by The Evergreen Outreach Committee is pleased to announce that June’s Community Spotlight is Benjamin Murphy, who works for the State Library of North Carolina as the NC Cardinal Program Manager. Benjamin joined NC Cardinal in 2017, having previously worked as a Systems Integration Librarian at the State Library of North Carolina’s Government and Heritage Library. He participated in their migration to Evergreen and attended the 2016 Raleigh Evergreen Conference.
Benjamin has focused many of his efforts at NC Cardinal on growing the consortium. “We’ve seen continual growth in my time here,” he says. “We’re now at 50% of public libraries in North Carolina, and continuing to grow.” NC Cardinal has worked for several years on major consolidation projects, like cleaning up circ mods, locations, and permissions.
While Benjamin is at the beginning of his broader community involvement, he has jumped in with both feet. Attendees at the 2020 Online Conference might have participated in one of the sessions hosted by NC Cardinal. Benjamin and his colleague April Durrence hosted several conference sessions, including the keynote. He particularly wanted to thank April and his other colleagues Courtney Brown and Llewellyn Marshall for their support and hard work.
In his role as a consortial leader, Benjamin has connected with other consortial leaders in the Evergreen community to share ideas. “It’s always good to have mentors, and it’s also good to mentor people. It’s helpful to brainstorm with other consortial leaders, share experiences, lessons learned, and counsel each other in terms of how to approach things.” When Benjamin was new in his position, he reached out to other consortial leaders for guidance, and now is in a position where he offers his guidance to newer community consortial leaders.
Benjamin touts the in-person conference as a great place to connect with members of the community, and put faces with names and/or IRC handles. He notes that it’s easy to be hesitant as a new community member, and that getting to know people via the conference has opened up avenues for learning and discussion.
“Imposter syndrome is real, [but] don’t let the things that you don’t know prevent you from making use of the knowledge of other people,” Benjamin says. “A lot of people in tech and libraries are introverts – so that doesn’t come naturally. When you put them in that context of shared similarity, it provides a way to engage and make connections, relationships,and friendships.”
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Any questions can be directed to Andrea Buntz Neiman via abneiman@equinoxinitiative.org or abneiman in IRC.