Recap of guest speakers in my classes at ESI

Although I mentioned a few of the guest speakers in passing, it only seems right to give credit publicly to ALL of the fabulous librarians who gave of their time and energy to share their talents and their passions with a small group of third year undergrads at ESI in the National, University and Special Libraries class.

First semester, our class met at 8:30 in the morning on Monday. It was impossible to coordinate with speakers in America with the time difference, but we did succeed in bring two very interesting speakers to ESI.
Nozha Ben Saadoun from the BNRM spoke in November about her work in Cataloging. She prepared a great talk, brought examples, and came in on her day off to speak to us.
Eric Childress of OCLC visited us in December. He also presented on his day off (during his vacation!) and even agreed to speak again later that week to a different group of interested students.
We also toured the BNRM as a group, which was very enlightening.

During the second semester, class met at 4:00 on Monday, making it possible to invite Americans to participate via Skype or telephone.
Sarah Wenzel, librarian at the University of Chicago, prepared a great presentation describing her library and her work. And she presented the whole in FRENCH. Her keen sense of humor and charm were not lost on the students, nor was her status in WESS, despite her modesty about her leadership roles.
Ray Schwartz, systems librarian at William Patterson University's library, took the time during his vacation to come and talk to us for an entire class period about data mining and evaluation in university libraries. The new director even came to his talk; we were very honored to have Ray, indeed, and he really got us thinking.
Larry Olszewski, director of the library at OCLC, also prepared a wonderful presentation in FRENCH, introducing the topic of special libraries. Of all the people, literally, in the world to talk to my students about special libraries, can there be someone more qualified than Larry? As qualified, perhaps, but not MORE qualified, and naturally his presentation was flawless.
Caroline Szylowicz of the Proust Archive at UIUC spoke about the special collection that she heads. Caroline is French, so speaking in French was simple, and her passion for her subject came across very clearly. However, the Skype connection was unavailable from UIUC the day of the presentation, so Caroline had to bike home (quite heroically!) with her laptop at the last minute to be able to speak with us at the appointed time.
And, as a surprise "end of semester" speaker, we talked with Diane D’Almeida from BU who was able to give us an overview of libraries in different countries, and to help us wrap our brains around the place of ESI graduates in the wide world of libraries and international librarianship.

Yet again, I have reason to be proud of colleagues in libraries. Librarians are above all professionals who truly believe in what they do and who systematically give back to the profession without asking "what's in it for me?" These folks all gave of their time, energy and talent to speak to 16 students in Morocco whom they'd never met... I may be biased, but I don’t know that folks in other professions who would be so giving of their time and talents in this way.