Jr. Faculty
Matthew Harrick
Matthew Harrick, Librarian
Thinking about his answer when asked what he does when he is not working as a librarian at Brooklyn College, Assistant Professor Matthew Harrick is at first stumped. "That's always a tough question for me," he begins slowly. "I don't really have any hobbies. Although my partner likes to pin beetles," he says, grinning. "Josh thought he needed a hobby while working toward his Ph.D., so he became something of an amateur entomolygist. Now, when Josh is away, I get to feed his bugs and take care of Jack." Jack is an impossibly cute terrier mix that came into Harrick's life pretty recently and has established himself in Matthew and Josh's home as a delightful distraction.
Distraction is a topic worthy of a deep dive when getting to know Brooklyn College librarian Matthew Harrick. Unlike most of his colleagues (as well as most students and staff at Brooklyn College, and perhaps anywhere you look nowadays), Harrick has successfully distanced himself from many of the well-known distractions of modern life, mainly, online social networks, streaming media, and the most popular vehicle that delivers these to us daily, the smart phone. He does carry a flip phone (a relatively new device that he reluctantly decided to purchase two years after the zero key on his first flip phone gave out), but he believes strongly in the importance of giving both the body and brain a break from technology. And yet, because Harrick works in a very technology-driven profession, he uses technology daily and is adept as any of his library colleagues in advising students at the reference desk who come with questions about accessing information on their smart phones.
Harrick has been a librarian at Brooklyn College since 2009 when he worked as an adjunct after finishing his library degree at Queens College (CUNY). He became a substitute assistant professor in the library three years later and started on tenure track a year after that. Harrick was hired as the Brooklyn College outreach librarian and is proud of the connections he has made to heighten awareness and the effective use of the library. He has built alliances with the Brooklyn College LGBTQ community, has served on a number of Faculty Council committees, and currently chairs the Committee on Honors, Citations and Awards. He has also brought a Learning Center tutor into the library on a scheduled basis, has developed a robust library instruction program with the early college high school (ECHS) initiatives on campus, has built an undergraduate science librarian internship program, and is currently focused on library services for transfer students.
In service to the LGBTQ community, Harrick successfully argued for a collection budget to purchase LGBTQ resources and was instrumental in the library’s decision to subscribe to the EBSCO database LGBT Life with Full Text. In addition to his focus on LGBTQ populations, he lends his librarian skills to classes in the School of Education and the Children and Youth Studies Program. His work with the ECHS initiatives covers three programs: College Now, Brooklyn College Academy, and STAR (Science, Technology and Research) at Erasmus High School). Library programming for STAR has evolved under Harrick into a rich program that culminates in the spring semester of the freshman year into a six-week project involving science-focused research at the library.
Harrick usually asks the STAR students what they think it takes to become a librarian. He intends the question to be an entry into a discussion about education as a foundation for a career. Nevertheless, his students more often than not immediately take the question in another direction. Someone in the class will always answer that it takes patience to be a librarian.
Harrick, as it turns out, is the soul of patience (keep in mind he is one of the few people left who is happy to wait a few days for his Netflix to be delivered on DVD), but he also has the credentials needed for his profession. Before he earned his master's of library science degree, he earned a master's degree in medieval English literature at New York University, and it was the attachments he made to New York City at the time that called him back to the city from a job he took in Binghamton. In Central New York, he had the "hardest job in my life that I loved." Harrick worked with learning disabled and autistic children in a program run by the SUNY Binghamton Department of Psychology, but once he knew he wanted to move back to New York City, he cast around for jobs that might be a good fit. He began to notice a number of jobs in libraries, but he realized that he did not have the one critical credential, a library degree. Harrick remedied the situation and moved into his current career. "It's not a romantic story, my coming to be a librarian," he says. "It wasn't like I lived in a library as a kid, and spent all my time reading. I did like reading, but I did other things." Regardless, Harrick is more than happy with his choice to become a librarian.
As he looks to the future, Matthew Harrick anticipates being more of a presence on campus. In his early days as the outreach librarian, he spent a lot of time visiting around campus, cultivating relationships and meeting other faculty, students, and staff. Now that he has built these relationships, he finds that people come to seek him out. Harrick hopes now to engage with more individuals on campus, become involved in more committees, and get to know Brooklyn College students better. "As a librarian, we don't spend as much time with students as do the classroom faculty," he says. In praise of our students, he says, "I am never not challenged by Brooklyn College students. They want to be here. And now that they are here, they want to stay here." It seems the same is true for Harrick. He works hard for Brooklyn College, and the school has worked well for him, too.
Back to Critical Thinking — April 2018
