Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment in our series recognizing the legacy of the NCI Frederick Scientific Library. Lisa Simpson contributed reporting to this article.
To the final team of Scientific Library staff, the library was both a physical location and an intangible purpose, a second home and a calling. The facility may have been measured in square feet, but to its employees, the Scientific Library was measured in experiences with each other and the patrons they helped.
Deanna West: A Calling in Frederick
Growing up, Deanna West spent plenty of time in Frederick and had obtained her bachelor’s degree from Hood College, so joining the Scientific Library as its new director in 2022 was a return to familiar territory.
She’d spent years building the skills to excel in her self-described homecoming. Teaching preschool early in her career cultivated her professional compassion and cemented her role as a leader and communicator. Then, after gaining a master’s degree in information science, she worked 18 years at the MITRE Corporation, capping off an impressive tenure of growth and leadership by managing MITRE’s 22-person library staff.
As NCI Frederick’s Scientific Library director, West strived to pay it forward, giving others compassion and new opportunities to learn.
“It is like the best feeling to watch people grow and spread their wings and learn new things. I just love it,” she said.
West’s work at MITRE gave her a valuable perspective for NCI Frederick. Her team there supported seven Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) and had communicated with libraries at other FFRDCs. Since Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, the operator of NCI Frederick’s Scientific Library, is also an FFRDC, West knew it was the right place to be.
“I felt a calling to be here,” she said of coming to the Scientific Library.
She came with a vision to expand the library’s role, emphasizing it as a hub of collaboration—a place for patrons and library staff to work and grow together. Under her leadership, the staff began to make more services and materials available online to improve accessibility for patrons.
West said she’s proud of what her team accomplished.
“Change is not always easy, but, as a team, we did it together,” she said.
Derdev Battseteg: Part of Life
In 1992, Derdev Battsetseg was at home caring for her young son when her husband, then a postdoctoral fellow at NCI Frederick, told her about an aide position open at the Scientific Library. Curious, she applied—and got the job.
Over the next 33 years, she’d work or volunteer on and off in various positions at the library, from aide to interlibrary loan clerk to technician. When asked about it, she simply calls it “part of her life.”
“It worked for me really well,” she said.
It worked well for NCI Frederick, too. Battsetseg built a reputation among patrons and staff as a fast worker capable of locating hard-to-find resources. She once tracked down a 1926 article published in a German periodical—and obtained a copy the same day via interlibrary loan—for a scientist who needed it immediately.
“She turned around stuff at lightning-fast speeds,” said librarian Matt Stirling, one of Battsetseg’s colleagues.
Battsetseg credits her quick thinking and interpersonal skills in part to her time teaching classes for blind children years prior. Like the Scientific Library, it was a complex, compassionate environment where clear communication was key.
Still, she continued to learn while at the Scientific Library. Helping scientists gave her a greater understanding of their work, and as the spouse of a scientist, it enriched her personal life by helping her connect with her husband and his research.
“We could talk about the science, about nature, its impact on his life, his work as well. … I could talk to him more about what’s going on in science,” she said.
It ought to be no surprise that looking back, Battsetseg sees this part of her life as time well spent.
“I was really grateful that I worked here,” she said.
Alan Doss: ‘Accidental Librarian’
Alan Doss discovered his passion for working in the library and helping patrons through 19 years of firsthand experiences as a patron himself. Hired to NCI Frederick in 1985 as a research technician working on hybridomas, he spent plenty of time researching at the library and enjoyed being in the space and interacting with the staff.
When an evening library aide position opened in 2004, he took the chance and applied. The library hired him, and he spent the next four years working in the lab by day and the library by night.
“There’s a term in the library world. It’s called an ‘accidental librarian.’ It’s like it’s nothing you even thought of doing, but just all of a sudden … it opens up,” he said of the career twist.
While balancing the two jobs might sound overwhelming, Doss said he liked his new responsibilities and coworkers. So, when the library sought to hire a full-time librarian in 2009, he hung up his lab coat and shifted into the position.
Over the following years, “How can I help?” remained his motto, whether he was assisting a patron, distributing weekly PubMed and Web of Science alerts about new studies, teaching a class, or hosting the annual Student Science Jeopardy! Tournament after it moved to an online format. He recalls being happy to help with or work on whatever question walked through the door. There was always a new skill to adapt or something new to learn.
