Summer is a very relaxing time of year. Vacations, parties, and good times with friends and family are all standard fare when it comes to Summer. The library, however, has been just as busy as ever getting ready for the start of the 2023-2024 school year. Don’t feel too bad though, vacations were had, and we made a few new friends along the way as well. In this blog you will read about some of the shenanigans that HPU Librarians took part in during the summer months.
New Teammates
Our biggest update comes in the form of new staff members added to the HPU Library team. These new hires include a new Digital Media Librarian, Media Services Assistant, Health & Natural Sciences Librarian, and Evening Library Supervisor. Let us introduce you!
Gerald Ward: Media and Digital Services Librarian
Gerald Ward is our new Media and Digital Services Librarian. In this role, Gerald will supervise all media-related services offered by HPU Libraries. Gerald will also be responsible for maintaining the library’s media collection, which is made up of 12,000+ physical films, 150,000+ streaming films, and more. Gerald is originally from Charleston, SC. After serving in the Navy for 5 years, he attended UNCG, where he earned a BA in English with minors in Philosophy and Russian, as well as an MLIS. Gerald is a trained book and paper conservator and managed large-scale preservation facilities for over 16 years before leaving that field to become the Media and Digital Services Librarian at HPU.
Suzanne Milano: Evening and Weekend Media Assistant
Suzanne Milano joins the HPU Libraries team as our new Evening and Weekend Media Assistant. In this role, Suzanne will assist Gerald Ward in maintaining the physical media collection, as well as provide media-related support to library patrons. Suzanne brings with her a wide range of expertise with media software, including the Adobe Creative Suite. She also has extensive experience with digital and film equipment like cameras, lenses, lighting and more! Before coming to HPU, Suzanne worked as a social media specialist, graphic designer, and in the art departments to complete projects for HBO, Disney, Sony, and CBS Films.
Kelly Jones: Health and Natural Sciences Librarian/R.G. Wanek Center Librarian
Kelly Jones will be the new Librarian for Health and Natural Sciences, as well as the Wanek Center Librarian for HPU Libraries. Kelly grew up in Georgia and attended the University of Georgia where she double majored in Ecology and Comparative Literature. She moved to North Carolina in 2021 to attend graduate school at UNC Chapel Hill, and she graduated in 2023 with her master’s in library science. She lives in Greensboro with her cat, Hank. In her free time, she enjoys writing, reading, and doing yoga.
Kerry Sparks: Evening & Weekend Library Supervisor
Kerry Sparks joins the HPU Libraries team as an Evening and Weekend Library Supervisor. Kerry graduated from High Point University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science and later went on to obtain a master’s degree in special education. She has been teaching in both the private and public sectors for 24 years and she currently works as a Reading Specialist for kindergarten through fifth grade students. Her husband Allen also works for HPU as a bus driver.
Video Games at HPU Libraries
For almost a year now, HPU Librarians have been busy curating and processing a new collection of video games. Video games are becoming more commonplace in the library space these days, as they add much in the way of academic and recreational value to a library’s collection. For more information on the academic value of video games, please check out “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning, and Student Attitudes to Games-Based Skills Development: Learning from Video Games in Higher Education. More and more academic libraries are adding video games to their collections; both the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and NC State offer games for their students to play and learn from. The video game collection will support the academic needs of faculty and students in HPU’s nationally recognized Game Design program and will also offer other students the opportunity to play games that are not as readily available today, such as Ristar and the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, both on their original release consoles.
The video game collection consists of 9 consoles and 70 games, all available for students to check out. While the collection is in-library use only, students can expect much value out of this collection, as well as a little bit of fun. If you are interested in assisting the library with expanding this collection, donations are being taken for the collection. The Video Game Collection is circulating now.
Creating the Academic “Core Collection”
This summer, the library has continued to reclass library materials from Dewey Decimal to the Library of Congress classification system and the current grand total of books that have been switched over to the Library of Congress system and added to the Core Collection is now 13,000. Patrons can find these books in the center section of the third floor. Another collection which was reclassed this summer is the Faculty Publications Collection, located next to the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section on the right side of the third floor near the exit of the OARS Testing Center. This project is ongoing and is slated to be finished in time for the move to a new library building.
Other Changes and New Library Events
The summer months are much needed planning time for HPU Libraries. This is the time when the library updates collections, decides what kinds of events will take place during the next academic year, and much more! This year, the library added additional “Exit” signs to the end of each isle of books to improve student safety in case of an emergency. Gerald and Suzanne have been working tirelessly to revamp the media collection to ensure that it is more accessible than ever, and the Library Outreach Team has worked hard to plan more library events than ever before. New events that will be taking place this year include “Tabletop Tuesdays,” which celebrate different types of board games, and “Crafting Thursdays”, an opportunity for students to use our makerspace on the bottom floor of Smith Library to participate in themed-crafting events, such as button making and peace rock painting for International Peace Day. We hope you will visit the library to meet our new staff, play our video games, and come to some events this semester! You can follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter as well. We hope you had just as great of a summer as we did, and welcome back!
-Blog post by Bryan Nicholls, Evening Reference Librarian