Mary Fitzgerald

Librarian

“There’s a great deal of pride in the academic community we have here and in the product we deliver.”

“I’ve been at SMC forever!” says Mary Fitzgerald. (It was, just for the record, since 1970.) “And I’m having a better time now then I ever had. You see, I’ve got all these new toys…” Mary’s “toys” are the state of the art information retrieval systems that the SMC library now busily hums with.

“We have such expanded access now,” says Mary. “The information was always there; getting it was difficult. But now, it’s just fun. And our system never cools down. There’s always someone busily at work.”

Innovation in library technology has indeed made the SMC library an exciting place. “We don’t have to work at getting our students enthused,” says Mary. “Once we introduce them to the system, they’re fired up. They have no resistance to the new technology.”

Mary spends her free hours “getting grubby” with the German warm-blooded horses she’s been breeding for 20 years. “They’re used for dressage and jumping and they’re my passion,” she says. “They have really nice minds and big feet.”

Mary’s personal search for knowledge often gets a little more rigorous than simply combing the stacks for an obscure title. “When I’m not charging off to Africa or riding through the back hills of Spain, I’m studying the flora and fauna of the rainforest. And I spent last summer going down the Amazon in a dugout canoe.”

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