Not Really Poetry:

Introducing New Employees at the Annual Meeting, August 2001

I’ve been asked to introduce the new employees, so I will introduce the new employees. I’m probably going to leave somebody out, and some people will get more attention and lavish words than others. C’est la vie, such is life. Life ain’t fair.

For those of you looking forward to lunch, I advise you that there will be exactly one-quarter of a hundred introductions, that is, 25 of ‘em, so you can keep count to get an idea just how close you are to wrapping your teeth around whatever comes out of the Dutch ovens. The names will come at you just like in a bibliography, alphabetically by last name, so when we start approaching the letters “y” or “z”, you can start salivating like Pavlov’s dog. You know, there have been a lot of turnovers in the library lately… Turnovers, there I go again, talking about lunch.

As I mispronounce your name, would each of you please stand briefly so that everyone else can see who to talk to later for more accurate information. First, we’ll skip the letters A & B:

Leticia Camacho, also known as Letty. Letty is the Business Librarian in the Management Library. So if you need that kind of help, she will manage to give you the business. Letty was born in Colónia Dublán, a Mormon colony in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. So a cultural lesson for today: Chihuahua is not only the name of a small, neurotic dog; it is also a state in No. Mexico with 94,831 square miles and a series of Mormon colonies. Letty is fourth generation LDS, so she’s a latter-latter-latter-latter day saint. She and her one brother and one sister all attended BYU. Her degree was in Travel and Tourism, a minor in Spanish, and an extra major skill in Italian. Perche Italiano e una lingua bellissima, ci sono i linguini d’amore. She obtained a master in Library and Information Science from UT Austin and worked at UT El Paso for 6 years, eventually as Business Librarian. She also taught library courses at Universidad Autónoma Chihuahua City Campus. Letty was married in the Mesa, AZ Temple, and her husband is from El Paso Texas; he has a degree in Sculpture and a minor in Art History from University of Texas El Paso. He is also good at sculpturing landscapes, he knows how to make yards with native plants that don’t use a lot of water. The Camachos have three children. You know, I learned something new about El Paso just this week. Apparently El Paso can mean something like “access” or “passage.” I was driving by an empty lot by the University Mall, and a sign there said: “Prohibido el Paso.” So apparently El Paso is now prohibited.

Mary Chapman was hired last October as a part-time paraprofessional for the Humanities & Divinities Department on the infamous Fifth Floor. For the most part, Mary grew up in Italy and New Mexico… that must have been quite a daily commute. Actually, her father was in the military so they moved a lot. Though not a bachelor, Mary has a bachelor degree in English and an MLS from BYU. While working on her MLS, she worked at General Reference for Julene Butler and allegedly loved it! She is married to Don Chapman, a professor in the English Department, and they have 3 children. Mary and her husband lived in Ontario, Canada for 5 years where he received his Ph.D in Medieval Studies from University of Toronto at around the same time Bob Maxwell was at approx. the same place. Before coming to work for the HBLL, Mary was a library consultant for Dynix (now epixtech) for 14 years. She was happy to leave the corporate environment and get back into the library, even if it involves an office next to me. Her hobbies and interests include traveling, camping, canoeing, reading, and watching old movies (which presumably could be defined as anything before the creation of the Sundance Institute). The HBLL has a special place in her heart because she met one of her favorite movie stars, Jimmy Stewart, here. One evening several BYU and HBLL officials were giving Jimmy Stewart a tour of the library after he donated his papers. When she saw the group, she left her post at General Reference (sorry Julene) and rushed over just to get a glance at him. He noticed her and shook her hand and called her dear! She floated back to the desk and was in a daze for the remainder of her shift!

Rebecca Curtis is new full-time staff in General Reference. She was born exactly one week after the Ides of March not far from the Wizard of Oz, that is to say, in Wichita, Kansas: the third of six children. For those who like to be precise, she, with 3 younger siblings, was the pre-ante-penultimate child. She grew up in Meridian, Idaho (which is located on a meridian right next to Boise). She is married to Cody Curtis. Rebecca has worked at the Oakland Temple Pageant, lowering backdrops. Isn’t that curious? Some of us work at putting up facades and she worked at taking down backdrops. She attended BYU and graduated in Elementary Education, then worked at Provo and Orem City Libraries. She enjoys water-skiing, and racquetball: She hopes to compete in a new sport that involves playing racquetball WHILE water-skiing. She also likes reading, which is beneficial to a librarian. Her Favorite Foods are Chinese food, Chocolate & especially and above all, GREEN PEPPERS. Red peppers, yellow peppers need not apply. Her favorite animal is the Turtle, which makes me suspicious when she says her favorite colors are brown, blue and yellow, because turtles and green peppers are both often green. Rebecca’s Favorite Painter is Camille Pissarro, or at least that’s her Impression – Ism. Unique about her: she knows how to tat and do all kinds of handwork.

