University Libraries
Library work pays off
By Maureen Schlangen
Mary Kuttler ’15 says she’s loved libraries for longer than she could read.
“When I was 8 years old or so, I told my mom I wanted to work in a library,” says Kuttler, who majored in biology with a minor in psychology. “When I saw the posting at Roesch for my sophomore year, I applied. I figured, ‘I spend so much time at the library, I may as well get paid for it.’”
From then until graduation, she worked every semester at the Roesch Library research services desk, now called the Knowledge Hub, where she not only taught faculty and fellow students how to navigate myriad databases for the information they needed, but also learned from the experts about effective searching.
“I’m still in touch with (librarians) Heidi (Gauder) and Carol (Williamson), and I like to stop in to visit whenever I’m on campus,” Kuttler says.
After graduation, Kuttler worked several months on an engineering project in Granville, Ohio, before taking a full-time job as a clinical research coordinator with Sentral Clinical Research Services in Cincinnati, where she works with patients participating in drug trials.
“I was bio and psych,” Kuttler says. “I didn’t know anything about this engineering project, so while I still had access to the library databases, I used them constantly, and I was able to quickly research the topic. It helped a lot to know how to use keywords to get better search results. It was so helpful that my co-workers started asking me for help.”
Kuttler credits Gauder with the skills she built in effective searching.
“Whenever I couldn’t answer a person’s question, Heidi would come over and help, and I learned a lot from watching her,” Kuttler says. “I don’t think people realize what answers are out there until you ask the right questions and learn how to better express what you’re trying to find.”
When her fellow students needed help, Kuttler always sent them to Roesch Library.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Roesch,” she says. “I would always tell my roommates to come to the library and use the computers with the double monitors on the second floor, and another great thing was all the journals we have there. … It’s a hidden gem.”
- Maureen Schlangen, E-scholarship and communications manager