As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving, I want to take the opportunity to give thanks for the life and work of the library’s long-time Government Information Assistant, colleague, and friend: Sara Lee Enders. Sara Lee died on November 15th, and we in the library have been mourning her passing.
Several months ago, my colleague Craig Milberg gave a shout out to colleagues whose work is essential to the library and the services that we provide but who, because they work “in the back,” are little known by students and faculty (see Contributors Less Visible).
Sara Lee was also someone whose hard work, knowledge, and expertise greatly benefited generations of students and faculty, although most didn’t understand her role in providing the resources that they used. They certainly didn’t understand how much time and work was required to make those resources available; few outside the library do.
Sara Lee helping a student
Sara Lee started working in the library shortly before we launched the first online catalog. At that time, we had a card catalog and maintained detailed paper records of every government document we received, processed, and added to the collection. Cataloging government publications was time-consuming and cumbersome. Like other libraries at the time, we also didn’t have catalog records for many older documents, some of which had been in the collection since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Students who needed information in federal government publications usually had to consult a library staff member, who in turn needed to consult print indices, bibliographies, catalogs, and shelf-lists in order to find the information — and confirm that we had the volumes containing it. Sara Lee quickly mastered these skills and became the “go to” person for government information. Everything we received, everything we processed, and everything we reshelved passed through her hands; because of that, and because of her longevity, she knew the collection better than anyone else.
Cataloging practices and processing procedures changed numerous times over the twenty years of her tenure. Some practices got simpler; some things took less time. Some things remained time-consuming and tricky. Student questions and researchers’ needs continued and grew over the years. The number, variety, and formats of government publications also grew. Sara Lee’s interest in and passion for government documents never wavered, however!
Only in the past few years, just as Sara Lee was retiring, has the management of government documents become less onerous, partly because most new publications are now online and partly because we automatically receive catalog records for nearly all new publications. It’s important to remember, however, that our print government documents collection is what it is in large part to Sara Lee’s hard work and careful stewardship.
She took as much care with and interest in the intellectual content contained in the publications as she did with their physical processing. Her interests were wide-ranging. How many times did we hear her exclaim, upon examining a new publication or barcoding an existing item, “This is so cool!” She was particularly interested in Native American history and also had a special love for Congressional publications, including the Congressional Record. The oddities that we occasionally received on deposit, such as board games and puzzles from NASA, amused her as well. How do you shelve a board game or a photograph of the Vice President? Where do you put the depository stamp and the barcode on a round, double-sided image of the sun (another NASA publication)? I can still hear her laughing over that one.
Indeed, she had a wonderful laugh, a beautiful smile, and a huge heart. She loved animals, especially dogs and horses. And, above all, she loved her family; you didn’t have to be around Sara for long to know how much she loved Butch, her husband and soul mate, and her children and grandchildren.
On this Thanksgiving, we celebrate Sara Lee’s life, giving thanks for the fine person she was and for what she gave to Davidson. She was dear to us.
