By DAVID JANZEN

Staff Writer

First-year students this fall won’t have the pleasure of receiving their library orientations from one of Niagara College’s most dedicated librarians.

Sandy Kerr, 60, retired in June after 39 years of maintaining the library at the Welland campus, helping students find materials for their assignments and continually educating herself to be more effective at work.

“The staff have been great — past and present,” she says on one of her last days on the job in the library.

“They [the staff] have been really supportive over the years. We really are a team here — we work as a team.”

Prior to coming to Welland, Kerr worked two years in Toronto at Acres Consulting Engineers, but then started applying to jobs in the Niagara Region.

She was offered two jobs in the same day, librarian at Niagara College or a position at Fleet Industries, which made plane parts in Fort Erie.

She chose the librarian position.

Ralph Laird, Niagara-on-the-Lake campus librarian, says, “She was our IT guru.” 

Laird says she took the time and put in the effort to always stay up to date on keeping the library organized; she knew how all the record-keeping systems worked.

In addition to staying on top of the library systems, Kerr found time during her full-time work to earn herself a bachelor of arts in philosophy in 2000 from Brock University in St. Catharines. 

And what is she going to do now that she’s retired? 

A friend has a great line when someone asks that question, she says, it goes: “I don’t know, I’ve never been retired before.”

Kerr says she’ll do a lot of reading, gardening and walking, and in the morning she is “definitely looking forward to not getting up.”

Karen McGrath, library services manager, says Kerr has “an in-depth knowledge” of the Integrated Library System and is a “great resource.”

She says Kerr “left big shoes to fill” and was a “wonderful right-hand person.” McGrath added, “She is so organized. She can do a million things at once.”

There won’t be a need for that amount of organization now as the summer weather has settled in and Kerr no longer has books to process.

Jillian Grenier, a second-year Graphic Design Production – Art and Design Fundamentals student, who has worked with Kerr during the summer says, “I hope she enjoys being retired, she deserves it.”