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The most rewarding part of my job
is the two missions
that I work hard to fulfill.
One is providing accessibility to
rare books, special books, state and local history.
The works of
the past five and six centuries,
in addition to accessibility, collecting
and preserving these works is
a very fulfilling aspect of my job. It gives me the opportunity to be in contact
with many book people of
all professions, all over the state and indeed all over the world.
The resources that are available
at the West Virginia Regional History Collection
are made
accessible to a wide variety of people
and we make a big effort
to reach all these people, the students
the faculty, the students and faculty from
other institutions of higher education, local people
in the community and throughout the state who are
researching topics of
interest in a wide variety of disciplines.
The importance of
what we do in a library is that we
very carefully collect, assemble,
catalog and provide access to all these great resources.
Winning this award is
a genuine honor and privilege. It means to me
that the work that I have been doing for
the past 40 years is
significant, it's important
to the the library system that I work in
in and that it's important to
the university, to the administrators
and the supporters of the University. It means
also that the University
in many ways has
faith and trust in the work that we do
as librarians. Libraries do transform people's lives.
I have
personally experienced time again
the thrill of
watching a student
handle
a rare book, a truly rare book, perhaps five hundred years old.
They carefully touch it.
They turn a page.
They obviously make a connection
with a tangible historic item
that's there in front of them, and then they turn to me
and say, "This is the most incredible experience I've had while I've been at
the university."
And that's how I see
people's lives being transformed.