Get to Know … Ben Aldred

Abstract

Ben Aldred, GODORT’s immediate past chair, has many personas: folklorist, Phillies fan, novelist, role-playing game enthusiast, musician, and, of course, government information librarian. “I am the quintessential accidental gov docs librarian,” Ben, who uses they/them pronouns, explained. “I had gone back to library school because I’d gotten a PhD but there weren’t a lot of job opportunities at the time in 2009.” Needing one more class to graduate, they took the government information course. Luckily, a position as social sciences and government information librarian at Loyola University Chicago opened up when they graduated. “I started doing that and never looked back,” they said. In 2017 they moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where they are an associate professor and reference librarian, the FDLP coordinator and maps librarian, and the liaison to the College of Urban Planning and Public Administration and the Jane Addams College of Social Work.