CHRISTINE MOULEN “GOOD CITIZEN”
This honoree is no stranger to summiting peaks both on and off campus. With over twenty years of his career spent at MIT, over ten of which have been at MIT Libraries, he has collaborated with countless professors, students, and researchers to serve the MIT community. From teaching classes in Course 1, to hosting workshops throughout the years, and even joining student programs on field work expeditions, he has been invaluable in building technical skills throughout the campus. He is always ready to go the extra mile; spending hours helping students troubleshoot their technical issues, consulting with faculty on building their courses, and supporting his Libraries colleagues in every way he can. Beyond sharing his years of technical expertise, this honoree has also been generous in sharing his time, energy, and wisdom with all of us. His enthusiasm for expanding Libraries services and careful consideration of student needs have been instrumental in transforming GIS services at MIT Libraries.
If we took the time to list every contribution this honoree has made to MIT and the Libraries over the years, we would be here all day. Instead, we can thank him for his years of care for his work and his colleagues, his thoughtfulness in every aspect of his work, and his exemplary service as a supervisor and program head in his time with the Libraries.
BRINGING OUT THE BEST
This awardee is a trailblazing individual who embodies the essence of goodness and kindness in every aspect of her life, always ready to go the extra mile. She consistently fosters an inclusive, safe, and welcoming environment in all her interactions, paving the way for others.
At work, she is proactive and innovative, always seeking ways to summit challenges and find effective solutions. When administrative questions arise, this person is the peak performer we turn to. Even if she doesn't have the immediate answer, she ensures that the right resources are found and follows up diligently, never leaving anyone at a crossroads.
Beyond her professional excellence, she is a passionate advocate for social justice, always choosing the path of righteousness over convenience, even when the trail is steep. Her dedication and integrity truly bring out the best of those around her.
UNSUNG HERO
Our next awardee pays attention to detail. Nothing flies over her head! She listens to what people are saying…and notices what they aren’t. She considers the work, the people doing it, and constantly thinks about how things might be improved. She does all of this in a low-key and impressively unflappable way, regardless of the boulder sized obstacles she may confront while on the climb.
One could count the ways in which this awardee embodies all of the qualities of this award. She has a quiet, seamless way of getting numerous things done simultaneously: running the complex logistics for workshops, onboarding staff, moving libraries’ materials, entering invoices into Alma, resolving supplies order issues, troubleshooting process details, navigating travel for CREOS, tracking finances for postdocs, and more. Much of this work happens in the background, but is integral to the success of the MIT Libraries. Her impressive way of hunting and gathering not only the answers to questions asked, but also to the questions that aren’t asked, make her an invaluable colleague.
This awardee has had two positions at MIT Libraries, and has been a star who leads the hike at both. After her job switch, she has remained a valued resource to her former groups–filling in gaps when there was a shortage on the admin team, answering a myriad of questions, and sharing tips and tricks for making tasks and processes run smoothly. So much of what she does is the often invisible background work that uplifts the rest of us, and allows us to enjoy events such as the Open Data Prize, Scholarly Communication Workshops, and the Libraries’ Inconference. Even with her own sizable workload, she never fails to tirelessly support the efforts of her colleagues, kindling ideas beside you until problems are solved. She never quacks under pressure, her quiet strength provides an amazing bedrock for the MIT Libraries, and we are grateful for this opportunity to celebrate her.
TOUGH QUESTIONS / CRITICAL THINKERS
The next honoree braves the wilds of MIT by using their survival skills to ask the difficult questions and provides support by sharing their thoughts and perspectives.
As noted by one colleague, while working on the GIS project with this individual, they noted that he always takes the time to respond to questions and provide thoughtful feedback on the ideas shared by others. The awardee makes it a point to ask about downstream effects from feature implementations, as well as asking about the updates, work, and ideas that are shared in project meetings. He also explains and asks folx to consider different factors that influence and are affected by project work including:
The current state of things, for example, an application or project
The “why” behind the action
Who or what will be impacted by the project work, for example, stakeholders and downstream applications
It can be hard, and sometimes feel like ascending a vertical cliff without climbing gear to ask tough questions and give thoughtful feedback, so it is appreciated that this honoree encourages questions and will go out of his way to understand what someone is trying to ask, even when they can’t formulate the words themselves.
COMMUNITY BUILDING AND ENGAGEMENT
The next awardee shows that not only will she get to the top of the mountain herself, she will also give others the opportunity to reach the peak alongside her. She is someone who consistently goes the extra mile to engage with her colleagues and the MIT community as a whole in the pursuit of social justice.
The honoree’s efforts to form connections within the Libraries and the wilds of MIT have fostered a tremendous amount of goodwill, and have proven particularly effective at harnessing these relationships to advance EDISJ work. For instance, as the Women@MIT Project Archivist, she is actively involved in conversations with potential donors of archival collections, organizes outreach events with campus partners to promote the Women@MIT collections, gives instruction sessions and presentations related to Women@MIT to classes and student groups, and has even gone above and beyond to work with LIRS to help conduct research and provide advice to MIT’s Indigenous history classes.
This individual is continuously inventive in finding new ways to foster relationships, share resources, and create a positive environment for staff, users, and MIT community members. She revived the Women@MIT Fellowship and curated the current Maihaugen Gallery exhibit “Under the Lens,” which gives visitors the chance to engage with DDC’s archival materials and learn about the work of women scientists in biology and chemistry at MIT. She also reaches new audiences by sharing materials from the Women@MIT collections on social media and through her implementation of a Women@MIT subject term in Dome to add another trail marker of discovery for digital collections.
