The gratitude that users express when they find solutions and resources for the topics they are studying is the most gratifying thing. When they discover that the path of scientific research is strengthened by the management of quality scientific information and that we can give it to them. When they discover that searching on Google is not the path of scientific research and we can give them access to routes where they can find relevant and important information to develop their subjects and research, that is what is gratifying.
Paolo Cuya
During the month of May, we are traveling across the globe to spotlight a librarian from the Latin American region, specifically Peru. This month’s spotlight is with the Information Center Director for the Universidad Cesar Vallejo, Paolo Cuya. Universidad Cesar Vallejo is one of the largest private universities in all of Peru, containing 12 campuses in 6 different cities throughout Peru. We are grateful to Paolo and the time he took out to talk a bit about his role in such a large institution and his vast experience working with libraries over the past 24 years.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into the field of librarianship?
It is a story that started in 1998, it all started for me while searching for a profession that reconcile my love for reading and my obsession with organization. That’s how I arrived at a profession that has a very traditional heritage but also benefits from technical advances and improvements in marketing and service to offer communities services based on relevant information.
What are your day-to-day responsibilities as Information Center Direction?
Making decisions about the course of action for the information centers located at the 12 Universidad Cesar Vallejo campuses. Reconciling the needs of the users with the offerings we have, administering the use of the virtual library, improving the experience of the users regarding the use of information offered, promoting scientific research through subscribed and valid resources, managing the plagiarism platform in the university and managing the institutional repository.
What were some of the major challenges you faced at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic?
The main challenge was to completely change our care matrix to the virtual environment, and although we already had many resources in this modality, making available all of our services to be provided virtually was a challenge. First in generating the tools for the staff of the information center and training them in the proper form of attention and use of the new channels; then in training users, which is an ongoing task that allows them to be involved in how to obtain information in this new normality.
How have you been able to overcome or adjust to the challenges faced?
With the effort and resilience of all the staff of the information center, we have managed to adapt, currently, with the use of new technologies such as MyLOFT we can manage, in a better way, the way in which we provide the information that our academic community requires. This is a great advance to help improve access to information, which is our goal. Managing the largest virtual library in Peru is not easy, and with your help, we make it possible.
What subject, topic, or issue has piqued your interest recently? What are you doing to further your learning as a librarian?
I am currently interested in digital transformation and data science, I am convinced that our future as necessary elements in the supply chain of information will depend on the way in which we can analyze our data to identify patterns that allow us to improve our work and provide services with greater efficiency.
What would you consider the most rewarding parts of your job?
The gratitude that users express when they find solutions and resources for the topics they are studying is the most gratifying thing. When they discover that the path of scientific research is strengthened by the management of quality scientific information and that we can give it to them. When they discover that searching on Google is not the path of scientific research and we can give them access to routes where they can find relevant and important information to develop their subjects and research, that is what is gratifying.
Can you share one aspect of librarianship that is particular to your country or geographic region?
In general, the processes are quite standard in Peru as in other countries, due to our characteristics, many of the efforts in Peru are oriented toward information literacy, the dissemination of reading, and in the case of academic libraries such as ours, direct the dissemination of scientific information for classes and for research.
Tell us about your favorite book.
I really like Dan Brown’s fiction series, I’ve followed him from Digital Fortress (1998) to Origin (2017), his most recent novel, and I am also a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle with the Sherlock Holmes series, both authors give an account of a parallel world that passes alongside our daily lives and gives us a lesson on how humanity can be so interesting only if we see it with another point of view, always looking for something that is there, but that not everyone sees.
If you could take a trip right now to visit any library in the world, which would it be and why?
Actually, I would like to take a tour, rather than a single visit, to start with the Al-Qarawiyyin library in Morocco, then go through the library of the monastery of Santa Catalina in Egypt, and finish in Turkey to appreciate what was the library of Pergamon and Constantinople and knowing how the children of Anatolia preserved the wisdom of the East and the West for so long, that is a journey that I would like to take to feel the origin of this call to the conservation and dissemination of knowledge that is the vocational call of librarians.
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