Cindy Mediavilla was barely into her second quarter as a doctoral student at UCLA when Mary Niles Mack, a professor of Information Studies, invited her in for a talk. Impressed by a brief paper Cindy had done on the history of public librarianship, Mack suggested that her dissertation project might be a biography of Carma Leigh, state librarian from 1951 to 1972.

As it happened, Cindy already knew Leigh, not as a possible subject of doctoral study, but as the unassuming 90-year-old friend of Cindy's boss, Catherine Lucas, who often brought Leigh along to social events in San Diego, where Cindy had been a library administrator. "Actually, I had sat with Carma at baseball games," says Cindy. "I was intrigued by this notion that she had been rather hot stuff during her career."

After a cursory bit of research, Cindy was sold on the project. Leigh was "extremely influential in setting up today's library services," she found. In particular, the concept of public library systems, in which jurisdictions collaborate and cooperate to provide materials outside their region, "was her vision," Cindy says. "That was the main goal in her career. It took her 12 years to do it, but she finally got it in place" in California by the late 1960s. Today, it is the model around the country, as well.

During the oral history interviews that are the heart of Cindy's dissertation, Leigh told her that her vision was born during her Oklahoma childhood. "She credits her father's sense of social justice for inspiring her own belief in cooperation and fairness to all," Cindy says. She also found that Leigh neatly fit a women's leadership model developed by UCLA professor Lena Astin and colleague Carole Leland. Like the women educators they described, Leigh was a natural collaborator with a passionate vision and a consistent management style. Former colleagues have told Cindy that Leigh "was brilliant at working with people. They tell me how gracious she was, and warm. Apparently, these were unusual qualities in someone in a position of power during the 1950s and 1960s."

"Seduced by library history," Cindy was diverted from her original dissertation plans: to create an instrument for evaluating the effectiveness of homework centers at public libraries. A library administrator for nearly two decades she got her master's degree in library science at UCLA in 1977, right after completing her bachelor's degree in English at UC Santa Barbara. Cindy returned to graduate school in 1995. Completing this project was a large part of what persuaded her to abandon a "pretty good career, a pretty lucrative career" to return to school. But if the project would no longer serve as her dissertation, the subject was not forgotten.

Even though she was no longer a working librarian, Cindy the graduate student found herself moonlighting as "a conduit of information for librarians around the country who needed help with homework programs." In 1998, she decided "someone had to write a book." With a $10,000 grant from the American Library Association, Cindy visited 25 libraries around the country and looked at their homework centers.

"I was hoping that there would be three or four models," she says. "Instead, I found that no two programs were exactly alike." Their uniqueness is appropriate, she says, because "to be effective, public libraries have to reflect the uniqueness of their communities." Her book on the research will be published by the American Library Association this fall.

By then, Cindy hopes to be launched on a new career. Again, experience has altered her original intentions to be a consultant for homework centers. While she certainly has useful knowledge, she's found that libraries rarely have the budget to pay consultants. On the other hand, many libraries have become interested in promoting leadership among staff members, a subject Cindy also knows plenty about, thanks to her dissertation research and to her own career experience. She will be president of the California Library Association in the coming year.

"Suddenly, I'm doing leadership workshops all over the place," she says. Emerging technologies are forcing librarians to rethink their profession. Her seminars are designed to help librarians "start thinking about these issues and to start thinking about themselves as leaders."

In addition, one of her dissertation committee members, Dr. Virginia Walter, "has been marvelous in opening doors for me" as a consultant, Cindy says. Cindy has had to turn down some projects "or else I would never finish my dissertation. On the one hand, I am desperate to finish my studies so I can get on with my new career; on the other, I'm having to turn down wonderful career opportunities to finish my studies." This conflict has been one of the most challenging aspects of her student experience, she says. "My biggest fear is that I will not be asked to work on these projects again once I finally get the degree."

Published in Spring 2000, Graduate Quarterly