If you had to use one word to describe Jennifer “Non-stop” would be a good one. Other words that apply are enthusiastic, friendly, and knowledgeable. 

Jennifer has worked in libraries for over 25 years starting in her high school years at King County Library (KCLS) as a Page. She continued working for KCLS all through her college and graduate school days honing her skills as she went. Her dream job and where she focused her education was in Children’s Services and fresh out of library school she went to work for the Ellensburg City Library as the youth services librarian. Pulling on her experience at KCLS and knowing what was possible, Jennifer took the children’s program to a new level introducing baby and toddler story times, school age programs as well as teen programming. With her quiet charm she roped in the Police and Fire Departments, the City Manager and the Mayor to come and read to the kids. She participated on behalf of the library with the kids in the Ellensburg parade, rode on a float and had on average four programs A DAY! One of the most popular programs was an American Girl Doll event. It started as a Victorian tea complete with real china but soon became a multi-age event for both boys and girls where they put on plays. As she said “The kids enjoy being stage managers and lighting engineers even if they won’t appear on stage.” Sets were made, costumes produced, the show must go on! Jennifer stressed however, that the kids did the work, she just coordinated the event. Did I say “non-stop”?

Besides her day to day work, while in Ellensburg, Jennifer was also the backup Library Director and was often called on to function in this role. In her “free time” She became involved in CAYAS and has been active in the Washington Library Association (WLA) since 1997.

Jennifer loved her time in Ellensburg but wanting to be closer to family she moved back to Western Washington and to the Sno-Isle Libraries, specifically the Mukilteo Library. While at Sno-Isle she was promoted to Assistant Children’s Service Manager. She co-implemented an early learning program called “Ready Readers”. She reports that working with the Children’s staff at Sno-Isle is “Where I got my love of training.” Jennifer’s tenure at Sno-Isle was before Washington’s state-wide involvement with the Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP), each library had to create their own Summer Reading Program.

Richard Jesse Watson’s Sno-Isle’s Summer Reading Logo

She developed a partnership with authors/illustrators to help produce programs and materials for the SRP and other programming and is still friends with many of these authors.

While at Sno-Isle, Jennifer also worked as a collection development librarian and was “loaned” to Lake Stevens Library as a Branch Manager. She found she really liked the “high level work” and that is what eventually led her to the State Library.

Ready for new challenges, in 2008 Jennifer became the Training Coordinator for Washington State, coordinating trainings both in person and online. She plans at least two major “on the ground” events a year, this year’s being the wildly successful “Gadget Menagerie” and “Mental Health First Aid”.   “She also partners with the WLA on a Continuing Education Needs Assessment which goes to all  librarians in Washington state. This fall look for a Social Media training and more sessions of “Leading without Authority.” Judging on the success of Jennifer’s past programs you might want to sign up early.

You would think with ALL this going on in her life there would be no time for anything else but Jennifer has a husband and two dogs to keep her busy in her off hours. She and her husband make jewelry (just look the next time you see her) and love to travel. Her cubicle walls are covered with gorgeous pictures taken in London, Hawaii and Egypt.

But enough from me, let’s see what her fans have to say about her.

“Jennifer is a person of many dimensions but more than anything she is patient, everywhere and every when, she is cool, calm and patient with, well, everybody.”

Lauren L R Murphy, Senior Librarian, Bonney Lake Pierce County Library

“I have worked with Jennifer on numerous projects and her depth of knowledge is always a great asset to each one. She brings a genuine enthusiasm to everything she does and her professional joy is infectious. Jenn is such a treasure to work with!”

Brianna K. Hoffman Richland Public Library

“I admire her as a ‘connector’ creating networks with people state-wide as well as with CE people in other libraries around the country.”

Jeanne Fondrie, Learning Coordinator, Whatcom County Library System

‘I first met Jennifer when I was a new librarian – I followed her as children’s librarian at the Mukilteo Library.  From the beginning, I appreciated the way she took me under her wing and mentored me… I can always count on Jennifer to offer advice on potential trainers, improving training or leadership.  She is knowledgeable, friendly and approachable.”

Kristin Piepho, Children’s Coordinator, Sno-Isle Libraries

Are you tired reading this? I could barely keep up with taking notes. Do you have a training need? Washington Librarians and libraries are in good hands with Jennifer Fenton.

“Judy is my bulldog. She’ll sink her teeth into a project and finish it!” These are the words of Judy’s supervisor Marlys Rudeen, Deputy State Librarian.

What a great picture this paints of a woman with a long and varied career with the Washington State Library. Judy started in 1998 at WSL as a prison librarian working at Washington Corrections in Shelton. She loved this job because she felt that it was like all libraries rolled into one. Depending on the patron she could be called upon, in any given day, to be a medical librarian, a school librarian or a public librarian. Before moving to Washington, Judy had worked as a school librarian at some tough inner city schools in Virginia and said the transition to working in the prisons was really not that hard.

