Greetings!

Hi, I’m Brian Whitmer and I look forward to starting this program as well as getting to share this experience with you. It’s been some time since I’ve been in an academic setting so I’m getting used to what’s the same and what’s new – and (hopefully) improved – since I last wore the moniker of “student”.

I’m a 1991 graduate of William Jewell College – majored in history, English literature, and philosophy. I spent a semester living in England and got to visit parts of Europe as well as a trip to China, Hong Kong, and Inner Mongolia.

After graduating, I worked in the marketing communications field acting as a copywriter, graphic designer, and marketing strategist. In 2003, I started a new career path as a digital colorist for newspaper comic strips. For 12+ years, I colorized daily and Sunday comics strips including Dilbert, Peanuts, Doonesbury, Red & Rover, and many others. I was the manager of an in-house and freelance staff of colorists. I also developed a fair amount of programming automation to simplify the production, archiving, and distribution of each week’s comics.

Oh…and I also started teaching myself to be a cartoon illustrator. So…if you happen to find yourself in the Liberty, Mo area in January, you can see my work displayed at the Morning Day Café on the Liberty square. (Shameless plug! J)

So why do I want to become a librarian?

My presence in this program actually begins with an absence.

Irony?–truth.

From about 2005 to 2013, I didn’t step inside a library. I did the majority of my reading via audiobooks (Audible junkie!) and purchases through Amazon and Half-Price books.

And when I went back, the place I remembered from my childhood was a place transformed.

Self-checkout kiosks, audible conversation, no Britannica, loads of comfy chairs (by a fireplace!), a mobile app, comic books & graphic novels, and a coffeehouse!!! What the?!?!

Visiting my alma mater, the library had disappeared – replaced by a learning commons. The stacks were banished to the basement as if displaying all these dead trees was shameful. What the?!?!

To quote from Ferris Beueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.

After more than a decade of colorizing other people’s work, I was ready for a change. I began looking into a library career. I read the available career guides, re-listened to some lectures from 2004 from the LOC (Library of Congress –yeah, new abbreviation to me, too!) on the digital future of the library, and found myself in September of 2016 in Overland Park learning about Emporia State and library science.

Something clicked… (and, no, it wasn’t a mouse.)

Jump forward to 2017 and here I am typing this introduction to you… and a new career path.

Proceed as the way opens,

Brian

P.S. (Can you name the book title of the Missouri author I quote in my closing?)