I started working as the Reference Librarian at Lake Michigan College in the fall of 1986. At that time, the library still relied on the card catalog - you know, the wooden piece of furniture with drawers of index cards! Now one can search the Hessel Library's electronic library collection (including the Online Catalog) from home on his or her Internet Computer. The library has many online subscription databases available for students and staff. These databases provide full-text magazine articles, full-text information from reference books, and even electronic books [eBooks] which are not available on the public Web or via search engines. To visit the library's web pages, click on the William Hessel Library link on the left side of this page.

My duties and responsibilities include:

• Reference (assisting students, staff, and community members with their questions; developing handouts or providing information on the library web page about our services and information sources available).
• Library Instruction (presenting information to classes on the databases available and how to search them and providing information on other resources to use, e.g., specific books).
• Collection Development (identifying subject areas that need improvement [purchasing more titles] as well as weeding).
• Acquisitions (reading many reviews and deciding which book, audio visual, and magazine titles to purchase as well as databases).
• Acting Director as well as Reference Librarian.

Education:

• B.S., Central Michigan University.
• M.L.S., University at Albany, State University of New York.

Related Work Experience:

• Four years as a librarian at the Norwood-Norfolk Junior-Senior High School in Norwood, NY. The town of Norwood is located between Potsdam and Massena in northern New York State.

The library is a member of:

• Berrien Library Consortium.
• Michigan Library Consortium.
• Southwest Michigan Library Cooperative.
• OCLC.

Facts about the William Hessel Library. During the academic year 2003-2004:

• 105 classes received Library instruction.
• 213 documents (books and/or articles) were borrowed for students and staff from other libraries.
• 52 items were loaned or articles provided from the Hessel Library to other libraries.
• 1030 people entered the library in a typical week (Fall 2004).

Interested in a career as a library professional?

• American Library Association
• CollegeSource (available on the library's web site). This database contains information on over 30,000 U.S. colleges and universities. The colleges' catalogs are searchable.
• Ferguson's Career Guidance Center