Faces of Colby: Karen Gillum
Research Librarian and Lover of Classics
by Alessandra Amano
Whether a student needs help finding a specific article or navigating Colby’s vast databases, the College’s research librarians are able to help. Karen Gillum, a humanities librarian, is passionate about the future of library systems and helping students find the most useful resources and information for any topic of their choosing. Along with working as a research librarian, Gillum is teaching both introductory Latin (LT111) and intermediate Latin (LT112) this year. During JanPlan, Gillum taught introductory Ancient Greek, usually a semester long course, condensed into one month. Gillum has a wide range of interests and is enthusiastic about all things related to Classics and pertaining to library research.
Born and raised in Maine, Gillum’s father worked at Colby teaching European history which led her to later attend the College, majoring in Classics.
Upon graduation, Gillum went on to study at Oxford. After her time at Oxford, Gillum remained in Southern New England before moving to Oklahoma. Along the way, Gillum has worked in many different libraries and has maintained her interest in library science. After spending some time in the midwest Gillum returned to Maine, where she found an opening for a position in Colby’s library, and pursued a degree in library science from the University of South Carolina.
As Gillum has worked as a research librarian for many years in many unique places, she has become increasingly interested in the field and in how data is organized.
As time has gone on, data has become increasingly accessible. But as Gillum points out, the main issue with data on ancient texts is the way in which scholarship on those specific texts is organized. As it is now, when a classic text is studied, it takes time and multiple auxiliary searches to find all secondary texts and commentary related to it. This makes conducting precise, and concise, research difficult. Gillum hopes that one day when a specific text is searched, all commentary and scholarship related to it will instantly come up.
As for Gillum’s Ancient Greek and Latin courses, she works hard to ensure her students are given the chance to grasp the challenging language. Although this is Gillum’s first year teaching Latin, she has worked to keep the class engaged through a range of activities. For her exercises, Gillum has looked to modern language classes to see how they’re traditionally taught, and has tweaked them slightly for Latin. Since Latin has little to no speaking, listening, or even direct translation from English to Latin, Gillum has had to be creative when it comes to structuring the class. Commenting on her viewpoint on being a first time Latin instructor, Gillum stated that it is “really interesting to see what comes easily to some people and what is more difficult”.
It is clear that Gillum has a passion for both Classics and her role as a research librarian. Many Latin students of hers have expressed that her love for the subject and teaching the course has made the class exciting and interesting. If you ever want to talk to Karen Gillum about Classics, or need help with research, avoiding plagiarism, finding primary sources etc., you can find her in Miller 107.
