Adrienne Green: How did you get this job and how long have you been doing it?

Theresa Quill: I have been working at the Indiana University library for four years. I graduated with a degree in international affairs from the University of Georgia, and after that joined the Peace Corps to teach English in [a small village in] Bulgaria. Part of my big realization while living there was how limited access to books and resources were. I worked with my Bulgarian counterpart teacher to write a grant and create a small library in our school, because there were no books other than textbooks, and hardly any internet access. That got me thinking about going to library school.

I've always been a traveler and collected maps my whole life, and to my great surprise and pleasure, I was hired for a staff level position at Indiana University. In April, my position changed to a tenure-track permanent librarian.

Green: What is studying to be a librarian like these days? I talked to a couple of other librarians, who are slightly older, and they remember being in librarian school back in the time of dial-up internet.

Quill: I graduated in 2013; it sounds like it's changed. The curriculum is intended to give you an introduction to librarianship as a profession, because we do have a pretty strong professional identity and a lot of people say it's a calling to be a librarian. I took classes on website development, library management, strategic intelligence, and how information itself is a commodity. I took a class on international information issues, which dealt with the flow of information across different cultures and library culture in different parts of the world. Now, tons of people take classes on programming languages and it's becoming much more tech-focused.

Green: You said that some people say being a librarian is a “calling.” Can you explain?

Quill: I don't know that I agree that a person is born to be a librarian, but most librarians that I know seem to really love what they do. It's a pretty service-heavy profession. Most librarians get into it because they like working with people and helping people, and I think that fosters the sense of community and collaboration. Those are things that are often parts of one's individual personality as well.

Green: Tell me a little bit about the maps you used to collect.

Quill: My family was really into traveling when I was younger, and my parents were really great about giving my brother and I some autonomy on our trips. They would hand us the road atlas when we were 10 years old and say, “We need to get to this city today. You're going to be the navigator and tell us the best way to get there.” We would spend a lot longer than we needed to get from one place to another, but they introduced that to me before everyone had navigation apps on their phones. When we would travel as a family, my mom used to collect maps and hang them up in a room in our house as wallpaper.