In 2002 Judy left the Prison library and came to work in Digital Collections for WSL and has been there ever since. Judy sees her work as building on itself over time. Her work as a school librarian made her a better prison librarian. Her experiences at both libraries made her understand the importance of the digital collections; how they could be used by school children for research and how the prisoners could use state agency information.

Marlys also said that with the turnover in the last few years that Judy has been invaluable as she has completed many projects which other people have started and left.   Their department is considerably smaller than when Judy first came to work in Digital Collections but it hasn’t slowed her down. In addition to the work she completes on her own, Judy also works with volunteers to help with the digitization projects. She has worked on the Emma Smith DeVoe papers, the Josephine Corliss scrapbook, the digitization of Washington Newspapers, has digitized Historical Maps and oversees the Classics in Washington History. Then there is her pet project, digitizing the Washington State Voter’s pamphlets which she does when she needs a relaxation break. Judy sees these as full of a rich history that would be fascinating and informative for school projects. One example she gave is the sorts of initiatives that were being proposed during prohibition. Speaking of interesting initiatives Judy discovered a gem from 1952 – Initiative 180 – a proposal to the voters to allow yellow coloring to be added to margarine. You can read the arguments for and against on pages 6+7 of “A Pamphlet containing…”   As you can imagine these voter’s pamphlets contain a snapshot of history and what was important to people of the time. In 1952 apparently margarine was high on that list!

One of Judy’s main jobs is to run herd on the State Agencies digital publications. It is the law as well as the mission of the State Library to collect all documents that are published by Washington State agencies, no small task. She accomplishes this in a variety of ways. If she is lucky the agency sends her a copy of a newly published document, sometimes electronically through email or FTP, sometimes on a CD or DVD. But she also has a special tool, a “Page Checker’ built for this specific purpose. Whenever a state agency makes a change to their page Judy will receive a notification through the checker. She then is able to go in, download the document and begin the process of adding it to the State Library’s collection. After a weekend there can be as many as 50 pages to check. Imagine what it’s like after a vacation! All this hard work creates a rich resource in our catalog for researchers to learn about the work of the Washington State agencies.

Outside of work Judy has many other things to keep her busy. She has two children, now grown, two dogs and four cats. In addition to her full time job at the WSL Judy and her husband, along with good friends, run their own t-shirt printing business, a true labor of love as Judy loves t-shirts and personally owns over 100 of them. Most days she leaves her job at the library to head over to their warehouse for an evening of work. A mild mannered librarian on the outside, take a look at her crazy socks and you’ll catch a glimpse of what lurks beneath the surface.

The State library as well as the researchers of Washington are fortunate to have this “bulldog” librarian on our staff. Thank you Judy for all that you do.

Rocio Franklin, as Washington Talking Book & Braille Library’s Receptionist, has one of the most important jobs at the library. Her smiling face and voice greet our volunteers, visitors and patrons when they enter the library and her cheerful voice welcomes all incoming calls to WTBBL’s main phone line.  “Rocio is like a ball of sunshine. She brings a special warmth, kindness, and humor to WTBBL,” says Danielle Miller, WTBBL’s Program Manager. This perfectly describes Rocio and why she is such a treasure to the library. When Rocio’s colleagues are asked to describe her, her willingness to take on new tasks and projects is repeatedly mentioned.  Rocio’s tireless dedication, optimistic spirit and never-ending creativity have made her one of the most celebrated members of the WTBBL team.

While Rocio’s title is Receptionist, she takes on many administrative and clerical tasks to assist the patrons of the library. Since she moved from the position of Custodian to Receptionist in 2009, Rocio has become the point person working with OSOS purchasing to keep WTBBL stocked with supplies, assisted with two summer reading programs and has become a major part of the team that processes donations for WTBBL.

Rocio, a native Spanish speaker, has also become the library’s translator and a lifesaver for our Spanish speaking patrons. “She has made it a special mission to reach out to our Spanish speaking patrons, welcoming them and ensuring their library service is muy bueno!,” adds Danielle Miller. She has since become a de facto reader’s advisor for this important group of patrons, who in many cases did not fully benefit from the service before her efforts.

Rocio translates all of our print material into Spanish and took the initiative to call the parents of our young Spanish language patrons to ensure the parents received materials to remain a part of their child’s reading life. In April of 2012, Rocio suggested and spearheaded WTBBL’s first celebration of Dia de los Niños/Dia de los Libros, which included packets of her personal story from her childhood experiences of Dia de los Niños in Mexico.  Every WTBBL child received the packet and Rocio created a marvelous display to capture the celebration for visitors to the library.

Tyler Kaye, WTBBL’s Patron Registrar, says it best: “Working at the front desk is often like being an air-traffic controller. You’ve got to efficiently direct telephone calls, visitors, and volunteers to where they need to be. It can be a pretty stressful task, but Rocio always handles it with grace.” Rocio’s graceful handling of all patrons and volunteers and her motivation to assist in all areas of the library has made Rocio an irreplaceable member of the WTBBL, WSL and OSOS team.