NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 27 number 2 - Winter 2007

Students Work Hard for Us

By Kathy Brown, Planning and Research, and Chelcy Boyer, External Relations

They come from a variety of backgrounds to perform a variety of responsibilities for the NCSU Libraries. Collectively, the hours they work represent the equivalent of fifty-six full-time personnel. Who are they? They are the Libraries’ student workers. For them, the flexibility the library offers in arranging work schedules around classes ranks high, as does the convenience of an on-campus location. Flexibility and convenience, however, are only part of the equation. Just a few of their stories illustrate how essential these students are to the functioning of the library.

The largest concentration of student employees is in the Access and Delivery Services Department. Jeff Curry is one of the most experienced members of the stacks team. Hailing from Roxobel in the northeastern part of the state, Curry started working for the library in August 2001. He is now the point person for training new student workers in shelving, shelf-reading, straightening, sorting, shifting, searching, and sending notices. “We handle a lot of ‘s’ activities,” he notes. Accuracy is important, and trainees undergo two tests before they are permitted to shelve independently. Team members wear special vests in the stacks; this makes them visible and places them on the front line in helping people. The quantity of materials handled reflects the unrelenting pressure on the team. So far this year they have shelved 235,000 items, putting them on track to exceed last year’s shelving total of 250,000 items.

Curry has stayed with the library because he enjoys the people and the contents of the collection. This semester he worked about thirty hours a week. Next semester may find him working fewer hours as he completes his course work. Curry is majoring in communication with a media concentration and hopes to be involved in production, perhaps establishing his own company at some point in the future. “Being a student, I know how hard it is to find things,” he declares. “It’s really important for us to get things to the right spot in a timely manner.”

Chris Hill also appreciates the library’s flexibility as he juggles a demanding schedule that includes four courses and a thirty to forty hour workweek in the library. He is majoring in wildlife sciences and is on track to graduate in December 2007. His background indicates adaptability. As a member of a military family, he moved frequently, although he identifies Radford, Virginia, as an area where he has ties. He met his future library supervisors when he worked in a coffee shop. They described openings in their departments, and he ended up working for both.

In the Special Collections Research Center, Hill is part of “Green ‘N’ Growing,” a grant-funded project documenting the history of 4-H and Home Demonstration in North Carolina from the 1900s to the 1970s. When completed, users will be able to access digital reproductions of more than 10,000 items. Hill plays a key role by digitizing photographs and texts, performing quality checks, and entering metadata about the content. He also works in the Digital Media Lab, where he scans and edits a variety of media. Equally important, he puts people at ease with a range of technologies by answering questions and demonstrating how to use the laboratory’s equipment and software. Hill gleaned some of his technical skills by experimenting at home with his father, and he picked up the rest through his work in the library. Having always been a PC user, he was pleasantly surprised to discover the capabilities and user-friendly interfaces of the Macintosh. “I now prefer the Mac,” he states.

After graduation, Hill will explore positions with a government agency. He is also contemplating graduate study, because his career goal is to work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services in the Endangered Species Program. Photographs of endangered animals can increase empathy for endangered species, and he expects that the knowledge he has gained as a media technician will prove useful at that phase of his career.

Josh Brown tackles a different type of technical work in the library’s Preservation Department. A business management major anticipating a May 2007 graduation, the Roxboro native landed in Preservation somewhat by chance. Brown participates in the work study program offered at NC State, which places students across campus. Preservation’s position description piqued his curiosity, and he has worked roughly ten hours per week in the department for the last year and a half

Since joining Preservation, Brown’s assignments have increased in complexity as he has learned new skills. He started by repairing tears in pages. Later, he made customized phase boxes to house materials either too brittle or too costly to repair in light of their anticipated use. He has now advanced to deconstructing and reconstructing badly worn books: cleaning the spine, resewing the spine and adding reinforcement tape, inserting new end pages, and making a new cover. The work is painstaking and requires several hours to complete. He describes the effort as being worthwhile, because the conservation treatment will provide the book with another thirty to fifty years of use before it finds its way back to the Preservation Department. “I’ve learned a lot about things I had never thought about, and I’m still learning,” he muses. Before his exposure to the Preservation Department, he admits he might have used scotch tape to stabilize a torn page. “Please don’t do that,” he says, “it can be a real mess to clean up.”

In Research and Information Services, Robert Waldrup is midway through his first semester as a member of the Peer Research Advisors Program--a library initiative designed to make the reference process less intimidating for students and to enhance the information literacy skills of the advisors. Waldrup came to NC State “by way of the world” and Goldsboro. He selected meteorology as his major after witnessing the impact of Hurricane Fran. He is the recipient of an Air Force scholarship and will likely become a weather officer after graduating in December 2007.

Waldrup discovered the Peer Research Advisors Program through a former advisor who encouraged him to apply for the slot she had held before graduating. His mission is to help students find the information they need, whether it be identifying a relevant database or finding a book in the stacks. In some cases the training has been fairly specialized. He received an overview of chemistry reference materials, for instance, to help students with a class assignment. Through his experience at the reference desk, Waldrup feels he has gained “a different mind set for detective work.” Knowledge of information resources is important, but the greater challenge lies in “learning what people really want by asking probing questions.”

Commitment, intelligence, engaging personalities, technical skills, people skills--it is hard not to be impressed by the library’s student workers. Brian Clossey interacts with numerous student workers as a supervisor in Access and Delivery Services. “If you say anything,” he urges, “stress how hard they work for us.”