Friday, May 21, 2010

Celebrating People


Daisy Benson and Angie Chappel - Sokol have in common an amazing willingness to help people find what they need, when they need it. May 2010 brought official recognition for both of them for their librarian work for almost 10 years.

Daisy moved to Burlington, Vermont ten years ago all the way from Texas. She started working at the Bailey/ Howe Library and helped facilitate people’s way of discovering the intricate ways of research. Her job responsibilities changed over the years, but if you have to put a name on it, her position would be library structure coordinator. A job that embodies her efforts (and of course others’) to improve the library's dynamics and to meet students' research needs. She began by working on the Bailey/ Howe website in order to create better search engines for a variety of needs. Throughout the years she started teaching and having face to face contact with both students and Library staff. As she simply says it – “the part of my job that I like most is teaching”. On May 5th 2010, during the Rainbow Graduation organized by the LGBTQ Center at UVM, Daisy received the Glen Elder Faculty Leadership Award in appreciation of her work to make the campus a better place for students. She has dedicated a great deal of her time to students working with LGBTQ Services in the past years.

Angie came to Vermont 15 years ago from Illinois and started working at the Dana Medical Library 5 years after that. She did her master’s in Library Science and then used her educational background to become a reference librarian on UVM Campus. She helps the nurses at Fletcher Allen keep up with the information and technology relevant for their profession. Angie believes that “you can make librarianship very interesting” and just like Daisy, she loves teaching other people what her years of work had taught her. And she especially loves working with nurses, because she finds it challenging on a day to day basis - “People think of nurses as being part of the landscape, not as people who help you get better”. On May 12th , at the Annual Meeting and Banquet organized by Sigma Theta Tau Honor Society of Nurses, Angie received “The Friend of Nursing Award” for all her work until now at Dana Medical Library.