Being a Librarian

Being a Librarian in the 21st Century: An Interview with Dr Julia Schneider

by Eduarda Machado

October 2023 – IPM Monthly has invited Dr Julia Schneider to an interview. Dr. Schneider showed the most sympathy for collaborating with IPM. With a bright spirit and open smile, she talked about her work’s challenges and her contribution to research in medieval studies. She also talked about the challenges of the exponential evolution of technology and artificial intelligence for the profession, her career path, and even her musical tastes. She is the Scholarly Resources and Assessment Librarian for Arts, Humanities, and Architecture and Subject Librarian for Medieval Studies and subject liaison for German Language and Literature at the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame.; has a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies with a concentration in medieval liturgy, theology, and intellectual history with a focus on Albertus Magnus’ Commentary on the Mass.

About Julia Schneider

The Interview

Eduarda Machado: Thank you very much for accepting this invitation. It is my pleasure to interview you. You have a somewhat alternative and varied background in your education. How did you find this vocation?

Julia Schneider: I was very excited about the invitation. Thank you! When I was in undergraduate school, I was an English major and took Latin as my foreign language. I had already had German in high school, but I wanted to learn Latin because I wanted to be able to read texts in Latin. So that helped. One of the classes that I took was an intermediate class, like the second level, and we used a book that just contained medieval Latin texts, primarily little, short ones – medieval versions of Aesop’s Fables and different little snippets from saints’ lives and that kind of thing. It was very interesting to me. And then, I took another course that was an interdisciplinary course on the Middle Ages in Italy. And I fell in love with that. I remember talking to the professor – one of the first things that we read was Confessions, by Saint Augustine, but not the whole book; we read a short selection. I read the rest of it for a paper that I was working on – and said to the professor, “Now I’ve read the Confessions, I’ve always wanted to, now I’ve done it, I feel really good about it. And he said, “You haven’t read the Confessions. And I said, “What do you mean?” He replied, “You have read a translation. You have not read the Confessions until you have read it in Latin!”

That made me think about what the difference is between a translated text and a text in the original. And later in my education, I got to a similar point when thinking about manuscripts – the unmediated texts vs. transcribed or translated versions, and questions about the effect of transcription, editing, and translation on the meaning of texts really interested me. I was thinking at that time, “Should I go on to become a librarian, or should I do something else?” I was also interested in Theology. I had questions as somebody who believes in Christianity, I had questions about the teaching of the church and its development. So, I wanted to get answers. That’s why I got a historical theology degree from St. Louis University. I wanted to apply here to come to the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame right out of my undergraduate program, but I didn’t think I’d get in – I didn’t have the language background.

When I was in St. Louis, my advisor left to join the Dominicans, and he had gone to Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute and suggested I apply here. That’s when I applied to come here. I did not plan to get a Ph.D. when I first started graduate school. I thought I might go to library school eventually, but that was not anything I considered deeply. And as I went through my Ph.D. program, I still thought about library school a little bit, almost from a practical perspective, because there really aren’t many positions in medieval theology in North America. I mean, there aren’t any anywhere. Now we are in a place where this is very different from 2011 when I graduated. I was preparing to graduate for a few years, waiting to see what the market would be like while teaching as an adjunct in the theology department.

There were a few positions back then only for Thomists, though, and no positions for anyone else, and now there are very few if any jobs. The library part at the time was both something I had been interested in and a pragmatic kind of thing to think about. I got a job here in the Medieval Institute Library, a staff position, as the reading room supervisor. So, I was able to do much, helping students find books and answer reference questions and that kind of thing. And that made me realize that I really felt like this would be a good fit for me. Then, when the Medieval Studies librarian retired, I applied for her job and I went to library school then while working full-time, which I don’t recommend to anyone. It was interesting, and it taught me the background concerning the organizational systems used by libraries, how to help people, how – I’ll throw out an actual library science term – how information-seeking behaviour has changed in the last, 500 years, 200 years, a hundred years, 50 years, 20 years. And it’s no surprise to anyone that the internet has changed everything about everything we do. That’s sort of the background.

EM: Do you think the impact of the internet and AI on library management is just beginning and will evolve exponentially, or is the significant impact made, and from now on, they will be mere replicas?

