Search and seize. Cataloging and classification. Archival appraisal. Library lingo sounds like something out of a spy novel, but Kate Wenger’s used to it: the Chatham reference librarian hasn’t left the stacks since high school. “I’ve worked in a library since I was fifteen,” she says. “I worked in the public library in my hometown, which is kind of a smaller library.” In college, she double-majored in Psychology and English but reconsidered her ambitions after graduation. “When I was a senior in college, I was trying to figure out what on earth to do with myself.” She knew she didn’t want to teach English or take five years to pursue a Ph.D. in Psychology, but her path revealed itself unexpectedly. “My Mom suggested Library Science,” she says, later adding, “Even though I worked in libraries, I hadn’t thought about it as a career, so that’s how I ended up in library school. It’s really a very good fit for me…. I liked school, I liked learning, I liked research.”
Swapping Freud for Dewey, Wenger entered the Library Science graduate program at Kent State University. Classes ranged from Foundations of Library and Information Science to in-depth explorations of the field and its future. It turns out that the “search and seize” concept is definitely spy-related: students go on a mission to find specific, under-the-radar resources in response to a professor’s prompts. Even with the cool literary work, Wenger’s classes went beyond the page. “I took a usability class… which has been very helpful when we redesigned our website. And then I also took an HTML class, so I can write a very small amount of HTML code.”
After a year of intensive study at Kent State, Wenger spent two years as a reference librarian at Muskingum University before moving to Chatham. Wenger is often a friendly face at the reference desk, but her job requires a lot of multitasking. “There are only six of us full-time and then a number of part-timers,” she says, “so between all of us we have to split up the tasks.” Wenger is often an educator: “Anytime a professor wants a librarian to come in and talk about the resources, I do a lot of that,” she says. “I also do marketing…. We put out a library newsletter. If all-campus emails go out, I’m usually the one to send those. Brochures, displays, anything like that.” Even with such a varied set of responsibilities, Wenger spends plenty of time with the texts. “All of us work on updating the collection: adding books to it, taking books out, often adding recommendations from faculty or students.”
Of all the work she does, Wenger seems to find special fulfillment through research. “My favorite part is working with students in any way, but I really enjoy when someone comes in with a research topic and needs help finding information,” she says. Luckily, Wenger is open to helping students find virtually anything. “It’s easy to get interested about most topics if the student’s interested.” Wenger says one of the most challenging things about her job is “helping students to know how a librarian can help them. Students often think that we can help them find a book in the stacks, but they don’t realize that we can help them with their research topic and kind of help them narrow it down and find the information in our databases or in books or online or statistics on some random website.”
Participating in workshops is one of the best ways to learn the librarians’ secrets. Wenger can often be found at the podium, and she says that there’s definitely a workshop for everyone. Even if you’ve worked with the library’s online collection before, Basic Databases may help you streamline the research process. “Basic Databases covers Academic Search Premier, our very general database, but it touches on some of the more hidden tips and tricks,” she says, adding, “Our workshops are usually small enough that someone could ask if they had a question about how to do something or other.” The Evaluating Resources workshop ensures that you know a good text when you find one. “Evaluating Resources doesn’t get touched on as much,” Wenger says, “so that one’s probably beneficial to anyone.” Once a student gets rolling with research, skills learned in the Plagiarism and Citation workshop are critical. “I give people scenarios and they have to decide if it’s plagiarism or not,” she says, “and some of them are very obvious—don’t buy a paper online—but some of them get more at the gray area of plagiarism, so I feel like a lot of people learn from that.”
Even with a morphing technological landscape, Wenger believes the workshop skills won’t be outdated anytime soon. “People here still want the book and they want the print book,” she says. “And that’s not everybody, but it’s more common here than I think it is at some other places, so I don’t see us getting rid of floors of books at anytime soon. But as things go online, shifting in the usage of space will probably change.” Portions of the collection may already be on the web, but Wenger has a beautifully sentimental dedication to the physical objects that sparked her passion. “I prefer print even if I have to lug five books to the beach.”
Ms. Wenger will teach a number of the library workshops offered this semester.
Basic Databases
January 24 (Tuesday): 11:30am to 12:20
February 6 (Monday): 10:00am to 10:50
Plagiarism and Citation
January 30 (Monday): 2:00pm to 2:50
February 16 (Thursday): 11:30am to 12:20
Evaluating Resources
February 28 (Tuesday): 11:30am to 12:20