Celebrate the NOVA Libraries in April!

National Library Week is April 24-28, but we are celebrating the library for the entire month of April!  Get to know MEC campus Instruction and Technology Librarian, Kirsten Mentzer. Check out her National Library Week interview to learn why everyone should love libraries.

My name is Kirsten Mentzer, and I’m your friendly neighborhood Instruction & Technology Librarian. I’m based at the Medical Education Campus (MEC), so I work mostly with students in Orientation to Healthcare or later on when they’re here in our MEC programs. I answer questions at the front desk and do remote appointments, assist with daily tasks of running the library, and I also spend time working with classes on research projects. Much of my time is geared toward saving students time by making resources easier to access, whether through creating zines that cover the trickier points of APA or making videos to help students navigate specialized databases.

I started at NOVA in 2015 after finishing library school at Catholic University of America, and I found that not only did I want to stay here, I found that I really liked it here. The students at NOVA are incredible. Every year I look forward to seeing new faces on campus and hearing about what our patrons are accomplishing.

One of the main reasons I love being a librarian is that it can be a way to put some goodness out into the world. Even if I can’t solve the world’s numerous and varied problems, I can help a student find the resources to work towards achieving their goal. I can help faculty members improve their assignments to be more transparent or inclusive of their classroom. I can put on a program that gives students fifteen minutes to breathe in the middle of a hard day.

I have lived around the world on military bases, and no matter where we moved the first thing we did as a family was to get our library cards. Even when exhausted, halfway around the world, we’d haul ourselves out of bed and stumble to the MWR (Morale, Welfare, & Recreation) library to get our cards. When the library was open, we had wifi (free wifi was cutting edge in 2003, mind) and space to study and socialize. When the library was closed, we had books to read while stuck in bureaucratic lines or movies to watch in the exhausted, jetlagged nights. The libraries helped us survive, and cope, and grow, even on unsteady ground.

As a college student, I experienced severe anxiety and decision paralysis around my classwork. Learning citation styles, doing research on a new topic every few weeks, meeting deadlines, and just trying to get through the week were hard. Now that I’m a librarian, I can work to be sure that if I can help a student carry some of those burdens, I will. Maybe I can’t be sure you get an A in your class, but I can help you get closer to where you want to be.

I hope you love the library because we strive to make it a space for everyone–especially you. Whether you need time to rest and watch a movie, or you want to sit in the quiet and wake up while you sip your coffee and read the newspaper, or you want to study with friends in a group room and have fun while you learn. And the thing I love most about working at NOVA Libraries is that we get to be your library. I hope you use the library – the librarians’ guidance, the comfy chairs, the resources, the programs, whatever you need.

https://libguides.nvcc.edu/NLW2023/KirstenMentzer

Submitted by:
Liz Leon, ileon@nvcc.edu