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Name: Mark Jacobs Location: Technical Services
larger version) |
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Mark Jacobs, our Electronic Resources/Serials Cataloging Librarian, was in his
mid-thirties before he decided to make libraries his professional home. Though
now working in the Technical Services Division in Holland Library, he relates
that, before returning to school at age 35, he "went from job to job to job."
Along the way he put in time as a letter carrier, a truck driver, a convenience
store clerk and clerk in a record and tape shop "before the days of CDs."
It was, however, a stint at the national headquarters of Pizza Hut, Inc which set
his current direction. The substance of that job was to "get kids reading for fun"
through a program called BOOK IT!©. National Reading Incentive Program, a partnership
between Pizza Hut and schools. This program offered incentives, such as free pizza,
to children for reading completed, and through it, for the first time Mark worked
with educators and librarians. He found he liked this environment. This discovery
led to the completion of a bachelor's degree at Wichita State University. He then
spent five and a half years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both
as a student and then as a cataloger with the Illinois Newspaper Project. Together with his interest in books and reading, Mark clearly has a love of language. He names the writing of poetry as his avocation (see "lost elucidation" for an example) and says of his extensive reading lists: "I read for pleasure, of course, but also because I like to look at the way people use language. I read widely because I want to be able to express myself in ways that are out of the ordinary." At the top of his book list are novels, histories and books about popular culture and about writing. When not reading Mark can often be found walking the Pullman hills. Declaring "it's a lot farther from one spot to another than I had imagined, because of the hills," he hastens to add, "it's very beautiful here, and there are certainly more trees here than any other place I've ever lived." In conclusion, Mark summarizes his attitude this way: " If there's anything about myself that I want people to know it's that I try not to take myself too seriously. Life is serious enough and we don't need to make it more serious." Then he adds, with a grin, "One of my ambitions is to be cremated and to have my ashes deposited in a library, with full cataloging and classification, and I'd like to be circulating." Then, turning serious, he muses, "I very much want the library to survive as an institution, but in order for that to happen we need to redefine ourselves. I think the library of the mid-21st century will be unrecognizable to someone from the mid-20th century." -Judith Ashworth |
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