JS: I think we’re just at the very beginning. I spend a lot of time thinking about these questions, comparing, in my mind, the beginning of print culture and the internet. In the beginning of print culture, in the first 20 years of publishing, there were a few thousand painted books in circulation in Europe and then 35,000 books by the end of the 15th century; by the end of first quarter of the 16th century, a hundred thousand books were in circulation. By the beginning of the 17th century, a million books were in circulation (I read this somewhere recently). It just grew exponentially. And I feel like that’s what’s happening now, and we are starting to consider both the good and the bad aspects of artificial intelligence, which has been there all along with the internet, but of course, we haven’t thought of it that way. I think that will have a considerable impact, and we don’t know how. And things like open-access publishing change everything as well. So, there are many exciting and scary things about AI – sometimes simultaneously – and revolutionary. I mean, you could think about the changes, for example, in literacy over time. So, I feel like, in some ways, we’re going both backward and forward at the same time. And I wonder how they would speak about this same topic if I spoke to someone at the end of the 15th century. Because it seems like there’s a similarity there: where more people are learning to read, more people are becoming literate, which is a good thing; but they also don’t necessarily understand what good and correct information is and what it isn’t without a deeper educational background. Mere literacy is not enough. And the same is true for AI – we need to manage it and the people using it need to be aware (and perhaps mitigate) the potential that individual AI programs could eventually write humans fully out of the equation.

Back to the question of good and not-good information. So why would you not instead read something that presents a more, I don’t want to say interesting, version of events than something that is just easier to read, maybe? Something that presents a more exciting version of history than reading the real hard thing that is backed up by facts and solid research? It is the same kind of problem, I think – you can read anything on the Internet, written without any factual basis on just about any topic, without any kind of mechanism for correction, like peer review or even public debate. And it’s only going to get worse. You think about things like deep fakes and that type of thing, as well. And this influence wrought by technology can be a real threat to democracy, and a threat to cultural heritage. Part of librarianship is trying to get people to move toward better, reliable sources of information and works where they can–though they may not always agree with the conclusions or evidence–actually see where the author is coming from, see their argumentation, and evaluate the sources and materials on which their work is based. I think those are good things, and that is what is exciting and terrifying about being a librarian because you have to help people figure out answers to those questions about information resources. And help them learn that the most exciting-sounding or easiest-to-read versions of historical events or evidence are not necessarily the most accurate versions.

EM: Have you considered what your work will be like in the future, given these technological developments, especially AI? How will you interact with these technologies, and how will they transform how libraries work?

JS: I mean, I have no idea, but it’s something worth thinking about. In the library science field, there is much discussion about AI and thinking about what it means. And it obviously comes up as a general issue, like it also does for, say, newspapers. If you go online, you will see people talking about AI and its uses in journalistic resources in general. Researchers in library science and librarians are trying to figure out how to manage the tools that are already there while thinking about what’s coming next. Things like ChatGPT and those kinds of tools can be useful tools for some people. But because, in one person’s hands, they are tools, and in another person’s hands, they become something not so good. Some students are already using such tools to cheat and plagiarize. And of course it’s not just students who are using these resources to cheat or plagiarize. This is happening all over. So, what do we do about that? How do we proceed? How do we assess the information that’s coming to us? Those are all questions that librarians have to think about. So, we will always be able to adapt; this is something we have been doing for a long time, for hundreds of years. It’s just a matter applying the skill of adaptation to a different kind of context, and learning how to manage technology as part of that process.

EM: Your work is fascinating and challenging. What other challenges do you find in your job?

JS: One of the best things about my job–the best thing about my job–is that I get to work with students, students at all levels. For example, last week, I had a student who was interested in researching in archives. They’re an undergrad, a freshman, and they’re interested in studying a topic that has already been very well studied. They want to go to an archive in Europe to study the documents. So, on the one hand, I had to give them a little bad news: that no, they likely cannot go into the archives as an undergraduate – and that, quite frankly, that they have chosen a well-studied topic with a lot of literature, which is only a problem because they have been asked to do original research, rather than synthesizing the literature. This meant that I also had the task of helping him to find adjacent areas of research that suited his linguistic and educational level to get him interested in the potential areas he could study with his skills and background, or other, related subtopics. So that’s one of the things I can help students with. It’s like research therapy.

For a graduate student, say, who is working on a paper or trying to think about their thesis and needs someone to help them with research planning, I may not know every single area of study as in depth. Still, I can help them figure out a research plan – in conjunction, of course, with their advisors and committee people. This can happen before they get to the place where they are actually writing a paper or proposing one, or maybe they have proposed their thesis, but perhaps they are not sure should they look at this kind of source. Would this be helpful? Those are questions that I get a lot, so I help in research planning, which is the most fun for me. I love that. Because I get to know areas of study that I wouldn’t necessarily know so well and we can talk about the types of sources they’re using. Are they using documentary sources? Are they using narrative sources? I can show them good series or sources that they may not have considered, for example, like if a student is looking at the history of the cult of Thomas Becket, I can say “there are some really great narrative sources for that. But you’ll also want to look at material culture objects, like portable altars, images, etc.”