This honoree is full of grace and compassion for her colleagues and the MIT community. She is a model for how to build and maintain relationships that enhance the Libraries’ values, ensuring that everyone has the supplies they need on their journeys.
COLLABORATION AND INCLUSION
The next honorees faced a unique challenge – stakeholders for their projects include everyone in the organization. The team has sought input from across the wilds of the MIT Libraries in multiple ways: focus groups, a Talk Circle, open office hours, meetings with leadership groups, surveys, polling in all-staff meetings, and an anonymous feedback form. Team members understand that different people in the organization use different tools and practices. Their work respects diverse viewpoints and needs while also offering trail guidelines and best practices that everyone can use to improve Communication.
Developing and sharing organization-wide norms and guidelines for email, Slack, calendaring, and meetings, along with discussion prompts for teams to discuss their own norms
Administering a pulse survey and sharing and interpreting results with the staff
Streamlining the Spot Award process
Completing a content inventory with every directorate in preparation for building a new intranet
Developing knowledge management guidelines - a keenly felt staff need that emerged from the content inventory work
The ICWG’s goals are to allow everyone in the Libraries to focus on the work that matters most
and to better understand the work that their colleagues do. With thoughtful engagement and
listening across the organization, the ICWG is putting the Libraries on a path to increased clarity,
transparency, and a sense of belonging.
INNOVATION, CREATIVITY AND PROBLEM-SOLVING
At a technical university like MIT, filled with the best of the best, it’s not always easy to know
how to help our community learn the skills necessary to be good researchers. However, this next team makes this climb up Mt. Everest feel like a walk in the park.
Honorees in this team serve as instructors, planners, champions and year-round stewards of the Carpentries program. They have done the hard work of planning both workshop logistics and content. They have traveled through the Carpentries training sessions themselves, and have spent long hours improving their own technical skills in order to serve as instructors. And they have made the Carpentries an interdepartmental collaboration across multiple areas of domain expertise, bringing in multiple other staff. They have thoughtfully worked to develop their fellow instructors with training and support, supporting others attending the Carpentries training and developing skills-building locally here at MIT as well. They have shown great creativity and thoughtfulness in all of these endeavors, going beyond obvious or rote solutions for even the most mundane aspects of the workshops to finding novel ways to make the workshops as good as they can be (let’s partner with the College of Computing to use their brand new space, as we did in IAP 2024).
This team models an inclusive pedagogy that moves away from the “sage on the stage” method in favor of building a true community where everyone, no matter where they are on their own hike, can learn from each other. They remind workshop participants that no matter their starting point, they can master this material and even reach the point where one day they might be
inspired to teach it as well.
The workshops this team runs push the boundaries of “traditional” librarianship to try and give our students, faculty and staff the best possible skills for doing the research they came to MIT to do. They have pushed their colleagues to learn new skills too and help out where they can, all while being unflaggingly kind,thoughtful and inclusive. The team has especially prioritized accessibility, to make the workshops as inclusive as they can be, by methods such as standardizing instructor font size and application backgrounds across everyone’s computers to match current visual accessibility standards. They have also kept the workshops as open as possible, allowing people outside MIT to register for virtual workshops.
RESULTS, OUTCOME AND PRODUCTIVITY:
Large scale projects that affect the whole of an organization can feel like scaling Mt. Olympus, and our next fearless team had their work cut out for them as they took on the Herculean task of migrating the Libraries to a new ticketing system.
Bringing together representatives from many departments, this team facilitated a smooth migration to LibAnswers, which was no easy feat considering the number of ticketing queues involved, each with its own set of unique requirements. They kept Libraries staff informed, guided impacted staff through change management, and managed a vendor relationship, all while making sense of a new system themselves.
During the transition between systems, this team provided excellent support for the staff and groups involved, setting affected folks up for success and gently guiding them with metaphorical trial markers to aid them to understand and embrace the possibilities of the new tool and rethink their usual ways of triaging work via a ticketing system. Additionally, during this time the team held multiple Q&A sessions, holding office hours and creating a Slack channel to make it easier to share information and ask surface questions. This team juggled questions and quelled fears, helping us all prepare for the climb ahead. One individual noted that the team’s “support and encouragement provided over the months of transition turned my fears into courage and empowerment.”
Time and again the members of this team exhibited patience, treating each issue reported – no matter how small – with care and attention. Post-migration, they remain available to answer questions and investigate issues. Their work has continued, helping all who use this system to fine-tune our queues and workflows with the same attention to detail that they’ve shown throughout the entire project. The benefits of this project will be reaped for many years to come, and the thoughtfulness and intentionality with which the group undertook their work is greatly appreciated.
USER SERVICE AND SUPPORT:
In the Fall of 2022, students from the School of Architecture and Planning requested more access to study spaces in the Rotch Library, particularly while the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse, their forthcoming home, is under development.
How could the MIT Libraries accommodate our community with our current resources and staffing? How could we make our space accessible to those who need it? To answer these questions the Rotch 24/7 Pilot Group was formed.
Through important discussions regarding collections, service points, staff spaces, art, and safety, the project progressed successfully and the Pilot was launched in September 2023.
The team was faced with a mountain of challenges - from literal walls being built to updating signs to training staff on new procedures. The group collaborated with various stakeholders to map out an implementation plan for extended access. But the team rose to meet those challenges and successfully launched the pilot program, allowing the MIT Libraries to offer new 24/7 access to Rotch’s main floor study spaces.
After receiving largely very positive feedback from the community, the program will become permanent as of this summer. The Rotch 24/7 Pilot Group includes many members of our staff in all different directorates.
MIT Libraries' 2024 Infinite Mile Awards Recipients
