Marcia Monroe is the heart and soul of our UW Tacoma Library, and as Access Services Supervisor helps train and support our amazing student workers. She’s a familiar face in the Tioga Library Building, and we are thrilled to be able to share her words here!

• How do you work with faculty and students in your current role at the UW Tacoma Library? Most of the work I do and have done with faculty is on our library’s service desks. Over the years, I’ve assisted faculty and students in ordering, locating, and checking out materials in the UW Libraries’ collections. It’s been rewarding working with such a diverse body of library researchers. What’s so amazing is having had the experience of working with some of the founding faculty of UWT.
• What drew you to working in libraries? I was a military dependent. My mom took us to a small, quaint library in Karlsruhe, Germany. Books were always a part of our home, so I loved the atmosphere and scent of libraries and books growing up. My first library position, almost 30 years ago, were in two of our regional public libraries, the Tacoma Public and the Pierce County Libraries. From there I investigated other opportunities in libraries and have been working in various roles at the UW Tacoma Library ever sense.
• What parts of your job are you most excited about?  The thing that excites me is working with our diverse body of student employees. Usually I work with about 10 students each quarter and I absolutely love the daily interaction I have with them. From hiring, training, ultimately seeing them graduate, and continuing to keep in touch with them, is an extremely rewarding experience.
• How has your job shifted because of COVID-19? While we may not have had the daily “inside the building” interactions that we did pre-Covid, I’m still able to communicate with the students virtually, sometimes one-on-one via Zoom. As a library team, we’ve been able to create remote work for our students to do from helping to digitized collected works, to taking online trainings to keep them up to date with library policy. In Spring we held a virtual, student employee graduation, to celebrate those students who were graduating, More recently our student employees have been able to work a few hours on site to keep collections flowing in and out of the library as we operate curbside.
• Have you read or watched anything good lately? My favorite shows tend to circle around food and travel. Great escapes when you can visually eat your way through a country or region!  My favorites right now are, My Greek Table, and the Food Network’s Chopped.
• Any advice for UWT students? Yes. I still say, even in this COVID era, to follow your heart, but also listen to your heart. It is still honest and true. It may be telling you to rest and slow down a bit, take smaller steps, to not be hard on yourself, to learn something new or something that you’ve always wanted to do. Most of all reach out. This is a great time to gain strength from others. They’re also learning how to work through this unique time, and there is great strength and peace when you can share your thoughts with others.