Past Featured Library Employee Archives

Meet this issue’s Featured Library Employee for the Missouri Library Association, Marie Concannon!  

What is your name, your library, and your role at the library?

Marie Concannon
Head, Government Information & Data Archives
Missouri Regional Coordinator, Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP)
University of Missouri Library, Columbia

What originally got you interested in working at a library?

I can trace it back to the first time I ever visited a reference desk.

I was twelve years old, and I was crazy about the Beatles’ music. I discovered them in the mid-1970s after they had broken up, and I couldn’t seem to find out anything about them. My mother suggested that I check the library. I didn’t think the library would have anything, but reluctantly agreed to try.

I was intimidated by the reference desk. I felt out of place and half-expected to be shooed back down to the children’s room. I still remember how the librarian reacted to my question – she didn’t even have to take a moment to think about it. She just walked me over the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, which I found even more puzzling. How could she be so confident that there would be stuff about the Beatles in those big old green volumes? I had presumed she would simply give me information about the Beatles, but instead she taught me how to use the Reader’s Guide. What an incredible, multi-step process it was. The entries were so heavily abbreviated they seemed indecipherable, but the librarian showed me the decoder in the introduction. After unlocking that puzzle, I could write down the magazine issues I wanted on little slips, turn them in and wait as the librarians retrieved them from a mysterious locked room at the end of a dark aisle. My reward was tons and tons of Beatles info! Over the next few months, I requested every single magazine article about the Beatles listed in ten year’s worth of Reader’s Guides. It was great.

When I turned 15, I got a job at that library as a shelver. It was a great day when they showed me where they kept the key to the old periodicals room, and I was permitted to retrieve magazines for other people. It felt like a secret room full of treasures.

When it came time to choose a career, I tried a visualization exercise from Richard Bolles’ book What Color is your Parachute? I imagined having a whole day to do absolutely anything I wanted, and I realized that what I’d enjoy most was simply to be at the library. I couldn’t imagine ever being bored there, so I reasoned that if I got a degree in library science, I probably wouldn’t have to change careers. Turned out to be a good bet. Here I am 45 years later, still working in a library. And yes, I am still finding interesting things here all the time.

What keeps you coming back every day?

There are many satisfying things about my job, but the project I love most is my website, Prices and Wages by Decade. It has links to primary sources which must be freely available online, so my challenge is to find information in very old documents, catalogs, memoirs, etc. in digital libraries. I used government indexes and found a lot by using full text searches in HathiTrust and Google Books, but it was not enough. Finally I thought to myself, “If I were a librarian in the year ____, what reference sources would I use to find current prices and wages?” I tried to imagine the contents of reference shelves from past decades. It was through this method that I also developed an appreciation for subject bibliographies. They often provide fantastic leads that are easy to miss in the usual online book catalogs.

The effort paid off because the website now gets close to one million page views annually. It makes me happy to think that it’s reaching so many people.

What's challenging about your work?

It’s challenging to know how libraries should plan for the increasing use of artificial intelligence.  I wonder how it might change reference librarianship in particular, and what we should do as a profession to adjust.

Has your work made you either curious, or passionate, or awestruck about something?

I’m passionate about health care price transparency. In my job as FDLP coordinator, I’m responsible for helping people find government information of any kind. Health care prices used to be protected as trade secrets but now, federal regulations allow consumers to request price estimates before scheduling health care visits, and we have a right to ask for billing codes which used to be concealed. The regulations were put into place to help reduce the occurrence of medical debt, which is unfortunately the #1 cause for bankruptcy in this country.  The Federal Depository Library Program’s motto is “Keeping America Informed,” so there may be a role for librarians to help get the word out about consumer rights in health care.

What book, author, artist, show, or music are you engaging with this week, either personally or professionally? Persuade us in one or two sentences that we should pick this up, too.

I found Marshall Allen’s 2021 book Never Pay the First Bill incredibly useful. It is a consumer’s guide to understanding health care billing and insurance. The title may be surprising, but it simply means that the first medical bill doesn’t provide enough information. One must request an “itemized bill” to get the complete picture and ensure that charges are correct. Allen gives a run-down of recent government policy changes and his book is full of excellent tips for negotiating bills as well. Had I known about it before, I probably could have saved over $1,000 on just two urgent care visits. Now I know to price-shop before choosing a health care provider. I am confident that this book will pay for itself many times over.

Is there anything else you want us to know?

One of the best things about my job has been the opportunity to work closely with other FDLP libraries around the state. Shared collection development is a big part of the FDLP, and through it, I’ve been privileged to meet many wonderful colleagues. With a strong network like this, we can indeed “Keep America Informed.”