About Starter Librarian

About Me:

My name is JaTara Barnes and yes, I’m a Starter Librarian. In a previous life, I was a software engineer with experience in both developing and testing software. After a while, I realized that I wanted a career that would allow me to have educate and inspire people. After some thought, I decided to become a librarian.

I thought about things for a while and decided to settle on a career change to librarian.  So, I’m currently attending Wayne State University’s online program for my MLIS degree.  I haven’t quite decided what I will specialize in, but so far, I’m leaning towards becoming a children’s librarian at a public library or work in a K-12 school library.

About the Starter Librarian website:

Welcome to the Starter Librarian!  I created this website to be a resource for all new librarians and librarians-to-be.  As you most likely have found (as have I), there’s a lot of helpful information and helpful people out there willing to help you begin your career as a librarian.  Unfortunately, this information is scattered all over the web. I decided that I would collect this information and organize it in one place and share some of my perspectives thus far, in the hopes of making other folks’ lives easier.

I chose the name “starter librarian” smply because the newlibrarian.com and .org domains were taken, forcing me to be a bit creative in selecting another domain name. After some thinking, I decided to call it the starter librarian website because a) the name is catchy and easily remembered — almost the same general category as “starter wife” or “starter home” and b) it’s an appropriate way to describe my intended audience.