2009 Eureka! Leadership Institute: Brian Guenther

As an Adult Services Librarian at the Fresno County Public Library's Central Library, my time at work is mostly spent doing collection development for music CDs, graphic novels, and several areas of non-fiction, but I can also be found working the reference desk.

I have been working at FCPL for a little over a year and a half. This is my first professional librarian job, but I have worked in several other libraries as an assistant or paraprofessional, mostly in my home state of Michigan. These include Michigan State University's Fine Arts Library, The Detroit Public Library, and Wayne State University's Undergraduate Library. I am a member of ALA and several of its sub-groups and roundtables. While working on my MLIS at Wayne State, I served a semester as President of the program's Student Organizations of Library and Information Science (SOLIS), an umbrella organization of the library and information science program's several other student organizations.

I applied to the Eureka! Leadership Institute because I want to gain the skills that will help me move my library forward to help our community to the best of its ability. We need leaders to help guide us through the myriad of changes and challenges we face everyday in our profession. Also, I sometimes feel that people see certain qualities in me that I don't always see in myself; I hope that the Eureka! Institute will help me realize my full potential.

I try to keep busy with several hobbies. Since last February, I've been spending a good portion of my free time teaching myself how to play the ukulele (no joke). I also play a mid-sized brass instrument called a euphonium. My undergraduate degree is in Fine Arts and I still manage to paint every once and awhile. And on top of all that I'm currently in training for my second half-marathon in November.