Background
When I first started the SLIM program in 2003, I had been keeping fresh my undergraduate degree in music education as a choral singer and colorguard instructor, but also had the benefit of working in an academic library. Back then, I thought the outcome of my MLS degree would be to combine these two professional strengths in a school library setting. But the longer I worked in the library, taking on more challenges within technical services, the more committed I became to academic and technical services librarianship. I returned to the program in 2007 to finishing my MLS degree with this renewed focus.
That gap between my two starts was significant since so much changed in libraries and in the program during that time. But my first classes had already firmly set the foundation for my pursuit of these particular truthbrary studies.
Truthbrary? Yes, as Wallace (2009) notes and many have argued, the word library no longer seems sufficient to describe what it contains. I use truthbrary as a way of exploring both the changing and the eternal meanings of the word library. My choice of term loosely follows a Rastafarian practice of altering common English words to reflect a more positive or more literal, face-value meaning.
Changing the implied li[e] in library into truth more appropriately describes the actual mission of libraries in the context of the basic hierarchy of learning. Beginning with data we build information and with information forms knowledge. Knowledge becomes understanding and the summit of learning is wisdom. While we may, in fact, only find ourselves perpetually seeking understanding, there is certainly great value in this seeking . This seeking, or lifelong learning, defines information literacy and can be found within my portfolio, particularly in the ways in which communication presents itself throughout my artifacts and represents my individual and collective truth seeking.