She knows how to tat. That doesn’t surprise me – all three of my sisters knew how to tattle.

Tom Edlund will soon be joining us as the cataloger for Germanic languages. In high school, Tom decided to be either a professional skier or an entomologist. One year into college at the U. of U., to the dismay of his parents, he switched from studying live bugs to studying dead languages -- Latin, Classical Greek and Sanskrit. While an undergraduate, he financed his education as a contractor and actually built five houses. Tom also learned Russian at the Army’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, and German and other languages while posted in Germany for a number of years. I won’t say what kind of position it was, since it was classified, but just keep in mind that the “Glory of God is… Intelligence.” An accident in 1988 ended both his military and his skiing careers. TomHewHe swwww had originally chosen the “U” over the “Y” because of his notion that the “Y” was where people went to get married. After the military, he earned an MLS from the BYU library school and enrolled in a basic Russian 101 course only to meet potential dates. It worked: he met his future wife there, and so became a casualty of his own prejudice concerning the “Y.” Recently, he designed and built a home for his family in the Dimpledale area of Sandy. It’s kind of like a Sandy Dale with a dimple in it. Tom has worked at the Family History Library in SLC since 1991 and is the editor of a journal on East and Central European Genealogical Studies. He has given presentations and has written a number of books and articles on topics ranging from “the origins of the Russian Lutheran church” to “a beginner’s guide to Croatian research.” One of the researchers that Tom helped recently was the Israeli ambassador to the Vatican. Now when Israel announces the appointment of an ambassador to Temple Square, we’ll know we’ve really arrived.

Pam Grace is a relatively new addition to the Catalog Dept. She was raised in Provo, and even if you don’t know her, you might know her parents, Nathan and Joyce Smith, both of whom worked for HBLL and the library school until retirement of both them and the library school just a few years ago. During her student years at BYU, she worked with Mark Grover, Terry Dahlin and Carla Kupitz in the Reserve Library. After that, she moved to Arizona and worked as Director of Purchasing for an outpatient eye surgery center in Phoenix. This was run by an eye surgeon, Gary Hall, Sr., who used to be an Olympic swimmer; while Pam – as coincidence would have it – never was an Olympic swimmer. In Arizona she met her husband, Kim Grace, and they have a daughter, Ashley, who is now 11 years old. After their daughter started first grade, Pam worked part-time at East Mesa Regional Library. And then the family moved with indescribable grace back to Provo. In June, she began to be a copycat, that is, she began working as a copy cataloger, and she says she enjoys being back amongst her old friends. And the department is more graceful than it used to be.

Jessica Hacken is a full-time assistant in the Humanities & Divinities Dept. One of the most charming things about Jessica is her last name, Hacken. It has a certain phonetic and semantic je ne sais quoi. Jessica was born on PEI, as they say up north. That doesn’t stand for post-electronic infrastructure, but rather for Prince Edward Island, which is in Canada and it’s an Island, and it was named for a Prince by the name of Edward. Jessica claims to have lived all over Canada, which could be true, since she was a Fox (with a capital F) up until the time she was married. And, let’s face it, she still is somewhat of a fox.

She now sometimes calls Cardston, Alberta home, but only when she’s not answering questionnaires for the US Immigration &Naturalization Service, where she’s applying for a Green Card so she can be a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen. Jessica is married to J.D. Hacken, who is my nephew, so now she has both a crazy uncle-in-law and a wacky mother-in-law. Jessica earned a double B.A. in French and Family History from BYU two Aprils ago, so she could help you with your French family history. Her hobbies are sometimes Genealogy, sometimes Family history, film, Irish dance, needlepoint, and bird watching. Which films and which Irish dances and which birds, you’ll have to ask her.

