Getting to Know Keiko Okuhara

 

1. Introduce yourself (name & position). 

Mahalo Lauren for keeping "getting to know librarians" going and giving me the opportunity to introduce myself to my dear colleagues. I am Keiko Okuhara and a mediocre librarian (ha ha!).  I am the Bibliographic Services/Systems Librarian (July 2003-May 2020) and the Metadata Services Librarian (June 2020-Present) at the William S. Richardson School of Law Library of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

Yes, it does. I have been working in Hawaii for 18 years by now, and there were many personnel turn arounds during my tenure in my department, including the change of library leadership with new visions.  As the library evolved, I have become more engaged in metadata management work, and the library ventured into the archive collection development. This undertaking made me think of being a certified digital archives specialist (DAS). The training of the specialist expanded and reevaluated my perspectives of the metadata creation. There are various metadata of which cataloging is the highly well-established metadata creation process. While I don't have many archival projects to directly utilize my learning on archives, my role in archives has unfolded to work on oral histories. This work will be an exciting collaboration with my coworker who has experienced in curating archival materials. Also, I am working on the integration of systems, Alma and Omeka; and Omeka and Oral History Open Source system. I could easily slide into this kind of work, since I have some knowledge on the systems and metadata. I look forward to seeing how all these initiatives improve the discoverability of faculty scholarship and leverage our library systems and services.

3. What are you reading now?

I hope you won't expel me from the librarians’ community.... I have to admit and confess that I am not an avid reader, but of course, our most popular leading journal, ”Technical Services Law Librarian.”  I thank the past and current Editor-of -Chiefs, article/column contributors, and layout editors for sharing their great talents that I don't possess! In addition, I like to look through cook books (I have strong affinity to food), the Prescription for Nutritional Healing, and any books or articles on self-improvement, integrity, and the art of happiness in general to maintain body and mind in a good shape.

4. If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?

I would love to work in an art museum/library. What a great idea to be surrounded by imaginative and thought-providing art objects to stimulate our soul, but I also learned that those positions are hard to get and the work at the art museum is not that satisfactory to a certain extent. Also, I would love to be a children's librarian at a public library, which seems to be a popular vote in our community. It is kind of sad reality for me that I wasn't brought up in the USA during my childhood, which inhibits me from sharing my own enjoyment of English children’s literature with young and enthusiastic children.

5. [Imagine the world before the pandemic] You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on?

If I am lucky enough to have a free day at work, I would organize my office. Due to the pandemic I was happily pushed out from the cubicle work condition to an enclosed office. I have accumulated a lot of junk in the course of 18 years of my time at UHM. However I am mainly teleworking and able to work in my office. I need to organize/de-clutter my office to find what I need easily.