My name is Justin Talamantes. I am a husband, father, amateur cartoonist, and future librarian. I’ve loved public libraries my whole life. Growing up, my mother would walk me and my best friend to the library almost every single day. Shout out to the East San Jose Carnegie branch, San Jose’s oldest branch! These days I get to walk my own kids to the Carnegie branch, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
I am 99% sure I want to be a Public Librarian, but as I look over the courses offered, I see so many interesting potential career pathways. The bulk of my professional life has been working with teens and children. If I end up working in Youth Services I would be over the moon. However, I have two major career priorities in the field of Public Librarianship. The first would be to offer more art classes for adults. Throughout college and my twenties, I was always disappointed that the majority of comics, animation, and character design courses offered usually cut off at the age of 17. My second goal is to beef up the art tutorial collection of whatever branches I work at. Then maybe I could stop spending so much money and hoarding “How to Draw” books!
I chose this course because I took INFO 200 and our professor linked to a lot of Professor Stephens’ lectures. I enjoy his enthusiasm and passion for public service through librarianship. This class is a bit of an odd fit for me because, to be honest, I’m more than a little wary of “emerging technologies”. I am distrustful of the large corporations that develop them and skeptical of many of the purported benefits. However, I recognize that Pandora’s box is open and the likelihood of going backward technologically is next to none. The best way to move forward is keep an open mind and try to adapt as best I can.
I made some very close friends from my previous MLIS classes, so I’m hoping to make more over the course of the semester. I’ll close by linking to a free comics anthology, Scarfff, that I co-founded and posting a picture I drew of Godzilla, the King of Monsters.