Janet Heier is in charge of managing records at Records Management on Level Six. Janet grew up in American Fork, Utah and has the distinction of being both an AFHS Caveman Band Member and Sterling Scholar. That’s very versatile --- from cavewoman to scholar. At BYU she earned an Associate Degree in Business and danced on the BYU Ballroom Dance Team. She really got her Heier education when she married her husband, David Heier, 23 years ago, and they have five children. Two of her children are now BYU students. Although born and raised in Utah, she has spent the last 15 years living in the sunbelt states of Texas, Florida and Arizona as a major consumer of SPF 30+ sun-block lotion. Coppertone stock took only a slight dip when she moved back to Utah. She has served for a long time as a Cub Scout Commissioner and a Den Leader. She loves to travel and is looking forward to a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana – that is not a very distant journey, of course, since BYU spells Bayou. She is an avid reader— the book she is currently reading is Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty. Her younger children recommended this book to her, suggesting that the low level of their allowances put them at the epicenter of world poverty.

Andrea Howell has recently been hired full time in the Serials Department. She is from Riverton,

Wyoming, the 2nd of five children, which also makes her the pre-ante-penultimate child. For those of you unfamiliar with Riverton, it is situated near the geographic center of Wyoming, actually closer to Thermopolis than to Muddy Gap. (See what you can learn from maps and gazeeters?). She has four brothers: she is a lone woman in the Garden of Brethren. She graduated from Ricks College (back when it still was Ricks) one August ago. She worked in the library there for two years and has now been outsourced to BYU. Andrea is majoring in English, but she’s thinking about changing that to Communication. In any case, she eventually wants to write a book, a biography (since she loves true stories). Doesn’t it make sense, though, that a biography ought to be about TWO people , BI- ography. Shouldn’t a biography about one person be a monography? Anyway, Andrea loves to rollerskate, sing, and go fly-fishing!. The ideal thing for her would be to go fly-fishing on rollerskates while singing. Something unique, she has a fish named Monty. Since she loves fly-fishing, I wonder if she catches and releases her fish Monty every morning? Now if Monty were a snake rather than a fish, perhaps she would call him Monty Python.

Mike Hunter is our new History Librarian in the Social Science Department. The Social Science Department differs from the Science Department in that it has one more social; in social science, the research strategy for sociology is called the “sociopath,” while the research strategy for psychology is called the “psychopath.” Mike Hunter was born and grew up in Virginia. He joined the LDS Church his senior year of high school and then served a mission in Tahiti. That’s not a bad introduction to Mormonism; one advantage of a mission to Tahiti is that it isn’t difficult to teach the concept of paradise. Mike received his bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in Library Science from BYU. He is currently completing a second master's degree in humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills. As a graduate student at BYU, he worked as a reference assistant at the History & Religion Reference Desk, which is now definitely history. After interning at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, he has worked as a reference librarian in the Church Historical Department for eight and a half years. He’s also been a free-lance indexer for eight years, having indexed over eighty books for commercial and university presses. This indexing activity has required him to develop his index finger and as such has contributed to our digital society. Mike has written several articles on Utah and the Mormons. He loves to read murder mysteries in what little spare time he has. Mike and his wife LeAnn live in Lehi, where the number of their children varies from month to month, since they are foster parents.

Margaret Hyson now works in Family History. Margaret was born in a former Russian province by the name of Alyaska that is now called the State of Alaska. It gives us Anchoragement that she came to work for us. But she grew up in Security, Colorado. (Security is a suburb of Colorado Springs). Security, Colorado, differs from “Social Security” in that it is less social but is probably much more secure. Margaret grew up in the security of her family with 3 brothers and 1 sister. She graduated from BYU in 1995 in the field of psychology. So don’t try to psych her out; she knows more than one psycho - path. But, here’s a little secret: one of the greatest motivators in her life is called “chocolate.” On the other hand, original-flavored Goldfish work very well for smaller bribes; I assume she means Goldfish made out of flour rather than goldfish made out of goldfish. She also collects mice, but not real ones – ask her if this means computer mouses or Mickey Mouses. Her hobbies & interests, other than mice and goldfish, are Genealogy (of course); needlework & cross stitch; arts & crafts; and all kinds of puzzles (she’s currently hooked on cryptic crosswords. Cross-stitch, crosswords, she’s been double-crossed. One of her greatest talents: She is able to trip over anything (including thin air), anywhere, anytime; she rivals Steve Young for number of concussions.

