Member of the Month: Marilyn Myers
Marilyn Myers
Associate Dean for Public Services
University of Houston Libraries
What inspires you in your work?
The breadth of libraries’ engagement within their universities is very energizing for me. I like to think we help all components of the university succeed. We contribute to programs that recruit students, support student academic success, provide comfortable work space, work with faculty to enhance and assess the effectiveness of learning, and offer events for both the campus and metropolitan Houston community. We provide customized research support to graduate students and offer the faculty research assistance throughout the scholarly communication process. I am further inspired by the fact that at the University of Houston Libraries we do this collectively, harnessing the expertise and creativity of a cadre of library professionals who do amazing things every day to demonstrate the value of the library to the institution.
Are you currently working on a project that is exciting or interesting? Tell us about it!
I am taking the lead on the design of a biomedical sciences library. It will be new space in a new building in support of patient care services, workforce training programs, research endeavors and community outreach being brought together from across the University. We will be hiring individuals with the expertise to design new programs of support for teaching and research.
What do you do when you’re not being a librarian?
I am a workplace coach supporting clients and promoting a coaching culture within the University of Houston Libraries. I am in the processing of gaining the expertise and experience to become a credentialed coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF). I am an active member of the Association for Conflict Resolution and the ICF.
What are you reading?
I just finished Sum It Up, Pat Summitt’s story of her incredible career in women’s basketball. I am making my way through Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, a collection of poets and writers definitions for terms that describe land masses and forms water takes, edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney. Over the [Thanksgiving] holidays, I re-read selections from my collection of Christmas mystery short stories. I had a new volume this year—Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop by Otto Penzler.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that most people would not guess by looking at you?
I am a weightlifter. My personal best deadlift is 250 lbs.
What is your favorite non-library website? Why?
Sprott’s Fractal Gallery. I love fractals and a new one is posted every day.
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