corporations, and managing two libraries for the Santa Clara County Library, being a library director seemed the next logical career step for me. I joined the City of Mountain View as library director in May of last year.

When you left your position as a Community Librarian at the Santa Clara County Library to become the Director of Library Services in Mountain View Public Library, what was the biggest change for you?

It was a bigger change than I expected! When I managed libraries for the County Library, there were a number of functions, like technical services and IT, that were taken care of at administrative headquarters. As a library director I’m now responsible for those functions as well so that has been a learning curve.

I was also a little surprised with the amount of autonomy I have. I get very little time with my boss, the City Manager. He trusts me to run the library and I have the authority to make whatever changes I think are needed. I was also very pleased that there is a very collegial relationship among all the department directors, even during difficult budget times.

What are your plans for the library in the next year? New services?

I think we could do a better job reaching out to our diverse community, so we recently started a series of Internet classes in Spanish. We worked with our local day worker center to promote this and all our classes have been full with waiting lists.

We also need to examine our collection, especially in light of the popularity of e-books. When Jeff Bezos says he is now selling more e-books than paperbooks, I take notice! This could have profound implications for public libraries, and it is a great opportunity for us. We are about to embark on some training for library staff to ensure that we are all up-to-date in this area and then plan to offer workshops and support to the public as more and more of them start to use some sort of e-reader device.

Have the library’s interactions with the community changed? In what way?

We have become a community destination, and I think that will be an important role for us in the future. Our families connect with each other through our story times, our teens hang out and tutor each other in the afternoons, and our adults access the Internet and use our collections for lifelong learning. We have really become a learning and meeting hub for the community.

What was the most memorable experience you had as a librarian?

The most exciting and professionally satisfying experience I’ve ever had was building a new library for the city of Morgan Hill while I was the manager there. It was a wonderful community effort involving library staff, city staff, library support groups, and residents. We all came together to define what the community needed in its public library and worked hard to make it happen. I am very proud of the facility and think it serves residents very well.

Any advice for new librarians wondering if they have what it takes to become a good leader?

I would recommend volunteering for any leadership position that might come your way. Leading a project team, supervising volunteers, and working with community groups can be very satisfying and can help you get experience as a leader. Additional formal education can also be extremely valuable. I went back to school recently and am just about finished with my Master’s in Public Administration. What I learned in the program has helped me a lot to grow as a leader, and I know it was a factor in my getting the job offer for my current position.

This is an ongoing series of profiles of BayNet members who work in little-known libraries and information services around the bay. Heidi Goldstein is the Head Librarian of Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville.

Ex'pression College for Digital Arts. Photo by Tiffany Lo.

How did you decide to become a librarian?

I’ve always been a reader and a lover of books. At about fifteen, I decided that librarianship would be a great career for me as I knew I didn’t want to be a standard classroom teacher. I knew that I loved to organize anything I could and figure out systems of order for things of all types. I also knew that I liked helping people and loved the concept of instructing people on how to help themselves. I worked in retail bookselling, both as a bookseller and as a manager, and knew that loaning people books was more appealing to me than charging for them.

Heidi Goldstein

In between bookstore jobs, I worked in a huge mess of a vintage clothing store. I had the task of putting it in some order. I devised my own system that included: sparkly Supremes dresses, fifties daytime dresses, sixties cocktail dresses, ironic seventies t-shirts, lederhosen, and so on. It was a mental challenge and included fashion history research and I loved every bit of it. I knew that librarianship was the perfect field into which I should delve.

Also, my mother still swears that she told me, when I was about 3 years of age, that I would grow up to be a librarian. At 37 years old, I now have to agree that she was right!

In what ways is a digital arts school library different from the more traditional school libraries?

The Wintzen Library and Learning Resource Center, while not large in size, is vast in its resourcefulness. Our students tend to focus on manuals and software usage more so than the traditional academic learning institutions as many of our classes are software-based. Ex’pression College, in and of itself, is different in that we are a fast-paced, learning-intensive, 24 hour a day, 365 day a week school. Our library, currently open only to enrolled students, has over three thousand books that range from, but are not limited to: children’s books to animal anatomy, jazz biographies to Star Wars history, acoustics and physics comprehension to logo construction, and rock and roll graphic design to punk rock music history. We also have an extensive DVD collection which includes concerts, tutorials, general films that tend toward the cult classic and hyper-creative, animation, experimental, and documentaries.

The library is also where all students come to attain their textbooks. For the General Education classes, they may borrow their books for the length of the term (five weeks). For the classes that represent the respective programs, Sound Arts, Animation and Visual Effects, Motion Graphic Design, and Game Art and Design, the library gives the students their textbooks which they then may keep for their professional library. This figures greatly in the activities of the library while saving the students large amounts of money from having to purchase their books.

Our library is similar to other schools as it is a hub of information, a central location in which students may print out papers, and where tutoring occurs. As the librarian, I help students with papers, research, and writing.

Ex’pression College uses Web 2.0 tools extensively: blogs, twitter, Facebook, and etc. How has this impacted your library work, if at all?

I believe that the school’s involvement with Web 2.0 has increased our brand recognition all around. The Web has permitted a small, niche-market Bachelor’s degree-granting school to gain international publicity. The library utilizes Twitter and Facebook to communicate with Ex’pression students who might not come into the library on a regular basis. Updates are made to Twitter, Facebook, and various other school-based websites regarding new additions to the library catalog and various events that happen around the school and in the library. Communicating with students in the way they communicate with each other has infinitely assisted in increasing the library’s appeal and communication levels.

What is your most memorable library experience?

My most memorable library experience is as simple and as pure as library experiences come. A student came in to talk to me about life and some difficulties she was having. I listened and advised as anyone would. But then, I used my super-reader-recommendation skills to come up with something wonderful for her to read. Lynda Barry has been my favorite comic artist/writer for a long time. A peer of Matt Groening of “The Simpsons,” she writes bittersweet, semi-autobiographical reflections on life, adolescence, and the complicated intertwining of family, awkwardness, and self-awareness. I offered one of Barry’s books, 100 Demons, to the student who was having troubles. A few days later she came into the library, eyes glistening, book in hand. “You reminded me how much I love to read,” she said shyly, “thank you.”

More recently, I was thrown a huge surprise birthday party by one of the library assistants, who is a student here at Ex’pression. The library had been decorated, a DJ had set up speakers, many of the people in attendance wore Guy Fawkes’ masks and an Ex’pression alumnus had airbrushed a 4 foot long painting of me that lots of people had signed. At least sixty people were in attendance, food was eaten, and much fun was had. This was not the same kind of memorable library experience as the previous one…but still memorable nonetheless!

Any good advice for new librarians still looking for work?

I started out looking for a hearty, civil service job in the public library sector. I envisioned helping those who needed help figuring out how to navigate the Web, performing the hardcore reference interview, and eagerly receiving the random question. As San Jose State University is the largest MLIS program in the country and competition is fierce, acquiring a public library job was more difficult than I could have ever imagined. I ended up, six months after getting my Master’s degree, with a job here at Ex’pression College in a position nothing like that which I had expected.

My advice would be this: keep your mind open and prospects wide open. The unexpected could be better than that which you originally hoped for!