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Himmelfarb Headlines: Staff Profile - Introducing Randy Plym, Evening/Weekend Supervisor

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Staff Profile - Introducing Randy Plym, Evening/Weekend Supervisor

Staff Profile

Learn more about Himmelfarb Library staff members. We learn more about Randy Plym, Evening/Weekend Supervisor in this issue.

Share your path to Himmelfarb Library.
I started working in libraries after graduating with a (super lucrative) English BA. Libraries started as a stopgap for me, but I quickly came to appreciate the mix of working with people and information and savored the always-unexpected unfolding of days in a public space. That being said, I paused my library career for a little while to live in Europe. After I returned, I sought out university library positions, because I figured it would be natural to work with students, having also edited theses and tutored for the TOEFL, and indeed, it’s been great helping facilitate people’s study and research.

Tell us about your position at Himmelfarb and what you do.
I’m a “Senior Library Assistant” in the circulation department. I help schedule and support our student workers, maintain Himmelfarb’s material collection, oversee circulation projects, participate in our 3D printing service, and help out in numerous other ways across staff committees.

What has been the best part of working at Himmelfarb?
Working with the Himmelfarb team. It’s been great getting to know them and learn from them. Himmelfarb has a goldilocks-sized staff, I think: there are enough people that things get done, but few enough people that lateral learning is encouraged/practical. And there’s a lot of expertise to benefit from, especially as I progress in the profession.

What do you like to do in your time away from work?
Writing is my passion, but I probably spend more time feeling bad about not writing. Some other hobbies include: tennis, hiking, kayaking, running, video games, and reading. I love a good road trip, especially one with friends, where the profound and profoundly stupid start to bleed together in conversation.

Could you share with us about your writing?
Sometimes I write signs like CPU OUT OF SERVICE or notes like “hey, [co-worker name] left this book for you.” I also write stories and poems (and have several novels incubating). Some of my poems are published; I have them collected here, if anyone is interested in reading them.

To be less coy, I studied creative writing in undergrad but only really dedicated myself to it about five years ago, in part because it’s intimidating to take art seriously. I think I also sensed that writing in the 21st century means shorting the modern world, because novel writing requires you to develop an intense machinery of concentration that isn’t very possible when constantly exposed to infinite scrolls, reels, etc. [Jonathan Franzen, the National Book Award-winning author, got this in the 00s when he stopped up his ethernet port with glue]. We’re beyond rich in information but risk getting endlessly spun around in the welter of it all. I don’t know how other people manage it, but I write fiction in large part because it gives my life shape; fiction writing requires sacrifices, but it redeems information by giving it narrative context and purpose. When I lived in Germany, I found myself constantly narrating my life as a story, for example, just to keep sane.

Where are you from originally, and what brought you to the DC area?
I hail from the land of diners, Wawas, and pizzerias: suburban New Jersey. I was living and working in Virginia Beach when a quarter-life-crisis-type-thing moved me to Germany; when I reentered the US, I wanted to look for jobs in a new area and one of my best friends had an open room in his apartment, so it was an easy transition to the grand ol’ seat of freedom and democracy.

Tell us about some of your previous library work.
I worked for three years at the Chesapeake Public Library. During that time, I worked across the library: from reference to circulation to helping youth services make a 20ft dragon. My favorite thing was designing escape rooms for the library conventions.

You lived in Frankfurt, Germany for a while. What was that like?
Amazing but brutal; high on adventure but low on dignity and glamor. I knew some German before moving there but woefully not enough. In a poem called, “In Deutschland, I Am Dodo,” I described my initial experience as “waddling up to smokers outside cafes/pointing, squawking, laying golden turds of phrase: [like] “is this the scarf of you?” or, “butter this make bread better?” Basically, it was a real ego death at all times but a feast for the senses. Imagining myself as a fuzzy, useless dodo helped me cope.

In the first couple months, I had no money at all because of bureaucratic moving complications. I remember walking back from the Ausländerbehörde (the Foreigner’s Office) and stopping to stare at a displayed grocery store ham. As I shivered in the cold like a Victorian orphan, an off-key busker played “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.” There were a lot of moments like that.

But the difficulty helped me grow, and I think ultimately the benefits outweighed the frustrations. I met a lot of people and travelled to nine or ten European countries. Returning to America, I have a newfound appreciation for the ease of communication (and for free sauce packets).