Hi
Everyone,
I
am currently the director of the Ebling Library at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. I have been a librarian for 28 years in a variety of jobs,
with a variety of titles, in a variety of library types and I left the best for
last -- Ebling Library. Before I tell you a bit more about me, I want to tell
you about Ebling Library. It is the staff that make the library outstanding and,
because of the fabulous people that work at Ebling, the services and resources
provided at Ebling Library are the best. These eighteen people meet with
faculty and clinicians and students, they perform systematic reviews and
detailed literature searches, address questions about ORCiD, data management
and public access compliance, help people with using citation management tools,
teach a number of class sessions, meet with students about their coursework, and
so much more. They manage a complex print and electronic collection to make
each title easily found, searched, and accessible to all the faculty, staff and
students of the campus including UW Health. The Ebling Library also has
outstanding Rare and Special collections that set it apart from many other
medical and health libraries. In addition, when we do not have the titles that
people need, we have the staff that can find and get those resources for them.
There
is so much more that they do but I do not have the space to describe and talk
about all the great work that Ebling Library staff do.
I
was born in San Diego, CA and grew up in Fremont & Hooper Nebraska. We
moved to Wisconsin when I started high school and I've been living in Wisconsin
since then (except for four years in New Mexico). Before I was 16, I sold
greeting cards door-to-door and detasseled corn. When I could get a "real
job", I worked at A&W as a cook (ask me sometime about making root
beer there) and some part time work at the Sun Prairie library. I got a B.S. in
biology with an emphasis on microbiology at UW-Green Bay and an M.L.S. from the
UW-Madison.
After
receiving the B.S., I worked as an industrial microbiologist, part-time phone
sales at Lands End, trucking expeditor at Wisconsin Cheeseman and a machinist
in Waterloo. I decided it was time to get a master’s degree in library science.
I followed that with work at Wisconsin Interlibrary Services (WiLS) and as a hospital
librarian at Mercy Hospital in Janesville. I quit the librarian job after four
years and my husband, Dave, and I moved to Silver City, New Mexico. I had
always wanted to start a gift shop and I opened up a gourmet food and kitchen
housewares store that I called, Coyote Chef. It was a great experience but I
had to close it up after two years. I then got a position with an NGO as a
researcher and writer on U.S./Mexico border issues. That was a very interesting
position for two years but then my husband and I decided to move back to
Wisconsin. Soon after moving back to Wisconsin, I got a job in collection
development at the Health Sciences Library in 2000. In the last eighteen years,
three libraries (Medical, Pharmacy and UW hospital libraries) moved and merged
as the Ebling Library. I changed positions from collection development to scholarly
communication to assistant director and then as director. I’ve been the director
of Ebling Library since 2009 and I’ve never learned how to desk surf (seeEileen Severson’s Spotlight).
When
I’m not working I like to cook, drive my motorcycle, travel, do Jan Van
Haasteren jigsaw puzzles, occasionally play Candy Crush, play piano with the
band 6.4.Sunday, and the occasional afternoon nap.
P.S.
Did I mention that I am retiring and my last day at the Ebling Library will be
July 7?
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