While 2020 truly threw some curve balls, our MU Librarians and staff never missed a step and continued to serve. Take a look at a few innovative ways they helped our community, kept faculty informed, and stayed busy throughout one of the most challenging years.
Over the summer, the College of Engineering was tasked with making several different types of face shields, some went to Columbia Public Schools, others went to MU Hospitals and to MU faculty and staff. Librarians are givers by nature and when the call went out asking for volunteers Mara Inge, a senior library information specialist in our engineering library, jumped at the opportunity to help. She and other volunteers spent their time performing tasks in two-hour long increments. Each piece of the face shield was its own station, and they were all put together assembly line style. Tasks included things such as riveting the headbands together, putting the headband together with the shield, and gluing die cut pieces together. “Since I enjoy power tools and things like that, I volunteered to use the giant hydraulic punch press to punch out the die cut pieces. The machine was big and loud, but it was a great deal of fun operating it,” said Inge.
Even though making the face shields was rough, tiring work, your hands would get sore and your thumbs could go numb, it was a fun opportunity to volunteer. The best part of this experience for Mara was getting to know colleagues from all over the College of Engineering. “It was great being part of such an important project. As the outreach person for the engineering library, this seemed like a perfect fit. I can’t think of a better outreach activity than providing PPE to the community,” said Inge.
