Sherrod Library News

Recognizing Sherrod Staff: Jeri Paddock, Winner of the ETSU Staff Senate Career Award

Jeri Paddock, Sherrod Library AskUs Supervisor

Since the early 2000s, Jeri Paddock, manager of the Sherrod Library’s Ask Us desk, has opened the Library with a consistency perhaps rivaled only by the United States Postal Service. Rain or shine, snow or hail, it is a rare storm that keeps Jeri from getting the library up and running and ready to serve the ETSU community in the morning, often regardless of campus closures or delays. Even during the campus closures of the pandemic era, Jeri continued to come into the office, the main coordinator of curbside pickup for ETSU’s needy researchers. This dedication to prompt and consistent service has been one of the hallmarks of Jeri’s career at ETSU.

Jeri began working at the Sherrod Library in 1999 for the Interlibrary Loan Department. In this era, ILL was still mostly done on paper, and Jeri was the one tasked with finding articles, scanning them on the library’s Telex machine, and sending them off to our off-campus borrowers. As the person at the front office in the old departmental location, Jeri became accustomed to being the first face people saw when they came in looking for news on their ILL requests. She adopted a, “We’ll be in touch within twenty-four hours,” policy when it came to helping people locate their ILL materials and ensured that all patrons who came to her with issues, did have those resolved within a day of their visiting the library. This mentality carried over five years later, when she moved into the Circulation Department.

In 2004, Jeri transferred into being manager of what was then Circulation and is now Ask Us. This wasn’t the only change Jeri’s seen in the library. “It used to be that the whole library first floor, second, third, all looked the same. Now they all look unique, but it used to be, people would forget what floor they were even on.” Every level was blocked off, similar to how the third floor still is. Every level had stacks, and the computers we did have could only be used for the library website. One of Jeri’s first big projects was helping to “scrunch” all the materials on the first floor onto the upper levels, when the decision was made to clear the original stacks from the ground floor to make room for other campus units and services. Around this same time, Jeri worked alongside a team of library faculty and staff, to reclassify our collection, going from the Dewey Decimal System to Library of Congress Call Numbers. Having worked with ILL previously,  Jeri was able to use her understanding of how cataloging affected finding to play an important role in the implementation of this massive project.

Another major project, hugely impactful to ETSU students has been Jeri’s work on the library’s lending laptop program. The labor for this has now largely been taken over by ITS, but for a long time, Jeri managed re-imaging and circulation of the lending laptops. During the pandemic, this service was a saving grace for many students who found themselves suddenly expected to finish up in-person classes online. Jeri continued coming into the building, sanitizing and serving ETSU.

Jeri and library scholarship-winning AskUs GA. Emilee Storie in 2023

In her day-to-day work, Jeri and the Ask Us desk are, for many students, faculty, and staff, the first point of contact they get in the library. To serve this purpose, the desk is staffed by three full-time employees, in addition to Jeri, and a gaggle of student workers and graduate students. “As a former Ask Us student worker,” current Government Documents Specialist, Paul Nease, said, “Jeri was, and still is, kind of like my work mom. For students where this is their first job, she provides a really important sense of structure and has a tough love policy for those that really need it.” He added, “I was one of the ones who needed it, and I’m grateful for it. The more you work under Jeri, the more you realize how much she genuinely cares for the people in her department and wants to see them do well.”

For her part, Jeri has humbly and steadfastly performed her work as a circulation manager for over twenty years, always with a people first policy. It is this labor and group leadership that has kept the building open and books delivered on-time for the betterment of the entire ETSU community. But when it comes to what really makes Jeri smile when thinking about her work with ETSU, it’s thinking about her former student workers. “Some of my GAs have gone on to do fabulous things, that’s the fun part.” She explained how great it was to hear from former students, checking in or asking for letters of recommendation. Often they prompt, “Do you remember me?”

She always does.

“I’ve had about five student workers who went on to become medical doctors. One spent her time here telling me she was not going into OB, no way,” Jeri told me, laughing. “Well now she’s one of the top OBGYNs in West Tennessee.”

In many ways, Jeri exemplifies what a winner of the ETSU Staff Senate Career Award should be. An individual dedicated to doing her part to better her community, through tireless, constant effort and one-one-one care for both library patrons and her departmental staff. Having been at ETSU for twenty-five years, Jeri has touched the lives of several generations worth of students, and has collaborated with countless faculty and staff on research and service projects. Jeri is truly a gem at the Sherrod Library, and a role model for every student and staff person she has ever managed or mentored.