Welcome New Permanent Librarians

Gleeson Library | Geschke Center is pleased to welcome two new librarians, Claire Sharifi, who is the liaison to the School of Nursing, and Amy Gilgan, who is the liaison to the School of Education. Claire and Amy both began here at Gleeson in January as temporary part time librarians. Late this past summer, the library posted two full time librarian positions on the USF jobs site. Claire and Amy applied to the respective openings, went through the rigorous interview process, and both got the job! We are excited to welcome them into our “library family”–or perhaps more precisely, we’re happy they’re not leaving our family!–and look forward to all the great work they’ll do with the students and their respective faculty.

Introducing… Claire & Amy!

Claire Sharifi has been building her career to the point of being a Health Sciences Librarian. After graduating from San Francisco State University with a B.S. in Health Education, she took a case worker position at Project Open Hand and also held the position of research assistant at UCSF. Although she felt nudged to get a Masters in Public Health during this time, she relished the research aspect of her job at UCSF and instead pursued a career as a reference librarian, getting her Masters in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. Since then she has worked at Barnett Briggs Medical Library at SF General Hospital and as a librarian at Life Chiropractic College West Library in Hayward, CA. She is excited about the evidence-based practice movement in the health sciences because it provides a natural opportunity for practitioners and librarians to collaborate. Her favorite fruit is the strawberry.

Her personal take on USF:
I have very much enjoyed my first few months here at USF. While I am impressed by the dedication to learning and education I see in both the students and faculty, I am particularly struck by the social consciousness of many of the students. Students come to the reference desk with research questions that demonstrate their awareness and
involvement in important current issues, and throughout campus I see evidence of students’ investment in their community, from posters encouraging students to volunteer at service organizations, to composting and recycling bins in the dining centers, to the movement to save the Upward Bound program. It is great to work among individuals who are committed to education, the environment and social justice.

Amy Gilgan comes to USF from the Art Institute of California-San Francisco where she managed library instruction for over 3 years. During her temporary appointment here at USF, she also worked at City College of San Francisco. She enjoys doing library instruction at USF, and loves the amazing collection of religious books at the Gleeson Library. In her spare time, she trains in Aikido, Muay Thai and Western Boxing.

Her personal take on USF and libraries in general:
One of the many things that attracted me to USF was the university’s commitment to social justice. At USF, I have the pleasure of working with students and faculty in a variety of disciplines who are interrogating a myriad of topics through a lens of social justice.
With the Googlization of information, many students are under the impression that everything can be accessed electronically. As an instructor, I strive to meet students where they are and use the tools they are familiar with, like Google, as a jumping off point for learning how to search effectively. Once students see the strengths and weaknesses of broad keyword searching, I love empowering them to do more in-depth searches with indexed subject terms. My experience working as an archivist at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library taught me that due to the high cost of digitization, the histories of marginalized communities are often underrepresented in electronic resources. Whether I am teaching students to search the open Web or proprietary databases, I encourage them to critically interrogate the search results and ask whose voices are not represented.

This info taken from last semester’s edition of Global Update, the Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Newsletter.