Jacob Jenson is a new full time employee working for the Library Information Systems Department (LIS). When you click on the little window that says the entire system will be rebooted at 1:07 and would you please log in again after that time, please don’t refer to this department as Library Inflammation Systems. And Jacob has nothing to do with that anyway. He isn’t altogether unfamiliar to us, since he has worked with Amy Stucki on the digital library and other projects. -- I wonder if the digital library needs indexing? -- Jacob will be working as a web programmer, building systems and interfaces for library services and databases. To translate that into less technical terms, programming the web is… like being a spider architect that makes webs, and building interfaces sounds something like plastic surgery. Now if Jacob can just get paid as well as a plastic surgeon, he will feel very welcome indeed.

Leila Kramer is the new HBLL Serial Claims Supervisor. Or at least that’s what she claims. If you look around at the number of BYU library users on any given Saturday morning, it will probably exceed the population of the town where Leela (L-E-I-L-A) was born: Taft, California. Taft is one of those places that has a name that’s very, very… presidential: like Washington, D.C., Lincoln, NE, Madison, WI, Roosevelt, UT, Carterville Road, Busch Gardens, Taft, CA. Leila earned her bachelor's degree in Microbiology and Laboratory (NOT library) Science from BYU where she met and married her true love, Neal.  And we wonder if he did kneel when he proposed? They hit it off when they found they had both had the same experience of having been hospitalized in a foreign country. Isn’t that romantic? With her degree in microbiology, Leila is able to quickly identify germs on periodical issues that might put the reader thereof in a foreign hospital. During her six and twenty years of marriage, her family has lived in Utah, California, Illinois, Idaho and back to Utah again. Many think she is obsessed with weddings, but as the mother of 5 daughters, who wouldn't be?! She has spent a fair amount of the last 4 years shopping, sewing, landscaping, baking and being a florist for weddings. So far 60% of her daughters have directly benefited from her wedding happening skills. Despite her youthful appearance, she is a grandmother – of two grand-daughters, of course. She has very little enthusiasm for reading mysteries, since her daily job involves solving publication mysteries.

Myrna Layton is the brand new help in the Music Library. Myrna’s middle name is June, and I don’t know if that is when she was born, but she is certainly welcome in this august group. Myrna was born and grew up in Taber, Alberta, Canada. Taber is in Alberta, and if you go north from there, the population density really does Taber off. After finishing high school, Myrna attended BYU but didn't graduate right away. She did marry one Bruce Layton, who, curiously enough, is not from Layton, but from Salt Lake City. While co-producing six children, she kept chipping away at her education and finally graduated from BYU (thanks to distance ed). When her family lived in the Vancouver BC area, she worked part-time for the Fraser Valley Regional Library System. If I remember correctly, I think BC stands for “British Colony.” She is one victim of the defunct BYU MLS program; there was no program here, thus she did not get her MLS. After investigating many options, she chose to complete an MA in Humanities through Cal State-Dominguez Hills' extension program. (We’ve heard that name before.) Still, Myrna would like to do an MLS someday. She has worked for Calgary Public Library and Orem Public Library, and has been a Humanities teaching adjunct at UVSC. “Humanities adjunct” is a phrase used by students who think their homework load is too heavy: take Humanities and add junk, and add junk and add junk. Hobbies? She reads, plays the piano, sings in choirs, attempts to swim, run, and attend cultural events, not necessarily all at the same time.

Marilyn Lee is back in the Catalog Dept. again. Since she was once an English teacher, she has enough classical mythological quotations in her brain to pinpoint Hecate, goddess of sorcery, hounds and crossroads, as the source of the saying “The third time is a charm.” And we’re hoping that her third time in the Catalog Dept. since 1969 will be a charm as she comes back to these crossroads. By the way, the name of Hecate is taken in vain many times each day in Utah as abbreviated in the phrase “Oh my Heck.” Marilyn was born a few years back in … I can’t quite make out the name of the town here… it looks like Mt. Peasant or Mt. Pheasant… anyway, in Utah, maybe Mt. Pleasant. She says she was basically raised in Orem; it isn’t clear whether she means that was basically in Orem, or that her raising was quite basic. In any case, she is “way” glad to be back, borrowing an adjective from her children. Her children are now “way” grown up, though, and she has seven children and almost six grandchildren. The atmosphere in cataloging is a far cry, she says, from the tense and quasi-hallowed halls of litigation where she trembled for five years. She does miss the friends, the six o’clock sunrises and the user-friendly climate of Southern California, but as one of the “terrifying numbers of divorced” referred to by Elder Holland in the October conference of 1997, she has come home to seek her fortune or live out her days, whichever happens to come first.