EM: I think most people are mistaken and don’t understand the nature of a librarian’s work and what is required of them at various levels, both in terms of the range and depth of theoretical knowledge and the immense skills involved in the job.

JS: Right, right. Exactly. They think that I mostly order books and tell them to be quiet in the reading room, and I do a lot of that – collection and space management. But I also do this kind of research planning. If an instructor is looking for guidance about, for example, how to present material to undergraduate students, I can also help. That happens sometimes. Usually, professors have an idea of what they want to do, but sometimes when they are new to this university, they might have questions, and I facilitate those answers and put them in contact with the right kind of partners in the library to work those things out. I also teach classes (usually in one meeting) ways to use our resources to conduct their research, or I offer sessions on our Rare Books and Special Collections Materials. These are all parts of my job, but my favorite parts are when I get to interact with the students in their work. And the grad students are especially great here. They have a really great community. The Medieval Institute has a wide variety of areas of study that the students work in, which also helps me in ordering books or looking for resources because the students’ interests serve kind of like octopus tentacles out into the disciplines.

When I start seeing requests for books or a student says, “Hey, I’m working on this topic,” or I see a course that is offered in this area, then I know that we need to, maybe, start building our collection in this area. An example of that is some aspects of Byzantine and Mediterranean culture. When Professor Thomas E. Burman came here as the Director of the Medieval Institute, we had already had several people who work in this area and have worked in this area. Our previous director, Olivia Remie Constable, passed away in 2014. She was someone who studied Mediterranean Spain and North African culture. One of the things that Professor Burman did was he really highlighted this geographical focus and started bringing in more students to work in those areas. Around the same time, we hired a couple of Byzantinists. It is in this way, we get to see new things and new areas, and we want to elevate those new areas of research in our collections; we were already collecting materials, books, eBooks, even manuscripts, in those areas. We put a little bit more force and funding behind that once we have a program change or new area of research emphasis.

EM: You already introduced some interdisciplinary elements. How did intellectual history, theology, and liturgy intersect and cross paths along the way?

JS: That’s a really good question. One of the reasons that I was attracted to this particular place is interdisciplinarity. Based on how students speak about their work, I can tell you if they are straight in a discipline versus the interdisciplinary ones. I’m not saying that one is better than the other, just that the kinds of source material that they are interested in differ. I’m interested in many kinds of things because I don’t believe that, for example, Thomas Aquinas went around with blinders on in his work. I think he lived in the world and interacted with various people and situations. We know from the curricula from the 12th and 13th centuries that survived that back then, the students had to do their arts education before going into a theology concentration. And so I wanted to build a real understanding of medieval culture, which is a very welcome thing for medieval studies. It’s not always welcome in every discipline, but it is helpful for those interested in interdisciplinary work. So, my interests in literature, art, and music were there first, and adding to that, my interest in theology and philosophy, of course, later, really helped me get set up to want to come here to study. And when I came here, again, I was coming in to work in historical theology, but I wanted to be as informed as possible.

Most of the courses I took here had a heavy Latin-learning component because I didn’t have the opportunity to take Latin in public school. In the United States, Latin is experiencing a revival now, but when I was going through school, that wasn’t an option. So, I had already taken German, which was fine, but I really needed to improve my Latin here. I already had a basis in theology when I came here because I had a Master’s degree. I took Latin courses specifically, but also had Latin as part of subject-matter courses: the Latin liturgy courses, Ecclesiology, Sacramental Theology, Classical Latin, Medieval Latin, Anglo Lattin, and others of those kinds of courses. I felt like they were good, not only because they improved my Latinity, but because I was reading some of the texts that the people whose work I was most interested in had also read (in some version). And of course, Latin is important for manuscript studies. This is the more significant piece here because I could have gone into a Theology Department and learned a lot, but I never would’ve encountered this Mass commentary text of Albert’s that way. And I also would not have had the built-in requirement to take all the manuscript studies courses that I could take. Which means I would not be equipped now to work with medieval manuscripts. You can’t really understand the Middle Ages until you’ve worked with manuscripts, in my opinion. You can study and learn a lot about the Middle Ages, but manuscript culture is the basis for understanding the culture of learning, at least. That’s how I ended up in the area that I wanted to work on.

