Role of personal interests, motivation, and timing in the transitioning to a new career

Abstract

This paper shows how someone with an educational and research background in chemistry and the life sciences (BS and MS in Chemistry, PhD in Microbiology) could maintain for many years parallel interests in citation indexing that led to a seamless transition to a new career in information science and librarianship. From working at the lab bench and publishing in scientific journals, to joining a scientific publisher (ACS) as a librarian, and finally, to going back to academic life (University of Maryland, College Park) to manage a chemistry library and teach chemical information were career turns that required strong motivation and depended to a large degree on timing.