Shaun McMurdie, not to be confused with McMurdo, which is a research station on Antarctica, is new to the HBLL conservation program, though he reports administratively to Special Collections, a little bit of trivia that you’ll be tested on after lunch. Shaun was born in Provo, Utah, yes, a local native, but was raised in Macomb, Illinois. He graduated from byu with a B.A. in Humanities, and a minor in International Relations. He is married to Kristie Martin of Columbus, Ohio, who was fortunate in being born late enough not to be a member of the Martin handcart company. They have three children, the oldest of which is approaching a double-digit age. Some of us here, myself included, are closer to triple digits… Shaun enjoys the fine arts, graphic design, and most sports. Most recently he was Collections Conservator at The Ohio State University Libraries, and before that General Collections Conservator at The University of Utah’s Marriott Hotel, I mean Marriott Library. He has also worked at conserving and restoring for a bookbinding company in Phoenix. The BYU conservation program should not be confused with the BYU conversation program, which is what happens when we all talk to each other.

Robert Murdoch is not the same person as Rupert Murdoch, who is a media billionaire, that is to say, Rupert Murdoch is the media billionaire, not Robert Murdoch, Robert Murdoch is the new Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services, technically speaking. Robert is the third of sixth children (that pre-ante-penultimate child again) and was born in Salt Lake City. Shortly after that, his family moved to Great Falls, Montana, the site of some really great falls, even greater than Idaho Falls, if you can imagine. Then his family moved to Layton, Utah, which he considers his hometown. Following an LDS mission in Scotland, the home of his ancestors, he returned to school at Utah State University and started working part-time in the library there. His degree was in Accounting, so you can see that though there may be no accounting for taste, he did have a certain taste for accounting. Robert married his high school sweetheart Linda, and they have four children, three daughters, now married, and a son who is a senior in High School. After graduation from USU, he was offered a full-time position at the Merrill Library where he remained for nearly three decades up until his wise choice to move to Provo. This past year he picked up a new hobby – being a grandpa – which is wonderful, since when things get sticky, so to speak, you can turn the child back to the parents. He also enjoys hiking, water skiing, snow skiing, and—strangely enough, reading. Robert, who is an MPLA Board Choice Award Winner for his potential to serve his library and the profession – was greeted early on in the Catalog Dept. with the words “You’re in big trouble, Bub.” Ask him about it.

Lee Richards works for Bill Lund in LIS doing some kind of programming that the rest of us can’t even understand, let alone do. He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. His growing years were lived from Ogden to Springville along the Wasatch front, save two years in Ohio, four in Maryland, three in Virginia, two in Southern California, and one in Louisiana and Georgia. Lee graduated from BYU in computer science in 1987. He now thinks he is grown up! He has worked programming jobs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for a telemarketing company (do not stone him, please!), for a small PC business company, for the largest flatbed trucking company in the nation, for Dynix--err--Ameritech--err--Epixtech, for ZZSoft, for Keane Consulting and now here at the library, enough states and enough companies for several lifetimes already, but we wish him many more years with us. Lee has four beautiful children ranging from ages 14 to 5, not necessarily in that order. His interests include caring for his children, gardening, sports and outdoor activities. These library meetings today constitute an outdoor activity… I don’t know if that really counts.

