Today’s post was written by Kayla Banks, receiving assistant for the William H. Hannon Library and former LMU undergrad.
Recently, I sat down to have a chat with Marlon Emprechtinger, ’25, to discuss his experience as a student assistant at the William H. Hannon Library for the past two years. Marlon works in the library’s acquisitions and collection development (ACD) department. He started around the middle of his college career. As he noted, he didn’t come to the library often in those early years.
Marlon: “And then, as I took classes and got more advanced in school, a lot of projects actually were like, oh you should go to the library, or you should use those library resources like JSTOR and all that to help.”
In one of his international business classes, he was assigned to research two real companies and simulate a plan to expand those companies into new markets. His class was visited by one of the library’s reference librarians.
Marlon: “We had José Rincón. He talked to us for a while and told us, okay, here are the resources you can use, or if you need help finding resources the library can offer that too.”
Approaching his first day of work, Marlon was a bit nervous.
Marlon: “It’s a little bit different from most of the on-campus jobs. This felt more involved in that I was working and meeting a lot more people who were not just students, but also who work in the library full-time. And so, I was a little nervous, but I was also excited too, because I felt like I was gonna learn a lot and, you know, actually have some valuable takeaways from doing this job.”
As Marlon continued to work in ACD, his understanding of library resources and functions deepened.
Marlon: “I think the biggest thing for me is just realizing how much work goes into actually having the library constantly be up and running and offering all these resources. Everyone’s working really hard and doing a lot. So I think it just makes me appreciate it more.”
When asked how his work at ACD impacted any skills, his immediate response was “attention to detail.” His primary work responsibilities deal with Digital Commons @ LMU & LLS, a digital repository that collects and preserves LMU faculty and student scholarship, and Scholars @ LMU, LMU’s research information management system which aggregates LMU’s scholarship into one place. Marlon works alongside other students in ACD to maintain and update Digital Commons and Scholars @ LMU. They review rows and rows of citation data, clean up publication records, and collect publication information by reaching out directly to faculty and transporting their works into Digital Commons and Scholars @ LMU, ensuring LMU scholarship is accurately recorded and represented to the public.
Marlon: “Being able to really spot differences quickly and make sure that everything is correct and kind of doing things correctly the first time rather than having to go back have all been super important things. Honestly, that’s one of the things I think carried over a lot, like outside of the library, when I was doing other work during the summer.”
Marlon translated the practical skills he strengthened working in ACD into a summer business internship. Outside of gaining more professional experience, his job also provides structure for his every day.
Marlon: “I intentionally set my time to work to be pretty early. And so, for me, I like that a lot because it helps me always make sure to start my day and stay busy, which I like, you know, [to] hit the ground running.”
Reflecting on his initial interview process in fall 2023, Marlon had the opportunity to work at another job on campus. When asked why he wanted the position at ACD specifically he had this to say:
Marlon: “I remember thinking I feel like if I work here at the library, I’ll learn something that’ll be valuable to me, beyond just doing my work study. I feel like I can actually walk away and say I contributed in these ways.”
Those expectations were met. Marlon observes how essential students are to the running of the library itself and feels connected to that function.
Marlon: “I feel like, since I’ve been here, I’ve been like, wow, some of the stuff I’ve worked on has actually been pretty important to helping the library. I think the Digital Commons stuff helps [get] all those faculty publications onto the databases so that students and faculty can use them and see them and kind of have a log of them. It’s cool to be part of an ecosystem that maybe most students don’t necessarily know about.”
Marlon’s work on Digital Commons also provided opportunities to connect with professors.
“You know I’ll see professors that I’ve had for class and be like, oh, I’m uploading their works into Digital Commons stuff. So it’s pretty cool to see. I’m like looking at a professor’s paper or something, it makes me more interested in them as well. It’s like, oh, I didn’t know that you wrote a paper about this, and then you go to class the next day and talk to them.”
The advice he would offer incoming library student employees is:
Marlon: “Just come to learn. It’s gonna be new so just come to learn and think about how things are also applicable outside of just the library setting. For me, I’m studying business, but a library is a business when you think about it right? And so, there’s a lot of things that you can learn that can also be applied in other places.”