Librarians share their multi-faceted talent with students
Laniaya Alesia Hoofatt
Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: Features
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"Instead of handing information to students, we want to guide them so that when they leave here [Spring Arbor University] they can do research for themselves," said Roy Meador, Library Director.
These faithful individuals come day in and day out to not only service the community but also to teach everyone to become independent and do research on their own. This past year the library received $260,000 to buy books, subscribe to research databases and continue to update the periodicals many students read. Recently they also received $500,000 from the Weatherwax Foundation.
They are underappreciated and sometimes looked at as another research tool in the library, yet all the librarians in the SAU White Library has specialties that many students don't even know about. All the librarians are knowledgeable about what is in the library, but if you can catch the right librarian on a subject that he or she are passionate about the researching process, your research can go a lot smoother.
Meador graduated with a master's degree in library science from the University of Mississippi. He is the librarian who collects books and other research tools for the art, business and English departments along with adult studies.
Meador had been working on his master's degree in English when a job opportunity at the library opened and he took a chance.
"I was working on my masters degree in English," said Meador, "and there was a job opening in the library, and I really enjoyed it, so I went back to get another degree."
If you are in search for information for cross-cultural studies, hard sciences like biology, physics, mathematics and chemistry, or foreign languages, psychology and counseling, Karen Parsons is the librarian you want to see. "I like to help people and I like to look things up," said Parsons.
Parsons graduated with a master's degree in library science from Western Michigan University. You primarily see her sitting at the reference desk in the library helping community members and students.
"Sometimes people don't know the difference between using Google and using databases that have peer-reviewed articles," said Parsons. "Anyone can go out and put an article on the Internet. With a peer-reviewed article people have to look at it and we just want to teach effective database searching."
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