Brian Roberts is the new (and first) Assessment Officer. Those are two quite scary words. The word “assessment” means some kind of “test” to me, and the last time I addressed somebody as “officer,” he was handing me a ticket for doing something in a California intersection that everybody does at the end of every yellow light in Utah. But let’s give Brian the benefit of the doubt, within at least a 97% confidence level or some other statistical measure of good faith. Brian was born & raised in Boise, Idaho, which is famous for its potatoes and its Albertsons headquarters. He served a mission to Korea and then graduated from Ricks & BYU. He is married and has 3 children (one of each kind, plus one extra of the boy kind). He currently resides in Lindon, a town in Utah Valley that almost sounds like it should have houses of parliament. Brian’s current interests, besides his family, include baseball (which he has no time to follow) and collecting & viewing of classic movies (which he has no time to do either). His present church calling is in the Tabernacle Choir. Now, some very unreliable rumor has it that this famous group of singing voices will be renamed the “Mormon Conference Center Choir.” One other potential name change that has been ruled out for sure, though, is: “Crazy Jivin’ Craig Jessop and the 325 Infidels.”

That one is out for sure.

Allison Schreiber – Excess Services. Allison just graduated from BYU with a major in Interior Design

(sometimes called Architectural Anatomy) & with 2 minors, one in Russian and the other in German. Da, Russky - Ja, deutsch. Al, as she is sometimes called with no allusions to Al Gore, served a mission in Moscow – Russia, not Idaho. Sometime before that, she grew up in Sandy, Utah, not far from here, and believe me, if you’ve been in the West Desert during a wind storm then you know just how Sandy Utah can be. When she was 16, Al moved with her family to Vienna Austria, where her Father was mission President, and where she did all of her high schooling. I don’t know if she went to her Junior Prom at the Viennese State Opera House, but it was more likely there than at the Southtowne Mall. Al’s library career started back in 1999, when she worked on the 5th floor under the supervision of Martha Talman. While there, among other things she did, Al helped me to digitize Austrian diplomatic documents from World War I that are now woven aboard the Internet. In January of this year, after Martha made good her escape to the Music Library, Allison followed her on down to be a Reference Assistant on the 4th floor. After graduation, she moved further down to the 3rd floor in what the irreverent refer to as Excess Services because they have too much to do. After moving from Level 5 to 4 to 3, Al has been teased that maybe in a few years she will end up in Special Collections on Level 1.

Liberty Sproat is a new part-time staff member in General Reference. This department, by the way, has seen a lot of progress through the years, having been promoted from Private Reference (Private First Class Reference, of course) to Lieutenant Reference and now 4-Star General Reference. Liberty, who hails from the city of Orem, goes by the name Libby most of the time. She has been married for almost three years, and her husband studies English (he does study English; he is studying English) here at BYU. Libby graduated last December with a degree in European Studies, which is, undoubtedly, one of the most magnificent fields of learning at our fine institution, the library books for which are especially relevant and well chosen. She plans on going to graduate school sometime in the future to try and understand different cultures through their films. One of the first things she’ll be taught, if she has a good film professor, is that some misguided critics keep referring to some offbeat & surreal nature of Fellini films, while we who love Italy realize that Fellini was just making documentaries of the way things really are. Oh, one very interesting thing about Libby is that the doctor dropped her when she was born, and she says she hasn’t been the same since. But how would she know how she would be if she hadn’t been dropped? We of the library wish a good LIFE for LIBERTY while she is in the pursuit of HAPPINESS.

Elizabeth Steed works at the circulation desk now. So maybe she can help if you have any circulatory disorders. She grew up in Northern California, presumably somewhere in those 600-700 miles between Pismo Beach and the Oregon state line. This is also where she met and married her husband. They moved to Utah shortly thereafter, and they’ve lived in this state on and off for the past two decades. They’ve also been Arizonian, Washingtonian, Idahonian and Coloradonian. They’ve been blessed with six children and one grandchild as of today’s tally. Elizabeth enjoys working at BYU while her husband continues his education full time. One unique thing about her is that she always has to take someone with her when she goes shopping for clothes. The reason for that is – not to keep her spending down, but because she has a form of color blindness that prevents her from being able to match her clothes. The eye doctor says that she’s in the worst 10% of cases. So if you see her wearing ensembles that look very odd together, you’ll know that she had to dress herself that morning without expert outside consultation!

