by Zach Miller
Quick Summary
In the early '90s, when Barbara Fister needed resources to complete a book about women writers from the non-Western world, Minitex services made her "small undergraduate library a portal to the library collections of the world."
Text courtesy of Barbara Fister, Professor Emerita, Gustavus Adolphus College.
In my pre-tenure years as a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, I got interested in writing a book about women writers from the non-Western world because a faculty member said he had trouble finding a diverse enough list for his World Lit syllabus. Challenge on. I could never have completed that project without the hundreds of books that Minitex helped source and sent to me.
That ability to make a small undergraduate library a portal to the library collections of the world (as well as databases we couldn't afford and training that would otherwise have been impossible) has also given generations of students the opportunity to do research that fired their curiosity and sense of personal agency. That radical idea of pooling the capacity of our libraries to serve everyone has enriched and changed many lives. I'm retired now, but still curious and I know Minitex will be there for me wherever my curiosity takes me. Thanks to Minitex and library workers everywhere who make this radical sharing possible for libraries of all types, even during the rigors of a pandemic shutdown.
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