This semester, we are thrilled to welcome Alex Belovich to our team for his UW-Madison iSchool practicum experience. We thought you’d like to meet him! Alex hails from Brecksville, Ohio and is in his final semester at the iSchool. We asked him to share a little about his path to the field of librarianship, how he landed on WiLS for his practicum, and his post-graduation plans.
I have always been interested in books and reading. I meandered my way through several false starts in my undergraduate career until I explored a BA in English and thrived in that setting. Some time after graduating, I began working in a regional book warehouse with Goodwill where I spent all day processing palettes of book donations and posting them to online marketplaces with standardized descriptors (goodwillbooks.org, eBay, and others). I absolutely loved being around books and knew I wanted to explore this further.
I applied to a nearby public library and worked for two years as a full-time library associate where I was given gracious opportunities to grow and thrive in a supportive environment. I performed reference duties, assisted with teen programming, gave book talks to elementary through 11th grade students, ran a recurring adult book club, proposed and eventually ran a system of 1-on-1 tech appointments for patrons, and sat on committees and attended conferences. I honestly lucked into such a supportive community that invested in my professional development. After two years, I decided it was time to take the leap to earn my MLIS, and I only applied to a handful of programs but was most excited to go to UW-Madison because my oldest sister had attended in the early 2010s and I loved Madison when I visited her and I could be closer to her and my brother-in-law who now live in Chicago.
I had been struggling to identify a practicum location based on the list suggested by the University, as I didn’t want to have a redundant public library experience and I wasn’t particularly interested in academic libraries, archives, or museums specifically enough. So when Sara Gold presented about WiLS and the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium and shared about project management work, collaboration, cooperative purchasing, and other big picture tasks that WiLS takes on with their partners, I knew this was where I wanted to do a practicum! Unfortunately, WiLS hadn’t offered one in the recent past, but I approached Sara at the end of the presentation and expressed my interest and asked if WiLS would be willing to formulate a practicum since the work they do aligns so well with the career and library path I envision myself taking, and she worked with my instructor, Jaime Healy-Plotkin, who is also now the practicum advisor, to set up work experience that meets my own and WiLS’ goals.
Perhaps the most impactful and surprising class I’ve taken in my graduate program is LIS 603: Research and Assessment for Information Professionals because it really helped open my eyes to the value of constant, dynamic, and intentional internal organizational evaluation and external stakeholder/public/patron evaluation for the health of an organization and to the benefit of its relationship with community partners.
After graduation this December, I’d ideally like to end up in a public librarian position, with an eye towards big-picture project management and collaboration in the public library realm, but I could also see myself working with a larger governmental organization or in a nonprofit similar to WiLS.
In my personal life, I’m constantly going when I can. I play recreational softball, baseball, enjoy tennis, and especially enjoy exploring Madison by foot, bike, bus, or a combination of the three! When I do unwind, I’m usually sitting out on the porch reading, trying to get through a TBW (to be watched?) list of movies, or if I can really find extra time, reverting to my childhood state with video games. I don’t own any pets but I live in a cooperative housing community and we currently have a chihuahua named Trixie, and before that a sassy cat named Jazz, and I also am involved with our coop’s nonprofit, Madison Community Cooperative, by serving on the Board of Directors and most recently joining the Personnel Committee.
I am currently reading:
- Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America by Elie Mystal
- The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells
- The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
I’m looking forward to discovering the world of library-related organizations and consortia and I’m immensely grateful to WiLS and the Practicum program at UW-Madison for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to meeting with and learning about and from many of you in the next few months!
Same, Alex. Same.