Jennifer Stoker was hired in March as the Excess Services Desk Supervisor. It’s true: I have seen the visor on her desk, and it truly is super. Jennifer has a degree in Family History, and no, she’s hasn’t filled in all her family history back to Adam. The Middle Ages seem to be presenting a bit of a problem, and only 56 of her lines even go back before the time of the pyramids. She is the youngest of 11 children… well, actually now 15. Her mother recently got remarried and so now she has 4 step-siblings as well. Who else of us in a non-polygamous family can say we have 14 older brothers and sisters? That makes her the ultimate child. Jennifer says that three things that can stoke her are volleyball, creative cooking, and people. Since she enjoys volleyball and people, she probably enjoyed the movie “Cast Away” with Tom Hanks, where a volleyball was a person. When it comes to creative cooking, we have to ask her: “just how creative?” Anything that you could get 17 people in one family to eat and enjoy would have to be either fairly creative or fairly safe.

Annalee Tyler is our new web designer /slash/ graphic designer. This is a position we haven’t had up till now in the library, and IS it a coincidence that we have ALSO not had any spiffy web designs up till now? Annalee was lucky enough to grow up in Alpine, UT, which is lodged in one beautiful corner niche of Utah Valley, snuggled up against the mountains. She was the 9th of 10 children, the penultimate child, thus all her brothers and sisters are enough for a softball team, even with one extra pitcher in the bullpen. Annalee attended Utah State University and graduated in History with an emphasis in Classical Studies. Thus, don’t be too surprised if she sprinkles a lot of Roman numerals into the new library catalog. After graduating, she worked at Utah Public Radio as a producer and a talk show host. This is good news, since it means now I don’t have to be a producer and host of this annual talk show anymore. We’ve found new blood. After developing a number of freelance sites for a government research project at USU, she decided to pursue web design full-time. In her free time, Annalee likes to travel and explore the great outdoors. She enjoys most sports, but racquetball and softball are her favorites. You won’t hear her make much of a racket, though: her voice is quite soft. She loves PBS, NPR, old movies, and great books.

Aren’t acronyms fun? PBS stands for Public Broadcast System (I think). NPR stands for National Public Radio.

These two acronyms bring to mind some of the other library abbreviations we have: CD-ROM stands for “Changeable Disc –hyphen- Really Obsolete Machine;” ILS, especially lately, stands for “I Lose Sleep;” LAN is the abbreviation for “Loony Apparatus, Nonpermanent;” NOTIS (which is now history) meant “Now Our Technology Is Superseded;” ULO (which is also history now) once stood for: “Unpredictable Library Organization,” which is why it had to be changed to LAO, which stands for “Let’s AGAIN Organize.”

Brian Wages now earns his wages in Excess Services. His slot/ we got / at first, you see / from the university; … he has come aboard to take care of 3-D, that is to say, Digital Document Delivery. In this position, he will be delivering indexed digits all over the world, especially to CES users. Brian was born and raised in Idaho Falls, Idaho and that’s where his parents still live (even now after more than ten years away, it’s sometimes hard for him not to tell people that he’s an Idahoan). He wants to have nothing to do with people like me who say puns like: “Idahoed potatoes if I’d a had a stronger back.” Brian came to BYU straight from high school with the intention of getting an advanced degree in English. He served a mission in Tempe, Arizona (including a small mining town called Globe, AZ, whose only claim to fame is "the town the world was named after"). Since graduating, he has resided in this fair Provolonian metropolis ever since. He met his future wife in a BYU singles ward and they were married nearly three years later. They have two children, the total of whose ages can be counted on a single hand.

The final introduction of the day is not of a person, but of a strategy that will be even more helpful than an entire committee of persons from whence it came. So nobody really has to stand up. This is a set of strategies that a sub-sub-subcommittee of the Strategic Planning Committee has worked out.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. This generally makes sense.

But because of the high equestrian costs in today’s automated library environment, the sub-sub-subcommittee has suggested some other possible strategies for dealing with dead horses:

1. Appoint a different sub-sub-subcommittee to study the lifeless horse.

2. Buy a stronger whip.

3. Assign somebody else to ride the deceased horse.

4. Visit other sites to see how they ride expired horses.

5. Lower the standards so that all horses can be included.

6. Reclassify the horse as "metabolically impaired".

7. Outsource expert horsemen to ride the horse.

8. Harness several kaputt horses together to increase speed.

9. Provide more training opportunities for the horse.

10. Do a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the late horse's performance.

11. Rewrite the expected job performance requirements for all horses.

12. Hire a consultant to tell you whether the horse is defunct.

And finally, #13. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

So we see the final acronym for today is SPC : not for “Strategic Planning Committee”

but rather: “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty” (to Animals).