I’m Matthew Coan and I’ve been a librarian here at Madison College since the fall of 2007. This is a great place to work and I love working with my fellow librarians and the students who come to see us.
The favorite part of my job is discussing research topics with students. Sometimes I have to be careful when I ask questions, because students might think I’m being too critical of their topics. What I’m really trying to do is to help students focus and I’m trying to ask some of those preliminary research questions for them.
Before becoming a librarian I worked as a high school social studies teacher. Turns out that student research time was my favorite part of teaching, too, so that naturally led to becoming a librarian. I also love libraries, even more than I do reading. A lot of librarians are drawn to the work by way of reading. For me, since I was small and would go to the library with my dad, I have loved the possibilities that libraries offer. In the 70s and 80s, the library was our internet.