“You know, it’s kind of nice being here all these years, and I learned a lot, certainly. And, hopefully, people learned a lot from us,” he said.
Matt Stirling: Seven Years of Growth
Matt Stirling considers himself lucky to have worked at the Scientific Library and appreciates the chances it gave him to grow and help others.
He came to Frederick in 2018 from PPD, a contract research organization where he’d been helping scientists with their questions for 22 years. The Scientific Library would expose him to even more modes of assisting and supporting patrons.
In a first for his career, Stirling became the library’s instructional coordinator and, as of 2022, the EndNote instructor and specialist. While he says the roles felt unusual at first, he quickly acclimated to them and enjoyed the new experience.
He and West collaborated to build LibGuides, another new role for him. The guides, part of the library’s increasing push to educate patrons and improve access to materials, were research hubs of resources on specific topics.
Stirling’s goal was always to provide excellent customer service and get creative where he could, whether that was with a research request or a task like the library’s Daily Science News digests.
One time, at some patrons’ request, he and West created an infographic about efficient ways to warm lab freezer temperatures slightly, a cost-cutting and energy-saving measure. Another time, he leveraged an obscure government archive site to retrieve a crucial document the Clinical Monitoring Research Program Directorate needed for a proposal the same day. Patrons were thrilled to have quick, useful solutions.
Like in any growth opportunity, Stirling admits it was challenging sometimes, but that didn’t outweigh the best parts of the job. He loved the experience and getting to work with NCI Frederick scientists.
“We were all very, very strong collaborators,” he said.
Pam Noble: Loved the Work
For years, Pam Noble regularly hefted big volumes of periodicals, some of the heaviest books in the Scientific Library. She also oversaw multiple reorganizations of large parts of the collection, efforts so extensive they sometimes required a pallet jack.
Despite this, she says she never “worked” a day because she loved her job.
Noble joined the Scientific Library as its serials technician in 1991. Her role charged her with managing the periodicals collection, a crucial resource for NCI Frederick scientists. Each day, she tracked incoming journal issues, issues shipped out for binding into volumes, and issues on loan.
Already a big job, it’d sometimes be even bigger. When the collection outgrew the library in 1994, Noble was responsible for estimating how much additional space would be necessary to accommodate another decade of growth and for protecting the periodicals during construction to expand the library—including their shipment to and from a warehouse for safekeeping.
“I just really always loved what I did, so that made my life easy,” she said.
Noble also enjoyed working with patrons and was a key player in getting all library staff a turn at the circulation desk. She’d come from a small, two-person library where she and her former colleague both helped patrons. After coming to Frederick, she asked Sue Wilson, then the library director, for time at the desk in addition to time handling periodicals “in the back.” Wilson agreed, and the model eventually became the standard.
Another delight came later, when she inherited the task of curating the library’s archive. With her background and degree in history, caring for and adding to the collection was a joy amid an already fulfilling career.
“I would say that we had a good run; that we did amazing things; and I was very, very, very blessed, lucky to have worked here all these years,” Noble said.
Photos from the SPGM archive, from top:
- Derdev Battsetseg (right) reviews one of the Scientific Library’s historical scrapbooks with then-librarian Tracie Frederick.
- Alan Doss (right) speaks with a Scientific Library patron during National Library Week 2019.
- Matt Stirling addresses a group of scientists attending the National Library Week 2019 celebration.
- Pam Noble works on one of the Scientific Library’s historical scrapbooks.
Samuel Lopez leads the editorial team in Scientific Publications, Graphics & Media (SPGM). He writes for newsletters; informally serves as an institutional historian; and edits scientific manuscripts, corporate documents, and sundry other written media. SPGM is the creative services department and hub for editing, illustration, graphic design, formatting, and multimedia.
Read other parts of the series:
- Echoes from the Past, Life and Times of a Scientific Library, Part 1 (miniseries part one)
- Echoes from the Past, Life and Times of a Scientific Library, Part 2 (miniseries part two)
- Echoes from the Past, Life and Times of a Scientific Library, Part 3 (miniseries part three)