Conclusion

While interviewing art house film programmers in Los Angeles for my sociology master's thesis on the transition to digital projection, I frequently heard about audiences who preferred the experience of celluloid. I initially attributed this to nostalgia, but researching projection technology revealed that film is often a more resilient preservation medium than digital formats, and that a theater's technical infrastructure dictates which works the public can see. For years afterward, I thought about pursuing a career in audiovisual preservation, but having already earned one master's degree, I was reluctant to return to school for a field with uncertain prospects. Only after I was laid off from my job in market research, and found myself applying to data analyst jobs I rarely felt passionate about, did I begin to seriously consider a change.

Beyond preservation work, much else about library science appealed to me. I care about free and open access to information and have long admired the ethos of librarianship, embodied in both public libraries and digital collections like the Internet Archive. I was also drawn to the intellectual side of the field: how information should be described and organized so that people can actually find it. I have always noticed when a system doesn’t make sense, whether it was the poorly designed database I used to find historical data at my market research job or a search interface with too many categories to filter effectively, and I find satisfaction in building structures that are logical and usable. My sociology training taught me how to frame complex research questions and find the right data to answer them, and market research taught me how important it is to organize that data well. Library science seemed like a place where those skills could come together.

When I began my coursework in 2024, I immediately felt at home, and my interests multiplied with each new class. Working in a film archive still appeals to me, but my certificate in Digital Assets Management introduced me to the software tools behind digital archiving, and I discovered how much I enjoy working with technology. Some of my favorite sessions at the Society of American Archivists conference focused on using software for metadata creation, a particular interest of mine. I also loved my Online Searching course, and during my two internships, one of the most rewarding parts of the work has been investigating historical subjects in archival materials. These experiences have steered me toward a career in digital curation or digital archiving, ideally at a cultural institution such as an art museum or a university archive, where diverse materials, from film and audiovisual media to documents and digital records, call for thoughtful metadata and sustainable digital infrastructure. In many ways, this path reconnects me to my initial insight: that the preservation and public accessibility of any work ultimately rely on the underlying formats and infrastructure supporting it. I want to help build those systems.