September 13, 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY
At the end of August, a host of librarians, faculty and staff gathered on the
third floor of the Hekman Library at Calvin College for a reception in honor of
a legendary colleague.
Barbara Sluiter, 76, has worked as a cataloguing librarian in the Hekman
Library for 55 years, during which time she has changed not only campuses and
classification systems, but also made the switch from cards typed by hand to
computers.
"I've always been amazed at how well she's swum through all the changes," says
Francine Lewis, a Calvin cataloguing librarian and Sluiter colleague.
At the reception in her honor, Sluiter reminisced about the days when there
was a snack bar in the library, when bats used to sneak into her workroom and
when she would discover student sleeping in the stacks during exams.
She also received what may be, for a librarian, a signal honor. She became an
entry, listing her vital statistics, education, reading and travel habits and
other information, in Calvin's catalogue.
"We thought," Lewis says, "how appropriate."
A 1951 Calvin graduate with a BA in Latin, Sluiter became a full-time Hekman
employee that year and enrolled as an extension student in the University of
Michigan's Library Science Program, where she earned her master's in library
science in 1956.
In 1952, a year into her career at Hekman, the library began to shed its Dewey
Decimal classifications and convert to the Library of Congress system, a task
that consumed several years. Sluiter catalogued every entry.
During her tenure at Calvin, the library collection swelled from 50,000 to
nearly 1 million items.
On December 31, 1991, Barb "retired" from her role as head of cataloguing,
continuing to volunteer 20 hours a week in her old capacity. A year later, she
resumed her job on a part-time basis.
For the full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/sluiter.htm
Contact Sluiter at 616-526-7073 or bsluiter@calvin.edu
-end-
Received on Wed Sep 13 15:58:06 2006
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