Today is August 31st, 2023. I'm Justin Lemons
with UNT Libraries Special Collections
interviewing Sean Seibel for the UNT Libraries
ARL Celebration Oral History Project.
Welcome, Sean, and thank you for sharing your
story today.
Appreciate it.
Alright, let's start. Can you tell us how you
began your library career?
Depends on how far back you want to go.
Let's get on the way.
Okay. Well, I was the nerdy kid that would take
his books down and reorganize them by title.
I'd get bored with that and I'd reorganize them
by subject.
So, you count that as part of my library
career, there you go, I was probably starting
at six.
Otherwise, probably a more appropriate one was
when I became a library aide in high school.
So I skipped my lunches and worked for her for
four years.
And she was the one that inspired me to
actually get into the library field.
What interested you in pursuing librarianship?
I don't think it was really librarianship.
I think it was just I enjoyed books.
and working with the people that I worked with
inspired me to work with libraries.
Can you tell us when and in what capacity
you began working for the UNT libraries?
I came here in the spring of 2000,
specifically for a library science degree.
it took me about a year
before I was able to get a student position
and how has your
role at UNT libraries
changed over time
it's changed
quite a bit I would say
from what I know it sure has
I mean I've worked in circulation
I've worked in reference departments
I've worked hand-in-hand with librarians, I've
done web development, and now the last
12 years I've been working in facilities.
Can you give us a little bit of history on that?
Maybe specifics?
Yeah, specifics.
How you began and where you are now?
I think it was probably just an evolution from
student to staff.
I mean, rather than take a year-long sabbatical
like a lot of people do and try to figure out
what they want to do,
I just went from student position for a year to
moving into a librarian assistant loan
position, working in circulation.
From there, it was just opportunities that came
up, you know, and if somebody needed help, I
never had a problem saying yes.
what would you say are some of your most
memorable experiences
that you've had working in the library so far?
One of the years I was part of the Christmas committee.
That's not the actual term.
I think it's the holiday party committee.
Party planning committee.
Something like that, yeah.
I probably did that for four years.
I got to know Glenda fairly well.
It was always enjoyable, and that's a great way
to get to know a lot of people in the library
that you otherwise would not meet.
About what time were you?
Like, what years were you on that committee?
Specifically, I don't know, but I think it was
probably the early 2000s for about five years.
Have you served on any other committees or work
groups in the years?
Multiple, yeah.
I was on staff development for probably a
better part of a decade.
Another enjoyable experience is when I worked
with archives and became St. Lawrence,
where we had me dress me up in a robe and
became the patron saint of librarians.
And we'd have a barbecue event every day.
Every day?
Oh, not every day, sorry.
every year.
I was going to say, well, I miss those days.
I think you were there for some of it.
But part of that was I would dress up in the robe
and I'd wander around and give out candy. Awesome.
What parts of your job have you found to be
the most personally rewarding over the years?
I don't think it's a specific thing.
I think I've always enjoyed helping people.
So in that capacity, the library is about
helping people in many capacities.
So my job has allowed me to help people in
various ways.
Yeah, I definitely think that's accurate.
Working in facilities, I could say it's
probably more hands-on help.
sometimes it's simple as just an email but yeah
yeah sometimes it's as hard as
breaking your back in the 110 degree summer um
all right what advice would you give to students
and recent graduates seeking careers in
academic libraries I started giving this advice
years ago
librarianship and libraries are changing
constantly so never limit yourself to one thing
a lot of times if you're able to talk to the
advisors and see if you can
create your own program within the library of
science because librarians are now computer
science majors and teachers at the same time so
the more of a jack-of-all-trades you can become
more likely you're going to get a better job
absolutely and that's actually been fairly
common advice to this question um certainly
advice that I give yeah and there have been a
lot of uh
administrators that have said they've been
forced to hire underqualified people
to fill a position and then train them up so
you can one-up that by educating yourself either
through the academic environment or personally
never hurts yeah just keep on learning
well that's the end of our questions do you
have anything else you'd like to
add or put on record nothing comes to mind all
right then well man a few words
um thank you for taking time today to sit down
with us appreciate it all right have a good one Yeah.