Member Spotlight: Graham Dethmers
GRAHAM DETHMERS
Ann Arbor, HathiTrust Digital Library
Metadata Analyst
Title: Associate Librarian
What is your area of specialty?
Non-Latin script language (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, etc...) metadata in library catalogs
What are you proud of as a librarian?
I think this is true of everyone who was at HathiTrust in 2020 - but I'm proud of my role in providing access to digital library materials for students and researchers during the quarantine and lockdown periods of the pandemic. We still hear about how valuable that was to people.
What might others not know about you?
I really love silent era comedies starring Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd. I watch them every so often, and they're my comfort movies to watch when I'm sick.
What is something that you are proud of outside your role as a librarian?
One thing I'm proud of that does play some role in my work, but definitely plays a much bigger role outside of work, is my longstanding interest in Japanese language and culture (particularly literature). What makes me proud, or at least one element that does, is that it is something I've kept up with since I was a teenager (over 20 years ago now!). I can read most books published in Japanese, even some classical texts in their original language, like The Tale of Genji (源氏物語) or The Tale of the Hollow Tree (うつほ物語), and as reading is one of my main hobbies, this has really opened up the library of available literature for me. Since this hobby has never been a main facet of any job I've held, keeping the skills up has had to be very intentional. Relatedly, during the part of the COVID-19 pandemic when we were all strictly working from home, I also began to learn Korean, though I'm much more of a beginner in that. But some of my current favorite writers are Korean and write in Korean, and one of my favorite TV shows is Korean (Running Man), so I'm likely to keep practicing. My friends know that I can (and will!) talk about the two languages, their literature, and their publishing industries without too much provocation.
Something else I'm proud of is that I started learning to play the piano as an adult, really only five or six years ago. I never played an instrument when I was younger, but I've always wanted to. I love solo piano music, so it seemed like a good fit. I'm probably at an intermediate level now, and like with my language skills, I'm happy as long as I keep growing - or at least not backsliding. Things that aren't tied to actively making money are easy to let stagnate (though maybe that's just me), so being able to keep up with these non-career oriented skills makes me proud. I mean, I started piano in my late 30s, but one of my aunts who is in her 70's just started learning the cello, so there's no limit to when you can start learning something new for your own enjoyment, which is inspiring to me.