Liefe Loves Libraries

I am a super senior feb this semester, and I’ve held virtually every library position available to students during my four years at Middlebury. Please enjoy this reflection on a very important cornerstone of my Middlebury experience. 

My first library job was in the Special Collections and Archives. What started as a desire for any kind of job in the library quickly turned into an appreciation for research through tangible items, and a curiosity of how institutions and individuals choose to preserve and narrate their own histories. 

Day-to-day in Special Collections, I spend time pulling, tracking, and reshelving materials used by researchers and classes. I love moments when I feel like I can help open Special Collection’s doors a bit more – including digitizing materials, answering research questions, curating exhibits, and writing blog and Instagram posts. I recently finished processing a collection recently acquired from the Dance department. As a joint Dance and English major, these materials felt especially personal. Over the summer, I inventoried and labeled approximately 370 VHS tapes, 330 DVDs, 630 mini-DVs, plus a handful of U-matics and reel-to-reel tapes. Learning about the Dance department through this embodied way feels richer than internet research. Not only is most of this information not accessible online, I began to recognize familiar names and initialisms. I deeply felt the disappointment of having missed Project Bandaloop’s performance on the side of Davis Family Library during the library’s dedication on October 9, 2004 (I would have been 1.5 years old).

After one semester in Special Collections, I wanted more library jobs, so I worked in the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department for a year. The ILL staff, Rachel, Kat, and Laura, are absolute powerhouses in what they do. They can find you anything you want – literally anywhere in the world. As a student assistant, I spent my shifts pulling books from the stacks to be placed on the hold shelf or sent to other institutions. I prepared books for shipping and unboxed books coming in. I scanned books and articles so they could be accessible digitally. 

This summer, in addition to my work in Special Collections, I worked at the Circulation desk. I loved having a public and patron-facing job, and how I didn’t know what a patron would ask when they approached the desk. No matter what was asked, it felt really nice to connect patrons with what they were looking for. During Language Schools, it was honestly a lot of printing questions. I spent one day a week working at the circulation desk up at Breadloaf at the Davison Library. The atmosphere in Davison is so quiet, chill, and trusting (and gave me lots of time to research library grad schools!).

My fourth (and final) library job is one I began a few weeks ago in Collections Management. Working with Marlena, I’ve been learning more about Alma (the back-end system of Primo, known to students as Library Search), all the little letters and symbols in records, copy cataloging through Connexion OCLC, as well as processing and preparing books for the shelves: stamping, stickering, sliding in the tattle tape, and printing spine labels.

Up next for me is library grad school and a Masters in Information and Library Science and a very long future of library jobs (I hope). I want to share a major thank you to all of the library people who have seen my potential and made Davis such a special place for me throughout my time at Middlebury, included but definitely not limited to: Kaitlin, Rebekah, Anna, Joseph, Kat, Rachel, Kimberly, Dan, Kellam, Marlena, and Dana. And to my fellow Midd kids, I would highly recommend getting yourself a job in the library – any kind of job!