We’re excited to highlight Erica Melchin ('25)! Erica is the Collections Manager at the University of Iowa’s very own Law Library. She currently oversees two collections, staff, and the student shelvers. She’s working on planning out larger stacks projects and assessing collection and preservation care needs. A recent accomplishment of hers was completing a long-running project at the law library: the 8th circuit project.
“We’ve been boxing up 8th circuit cases and adding the relevant information into both a finding aid spreadsheet and into the Alma ILS, preparing them for ingestion at the annex. The project has gone through multiple hands, but when my former supervisor left for a different job, I fully took over the project. With the help of a few other staff members we’ve been able to wrap up the project after ten years, and have now moved on to researching AI assistance in cleaning up the spreadsheet and preparing to move the data into a usable finding aid on our website.”
Erica loves the way that her career lets her work with collections in a hands-on manner: “ I find it satisfying to get everything in the correct order and making our stacks look neat. I also enjoy examining our older items to determine care needs.”
When asked about SLIS, Erica told us that we helped her in two major ways: “ First, it helped me think more widely about what patron services means, and how every aspect of library work should be done with the patron in mind. This has helped me look at our collection needs in light of what would help the students, faculty, and public patrons that use our resources. The courses on collection care and management also helped prepare me for the larger projects I have been taking on, giving me the tools to assess our collections thoroughly.”
We love getting to highlight our Hawks!
If you are an alumnus who would like a spotlight, reach out to us on LinkedIn! If you have a new position, or have recently presented at a conference, or other career achievement, we would love to get to share your success!