Publication identifies librarian O'Clair as ‘Mover and Shaker'

April 25, 2007

<h1 class="storyhead"> </h1>  <img src="http://www.asu.edu/news/stories/200704/200704_images/20070425_OClair.jp…; alt hspace="5" vspace="5" width="216" height="324" align="right">As an undergraduate student in environmental science, Katherine O'Clair looked forward to the day she could leave the classroom behind and do field research – studying birds in their native habitats.<separator></separator>But once she got her degree, she discovered that she had a huge problem with her chosen career: the research was fine, but being in the field wasn't.<separator></separator>“I learned that I wasn't cut out for field research,” she says. “I couldn't be isolated from people. If I were to go into research biology, I saw myself ending up in South America studying birds by myself.”<separator></separator>O'Clair eventually found her niche – as a research librarian and Noble Science and Engineering Library liaison to the School of Life Sciences.<separator></separator>Her enthusiasm for her job has earned her the title of “Mover and Shaker” from Library Journal, the national library trade publication.<separator></separator>O'Clair says she had never worked in a library, and the thought of being a librarian did not occur to her at first.<separator></separator>After several years of volunteering as a bird banding assistant at the Braddock Bay Bird Observatory in Rochester, N.Y., O'Clair headed west, where she took a research assistant position at the American Museum of Natural History's Southwestern Research Station near Portal, Ariz.<separator></separator>“I had a lot of time to think about my future while wandering in the woods, searching for nests,” she says. “I thought a lot about what I wanted to do. I didn't want to abandon biology. I asked myself, ‘What is it about biology that I really like?' I couldn't put my finger on what I wanted to do.”<separator></separator>Then she thought about how much she loved to do research in the library.<separator></separator>“Unlike many of my classmates, doing a research paper was really enjoyable for me,” she says.<separator></separator>She decided that taking a few graduate-level classes in information studies “wouldn't hurt” her, and she gradually came to the realization that she did have a very specific career goal: to be “a science librarian at a Research I institution.”<separator></separator>To that end, O'Clair enrolled in the distance-learning program at Florida State University to earn her master's degree in library science.<separator></separator>At the same time, she was offered a job as a research assistant at the Center for Environmental Studies at ASU, which put her in a very strategic position to achieve her goal, though she didn't know it at the time.<separator></separator>Just after O'Clair received her library degree, Diane Moore, the longtime life sciences librarian at Noble Library, retired. That enabled O'Clair to realize her dream.<separator></separator>“I have big shoes to fill,” she says.<separator></separator>O'Clair does far more than sit behind a desk and help students and faculty find research materials. She's in the classrooms and brown-bag luncheons every semester to learn what the students need in their research. She co-teaches a first-year seminar with Robert Page, director of the School of Life Sciences.<separator></separator>“Dr. Page and I have the same philosophy,” she says. “We want to help students to succeed and to develop as scientists.”<separator></separator>Give her a huge challenge, such as finding a copy of a paper published in Russia on the population of Great Bustards in Mongolia, and she's on it.<separator></separator>“I enjoy the thrill of the chase, finding something that can't be found,” she says.<separator></separator>Doctoral student Mimi Kessler, who is studying the Great Bustards (a very large, steppe-dwelling bird and the heaviest bird capable of flight) in Mongolia, and who requested the Russian paper, says that O'Clair has helped her identify and obtain articles in a variety of languages for her research on the conservation biology of the Great Bustard.<separator></separator>“These articles have frequently been difficult to obtain, and Katherine has been instrumental in locating copies in libraries abroad, even contacting one author in Japan to request a copy of one important document for our library,” Kessler wrote from Mongolia.<separator></separator>Those days of thinking about her life while watching birds have paid off for O'Clair, who has found her own “nest” in life.<separator></separator>“I love what I do,” she says. “I love coming to work every day. I love getting to work with the students. I love getting to teach. I have the best of both worlds – life sciences and the library. I think I'm particularly good in putting people in contact with the information they need.”<separator></separator>O'Clair will receive her award during a luncheon in Washington, D.C., in June. She is one of Library Journal's 50 “up and coming individuals from across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative and making a difference” in the library field.

Student The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences