All around campus, there is no shortage of friendly and helpful people. One of the many smiling faces you can find is Jennifer Ulrich, who is often residing in the infamous Sadie Hartzler Library. She has been a dedicated staff member and beloved member of the EMU community for 32 years. Prior to working at EMU, Ulrich attended Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. She worked in the library as a work-study student for four years, along with completing a practicum in the library during her senior year. Her educational journey then continued on to Indiana University, where she received a Master of Library Science, and later Claremont Graduate University, where she completed a Master of Arts degree in Applied Women’s Studies.
Being the Technical Service Librarian at EMU has a lot of moving parts behind the scenes that keep the library going. Some of Ulrich’s responsibilities include being in charge of the borrowing side of Interlibrary Loan, which means she works with requests made by EMU students and faculty to get books and journal articles they need. She also processes new books and DVDs, assigns call numbers, prints labels, and gets material ready to circulate. She checks the magazines and journals the library receives in the mail and puts them out on display. Some days she also assists the staff at the front desk, with checkout of books, DVD, and VACA equipment, copying and printing, and answering questions. Communication is really important in the library, so Ulrich even answers chats and email reference questions and meets with students in-person or on Zoom to help them with research projects they may be working on.
In addition to the student side, Ulrich also works and talks with vendors about their products to ensure that when the library purchases new databases access works both on and off-campus. She continually updates the library website and research guides, and even occasionally makes tutorials on how to use library resources so students are able to access them properly.
However, Ulrich says her favorite part of the job is “helping students find resources for their projects and papers and helping faculty find resources for their classes and their own research.”
Ulrich really appreciates her co-workers as well. “I have great co-workers in the library! They really are the best!” For her, there is nothing like getting to know the students with whom she works ]. “It’s been great to see a few enter the library profession as well”. Another one of her favorite things is the view from her office window. “It faces east and at times the sunrises are spectacular”. This semester has also been particularly special to her as she is glad to see more people in the library since the pandemic.
