6. The other people who inspired me: subject librarians in Japanese studies

Subject librarians in North America

Even though I was encouraged by my friends that I could study abroad taking my children, if I couldn't imagine anything, I wouldn't have been there.

In those days, I was working as a sales and marketing for customers in North America and some part of Europe. One of my jobs was to sell a subscription of journal-article database to academic libraries such as Stanford, UC, University of Chicago, Columbia, Michigan, and many other libraries that support Japanese studies. I was closely working with the subject librarians of those universities.

What is a subject librarian?

Now, for those who are not familiar with "subject librarian", let me explain.

Subject librarians are the librarians who are responsible for specific research area or specific theme in library services. They are required to have an advanced degree of that specific field, at least master's degree, or preferably PhD.
However, recently, research subjects are getting more complex. You cannot support such a complicated and interdisciplinary area with your single expertise.  So, depending on the subject area the needs for subject librarian is getting less and less.

But still, regional studies librarians, such as Japanese studies librarians, Chinese studies librarians, or Asian studies librarians, are in demand. Because those research fields are quite specific, and researchers in those study area need support from librarians who are extraordinarily familiar with something like language, culture, history, politics, etc.

Japanese studies librarians

So, the Japanese studies librarians whom I was communicating with gave me a quite concrete vision that I could be working in an academic library in the US after getting the degree. In other words, I had no image other than that.

Actually, I had been on a business trip to the US twice. One was Chicago in 2000 for an exhibition named AAS (Association for Asian Studies). The second one was in the summmer of 2002 when I went to a training program as a trainer. That was my very first experience of presentation in English. 
I met many librarians there which impressed me a lot. Many of them were Japanese who went to the US after they are grown up. They got a degree, and had a position in academic libraries.

One day, I got a mail 

While I was checking out the library schools of the US, I got an email from one of my clients, a librarian from the University of Pittsburgh. Her email was saying "why don't you come to Pittsburgh? You could work here at the library while you are studying in the graduate program". That was the offer that I had never expected.