I also saw that there were many dissertations on Aquinas. Just so many. And I didn’t feel I would contribute anything to the field if I wrote on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. Who knows if anybody will ever read my dissertation, honestly. I felt like the world did not need me to write (another) dissertation on Aquinas on the Trinity. I thought, “Well, I’d rather work on something that no one has worked on (in English) before.” And that’s…that’s a lot. It’s easier than you think because no one has done it before so there isn’t a lot of previous scholarship to navigate, but then you also don’t have the scaffolding of the literature. There was very little literature published on the text that I wrote on, which is the 13th-century liturgical commentary attributed to Albert the Great, and most of it was on the question of its authenticity, not an assessment of its actual content. From my experience, it seems to be based on lectures that he gave in the various schools in Germany during the time he was living and teaching there. After he founded the school that much later became the University of Cologne, he went to various studia to teach – Freiburg im Breisgau, Strassbourg, and other places as well. And some of the lectures he gave cover the theology behind the Mass. And that’s interesting to me. As a grad student, I took a liturgical Latin course, and we read mass commentaries, and I thought that I had never seen anything like them. Where did they come from? And the professor I worked with, Daniel Sheerin, was happy to guide me through that type of text. I could identify and push toward that interest very early in my coursework here. And then he said, “Look, here’s this Scholastic commentary. It’s the intersection of Scholasticism and the liturgy,” which I love because scholastic literary production—their style of writing—is indicative of the rise of higher education-that was a very exciting time in the 12th and 13th centuries. So I was able to identify with the tradition.

Now I’m not revising my dissertation for publication exactly as it was written. Still, I’m actually taking parts from it and creating another work on mendicant commentaries, primarily on the 13th-century mass commentaries, as an offshoot of Pope Innocent III’s work using his text as a basis for studying the other commentaries. The imperative in the documents of Lateran IV (Fourth Lateran Council) indicate a greater push for people (the laity) to participate more in the church’s sacramental life and know what is happening. Innocent III’s successor, Honorius III, put a lot of emphasis on clerical education as a means to better preaching and teaching of the faithful. So, the commentaries were written by primarily Dominicans, but also the Franciscans, at the university level, preparing the students to go back to the schools and teach all of the brethren who would go out and preach in the parishes. That is my working theory anyway. You can see kind of how it all comes together. There are many different types of sources involved, so that is a very long and windy answer to that question.

EM: Do you collect special rare books or manuscripts? I know it is a cliché question, but I am curious.

JS: I do have my own books. One of the things that I love about being here at Notre Dame is that almost everything I would need for my research is out there (in the Medieval Institute Library). Everybody acquires books in graduate school because you never know where you will end up when you graduate and move on to another place, or what you will be able to access easily. I had, like, 20 boxes of books, many of which I’ve given away because I no longer need them. I have everything I need right here, so I’m very fortunate.

I’m not a manuscript collector, but I have a little leaf from a medieval breviary that someone gave me with one of the antiphons for the Feast of St. Agnes – because she is my patroness. My favorite books that I own are works from the early 20th century. These are the works of Martin Grabmann on Theology and Scholasticism – they are really my favorite books.

If we were to talk about my favorite books and manuscripts that I don’t own, there’s the one – and I can’t think of the shelfmark number from Munich – with the Albert text in it. I love that one. At some point – I do a little needlework – I will embroider one of the initials from that. An image of that intial is on my “do not disturb” sign for my door, if you’d like to see it. If we are talking about more famous books, I would say the Sacramentary of Henry II – Heinrich II. It was made at Sankt Emmeram in Regensburg in Bavaria and donated by Henry to the Cathedral of Bamberg when he opened that diocese. It’s a late 10th-early 11th-century manuscript. So beautiful – it has the most lavish decoration and a gold book cover with an ivory carving of the Last Supper. But it’s also really important to me, because that is the diocese that my family is from. So, you know, I have a personal connection there as well.

EM: Do you have other interests not directly related to your work?

JS: Yes, swimming, I like to swim. I love music and singing. I’m not in a choir right now, but I’ve been in choirs and sung on and off throughout my adult life.

EM: What do you like to sing the most?

JS: Plainchant is my favorite. I love Mozart, but I’m not a soprano, so he doesn’t write for me. Nobody loves the altos; they are the workhorses of the choir. I appreciate the soprano; everybody loves the songbird. So, Mozart and Beethoven are probably my classical favorites. Chopin (although not for singing) because my mother often played Chopin. I’m interested in the romantics. I feel like the romantics are, in some ways, tonally heirs to the Middle Ages because of the way that this kind of tone painting that is done in romantic music, especially piano music – the way that it’s written so that you can hear (kind of) the echoes – including those echoes is similarly part of the writing of the medieval music – in the same way that the sound reverberates in plainchant through architecture. I did not hear much plainchant growing up in the United States. But when I went to Mont-Saint-Michel as part of a group, we prayed the Office with a Benedictine oblate, and (I think) two monks, so there were three of them singing. And it sounded like a full choir because of the Gothic architecture. I was amazed. My home parish church has a flat roof and is kind of half round, so the acoustics are not good – it takes electricity and modern sound devices to make it resonant. That was my first introduction to what it could really sound like in person and how you can feel that sound in your body.