By Ollin Garcia Pliego
Reference Librarian and Library Systems Coordinator and Associate Professor Kathleen Isaacson
Ollin García: What’s your hometown?
Kathleen Isaacson: I was born in Milwaukee.
OG: When did you start working at the library?
KI: In the mid-1970s, September 1975.
OG: What did you do before joining the Mudd?
KI: The library was the first actual job I ever had in my life. I went to school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and I got my library degree and looked at the libraries around Appleton and luckily I found an opening.
OG: What’s your job’s main task?
KI: If you look at my screen [she has two computers on her desk], you can see, I am above the only staff person who works at the command line level, so I run the library’s software systems and the data base system and the SFX, which gets you connected between data bases and journals and interlibrary loan and all those connections.
I manage the off-campus access to our databases. It’s all kinds of small pieces that together work to provide services.
OG: What’s your funniest memory here at the library?
KI: My husband kind of makes fun of my life as a librarian and sometimes he’ll, when I say I’m off to work, back to the rat race because he doesn’t think the library world is very much like a rat race. The impression people have of what happens at the library is quite different from what it is from a staff point of view.
OG: Do you have any hobbies?
KI: I have a lot of plants. I have about 35 orchid plants. I do a fair amount of gardening [although] I only have a little yard. We have a sun room in our house so, that is packed.
We have a very energy efficient house so on the south side we have a large room that has its own windows and net traps. Sun light helps heat our house and it’s full of plants.
Acquisition and Cataloging Assistant Amanda K. Lee
Ollin García: What’s your hometown?
Amanda K. Lee: New Lisbon, Wis.
OG: When did you start working at the library?
AL: March of 2005.
OG: What were you doing before joining the Mudd?
AL: Well, I graduated from [the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay] in 2003, so I was going to school and I was also working in retail.
OG: What’s your main task as an Acquisition and Cataloging Assistant?
AL: My main task is acquisitions, so I’m responsible for ordering all the material, accepting the deliveries, making sure it’s quality. For example, this DVD I have is broken so I have to send it back.
OG: What kind of material do you add to the library? Who request the material?
AL: Most of the time, faculty will request the material, sometimes the librarians. Sometimes I order things that I think students would like.
I try to keep up with movies and specially DVDs that I think students will like, because I know you’re kind of stuck here so [laughs] there’s not really a movie theater or somewhere that you can really go for entertainment. Sometimes I will have a student track me down and ask me to order something.
OG: What do you like the most about your job?
AL: I find it really rewarding when somebody is really anxious to get something and I can get it for them very quickly and they seem very surprised that I can get it so fast, that all they had to do was ask.
Digital Collection Librarian Colette Lunday Brautigam
Ollin García: What’s your hometown?
Colette L. Brautigam: I’m from Minot, N.D.
OG: When did you start working at the library?
CB: In December 2003.
OG: Why is your office located in the Art Center?
CB: It says Slide Librarian on my door and I like that, I have it as relic, a reminder of where we’ve come from because slides are the analog version of what we do digitally now.
When I started at Lawrence, my job was to take photographs out of books and have the film processed and mount it as slides and catalog the information and do a database to maintain the Slide Library, which is now a faculty office and classroom. The Slide Library just went away this summer. We had 65,000 slides.
OG: What did you do before working here?
CB: I went to College at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. It was a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English. Then, I went to Alaska and I worked on fishing boats and met my husband. It was a great experience. I got my master’s degree in Library and Information Science in Minneapolis College of St. Catherine.
OG: What’s your main task as a Digital Collection librarian?
CB: Making things accessible online for the students, faculty, staff and alumni. I’m also a Reference Librarian so I’m at the Reference Desk too, maybe 10 hours a week. It depends on the week.
OG: What’s your favorite thing about your job?
CB: I meet with classes and do instruction and I really enjoy showing students how to use the resources that we’ve created. I like doing the library instruction of all digital collections.