CSN Libraries welcomes our newest Instruction and Reference Librarian, Carrieann Cahall. Carrieann is based at the North Las Vegas Campus and will be working closely with CSN faculty, staff, and students to teach important research skills. She has kindly answered a few questions to allow us get to know her better!
Where are you originally from and where have you worked along the way?
I was born and raised in Vegas! I actually lived across the street from the CSN North Las Vegas campus until my early 20s, so it’s nice to return to a place familiar to my upbringing. Prior to joining the CSN Libraries, I worked a number of instructional and student support roles at UNLV. These roles ranged from being a graduate teaching assistant for the English department, an ELL instructor for international engineering students, and a writing tutor at the Writing Center. Eventually I made my way to the UNLV Libraries where I initially helped with multimedia and design resources, then shifted to supporting first-year and general education library instruction and outreach.
What have you learned in other jobs that you think would be beneficial to the students at CSN?
While a lot of the work I did at the UNLV Libraries directly translates to the work I’ll be doing here, I feel that the skills and experience I developed as a writing tutor prepared me the most for the instruction and reference work involved in my role as a librarian. As a writing tutor, I got to work a lot with students directly. Even though my work day could be back-to-back consultations, I learned how to approach each consultation with a fresh slate and understand that every interaction was unique. Remembering this helps me avoid assumptions about what I think students need help with and encourages me to actively listen in order to provide specific and useful support. Also, when you’re a writing tutor, you get to read about all kinds of topics and learn more about different perspectives, so I learned random facts from various disciplines which makes me both decent at trivia night and helpful with finding all types of information.
What do you like to do for fun?
My background is in creative writing and film, so I love reading, writing fiction, and watching movies and tv. I also like to cook and bake in my free time, and I recently picked up watercolor painting to relax.
What do you feel is your biggest personal or professional accomplishment?
This role with the CSN Libraries is a pretty big professional accomplishment for me. As a first-generation student with immigrant parents, there were many times when I felt like I had hit educational or professional barriers that I wasn’t going to be able to cross. Likewise, there were many conventions and expectations in higher education that I didn’t know anything about until it was too late. I didn’t even know librarianship was a profession that someone could pursue until I was working in a public library as a page, shelving books. Then even after that job, it took years worth of mentorship and encouragement from other library folks to keep going and become a librarian.
What’s one fact about yourself you’d like to share?
I’m not ready for a pet at the moment, and I’m more of a dog-person, but I would love to have a sphynx cat!