Winter 2023 Staff Retirements
February 20, 2023
Ellen Broadwell retired in December 2022 as Library Technician IV in the Acquisitions, Gifts, E-resources & Serials Department. Ellen was appointed Acquisitions System Coordinator in 1987 when William A. Moffett was the library director; since then, tremendous changes in publishing and online access have transformed her area of responsibilities. During her 35 years on the library staff, her work changed from cataloging items one at a time with printed cards to a fully automated system. She often interacted with users and colleagues, resolving queries regarding holdings, licensing, usage, and access issues. Ellen holds an undergraduate degree in English/Creative Writing and German from the University of Maine and an MA in German, specializing in medieval studies, from Bowling Green State University. In retirement, Ellen is excited to spend more time with her family and three grandchildren.
Senior Recordings Cataloger Phyllis Jones (‘72) retired in January 2023, after a decades-long career as a member of the Conservatory Library staff. In addition to her service as a cataloger, Phyllis was also responsible for curating the library's sound recording collection, working to expand holdings in changing areas of curriculum focus over the years. Her deep knowledge of the collection supported her authorship of Every Monday Morning: A Discography of American Labor Songs in the Conservatory Library at Oberlin College (1993). Phyllis joined the Library of Congress’s program for cooperative cataloging (NMP) in 1994 and held positions of leadership in it. Since then, she has created or revised roughly 45,000 authority records with the “Oberlin Conservatory Library” stamp. In 2012, Phyllis received the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG) Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes the recipient's "professional contributions that significantly address the needs and concerns of music-oriented users of OCLC's products and services."