For this Staff Spotlight, we sat down with Amy Spencer. Amy recently graduated with a double major in linguistics and theatre design and a minor in Russian, and she's been our Special Collections undergraduate assistant for four years. She's moving on to new adventures at the end of next month, and we will miss her!
What are your plans after graduation?
Spend the summer in Columbia, working with the MU Theatre Department, then off to the University of Illinois in the fall to start grad school for Library and Information Science.
What type of work do you do in Special Collections?
I do a lot of different things around the department. I do a lot of reshelving of materials after patrons and classes use them. I answer questions at the desk and occassionally write posts for our blog. Every once in a while I'll design a display for our reading room, but mostly I just help out with whatever needs done that day or what the librarians need me to do to help them. [Editor’s note: The librarians would like to suggest that Amy’s job has been to come up with new and inventive solutions for any and all vexatious problems that have come up during her tenure here.]
What is a typical day like?
I usually start off my shift at the reference desk in our reading room. While I'm there, I'll do some blogging or another computer-based project. Once I'm off the desk, I'll do something like reshelving or pulling books for a class. Recently my big project has been going through our Spec-M collection and straightening items on the shelf and pulling things that need re-housed. So that's something I've put a lot of time in on when nothing else needs done that day.
What has been your favorite project since you've been here?
A couple of years ago, the annual display we do in conjunction with the Life Sciences Symposium was themed "The Science of Superheroes," and I got to help with a big part of that display since I like comics so much. It was a lot of fun to get to help with that and really get to dive into our comics collection.
