An Interview with Marianne Siener, Library Accountant, Lamar Soutter Library

By Marci Cohen (Head, Music Library, Boston University, Retired)

Marianne Siener is the Staff Accountant at Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Chan Medical School, where she has built her career since 1989. In 2017, we met as part of the inaugural cohort of BLC (Boston Library Consortium) Leads, a leadership development workshop in which she was the only participant in a non-MLS role. In our interview, she discusses how her skills complement those of her librarian colleagues, especially regarding her love of digging into details and spreadsheets, and how she brings leadership skills to her position.

She is enthused about how meaningful her work at UMass Chan is. For example, she takes pride in playing a small role in supporting medical research. “I remembered when I was at the circ desk at night and I gave Craig Mello [future Nobel prize winner] his login and password when he was newly here.” Once she helped a family with limited English skills find their way to their appointment. “And the medical students are just awesome. And I’m doing my little part for helping medical education, for helping scientific research, and for helping the clinical side. It’s an awesome place to work.”

How did you come to a career in libraries?

I was a history major and was deciding on going to library school. My mom worked at UMass and saw a job on the board. I applied for a library assistant job while I was temporarily working at a bank. I started working there and I started [library school] at Simmons. But, then due to this and that reason, I gave it up and I didn’t do it. I was in the job already. I was working as the library assistant for the night shift when we were open until midnight and then later til 1am. For ten years, I worked at the circ desk, and I ended up working with the login/password system. I also updated our LAN – Medline things; we used CD-[ROM]s at that time.

Then I got a day job in the tech services, checking in the print journals, which I could have done til I retired at 75. That was fun. I really liked it. And I worked with standing orders and reference print books. I did some very basic cataloging that the cataloger taught me to get the standing orders in because I’d see her backlog. So she taught me some basic cataloging to help get things in. I had a part-time job at Holy Cross Science Library, where I did interlibrary loan and bindery. So I had my hands in all these different areas.

I saw the writing on the wall that things were starting to really convert from print to electronic. I thought, well, this job’s going to go away. My sister, an accountant, said I should go back to school for accounting. I was working in tech services full-time, going to school part-time, and their half-time financial assistant left. I did half-time financial, half-time tech service. And at the time, we were going through another budget cut, so I was also filling in at the desk. I ended up moving into full-time staff accountant work. But basically, I was still involved in the acquisitions, which is the biggest part of our budget. For example, I was still looking at a titles package from this vendor and seeing whether there was any redundancy and is this package better to have than the single titles. Do the issues come sooner than getting it through a direct subscription through the vendor? But I still turn to librarians. I still rely on their help for sure.

So that’s how I got there. My mom saw an opening in the library and I was thinking of getting an MLS. So that’s how I ended up there.

How does your skillset complement the skillsets of the MLS employees in library operations?

I would first and foremost say the attention to detail and a systems view of things and being inquisitive, wanting to be accurate, those types of skills and proclivities. You want to dig deeper, you want to make sure what you’re looking into is reputable to begin with. I’m usually working with Excel. I’m a cell checker. One time I was working with someone who was in a panic because she thought she had gone over budget. I said, wait, before you panic, let’s go through the cells. Because more than likely, there’s just a little error somewhere. And sure enough, there was just a little error in one of the cells that needed to be tweaked, and boom! She actually had some available funds still rather than a deficit. My thinking is the 80/20 rule: usually the mistake is on the outside 80% of the time. Searching for information, trying to be accurate, serving people, helping them to get to really good information, that’s all very similar.

But at the same time, I am complementing them sometimes because I also have an outside view. One time, I was in a meeting and they were trying to figure out how to get something implemented where they needed another department’s help, and it wasn’t happening, and it was kind of just constantly delayed and delayed. I suggested, “Well, why don’t we ask to pay them? They can charge us back.” Because sometimes different departments do that. We did it even if we were doing systematic reviews, if it was a bigger job than usual, you might need to contribute a bit for the time and money. And so when they brought that up, the department they needed to help was able to make time for this. They didn’t even have to charge us for it, but it just helped because my thinking was in the different types of funds and how they’re used. Because I was the only non-librarian in the meeting, I was able to bring that complement in a way.

In terms of finding and creating professional development opportunities, are you a round peg in a square hole for library focused training and conferences?

Something like the BLC Leads comes up because leadership can be horizontal. I can help to lead that way to get to a solution. And then the Charleston Conference, because of what I deal with, the acquisitions and the resources, I want to go to that at some point. That’s perfect because I deal with the vendors. It’s completely within my type of work. And I’ll do webinars too, especially free webinars, so I can become more familiar with a resource. It just helps in doing your job. I’m not sitting there with a patron going through a systematic review with them. I don’t have the skillset for it. I don’t have any knowledge for it. But learning what it is helps if you’re then on a team looking for different options of resources or software.

What are perceptions and misperceptions of you as a professional with different credentials rather than lesser credentials?

From the outside, when you work at a library, you don’t sit there and read books. That’s not what we do. And it’s not quiet. It’s busy as heck, and you never have enough time to get everything you want to get done, everything you need to get done, let alone everything you’d like to get done. So the outside world still has that view with a bun and sitting there reading a book with their glasses. That impression is so wrong. And especially nowadays with all the problems with misinformation, it’s very important.

And then from the inside, because I put librarians on a pedestal, I see what goes into that. And sometimes my colleagues will say, “Oh, what would we do without you?” I think a lot of that might be the fear of math. I remember seeing something somewhere that if someone claims they are afraid of math, nine out of ten times others will say “Oh, me too!” That would not be the same if somebody said, “Oh, no, I can’t read.” It’s so funny because we had earlier talked about the similarities with accuracy, attention to detail, and searching and delving deeper. I’ve always been very dedicated. But I always have to remind them, “I come to you for help. For all that information expertise.” And there’s just so much to know, let alone doing systematic reviews, working in the systems that we have now, all the different software and software as service. It’s really complicated. I don’t think my brain could handle doing both.

What are some interesting things you do as part of your job that aren’t typically thought of as the work of librarians?

I have all the financial and administrative type work that I do. Because we do grant work, we always have to keep our effort certification and space survey things very accurate and up to date. There are very specific systems I have to keep up with for personnel and our space, things like that. I work with consultants for this or that. And then the budget, it’s not just Excel sheets. You get in and you work in a budget system that has these complicated areas, and it’s tough, but it’s extremely useful.

And then there is also expense/revenue type work. When we have an ILL trust, you are working within that and the budget. So it’s the financial and administrative type of work mostly. But then I also work with the resources and with the vendors. For example, sometimes we need an ebook, but find it’s only available as part of a package. And the package sometimes is absolutely unattainable financially. So I’ve expressed to vendors when I can, instances where we’d like to get this book, it’s being requested, but we can’t afford the package that it only comes in, so we actually have to order one or two print editions. I would actually express that to vendors whenever I’d be in meetings, that they are sometimes making us go backwards in a way. Hopefully they hear you, because isn’t it better that you sell this one eResource instead of this much smaller revenue from a print version? I would have to defer to the librarians for 80% of any kind of library type thing, for expertise, 85%, 90%, but I can at least help in my own way.

Author’s Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.