Celebrating Agnes Lee: A career spanning four decades of resource sharing

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Minitex Resource Sharing Manager Agnes Lee has literally seen it all… and then some. Over the course of three Minitex directors, three different Minitex office headquarters, and quite possibly millions of interlibrary loan requests, Agnes – like many other venerable Minitex staff – worked her way up from the humble beginnings of student employment and full-time library assistant work to eventually become of our longest-tenured managers.

She officially retired from that position on May 1, 2026. But before riding off into the sunset, we connected for a Zoom conversation that covered the entirety of her time at Minitex, diving deep into the personal connections she made with fellow staff and her philosophy on management and supervision, with plenty of historical anecdotes along the way.

If my math is correct, if you've been here for 38 years, that means you started in 1988, is that right?

Sounds about right. Because I was a student employee for a couple years before moving to full-time.

So when you started at Minitex back in the 80s, were you planning to make a career in library work, or did you just kind of fall into it?

No, no intention. You know, it was just a student job, right?

Even back then, we were doing so many different things, so I started working with Kathy [Drozd, retired Minitex Assistant Director] at the bio-medical library.

We were retrieving books… I mean, back then it was so different, you know. I remember we had these big leather bags that we would bring over. We had to stuff so many books in them and haul them over to the West Bank, and then we were “copying” – there was no “scanning.” Sometimes, even now, I catch myself saying, “can you copy that for me?” We don't use the word “copy” anymore, right? We are scanning.

So we would have a competition to see who could copy the fastest. We really had a lot to copy and a lot of books to bring back.

But eventually, when the full-time position came up, I just kind of slid into it. I liked what I was doing, and you know so many Minitex staff started as students… It's the comfort, you know what you're doing, and it's not like sitting at the circulation desk, right? Doing discharging or whatever. We really did a lot of different things, so that was how I began and then moved up from there.

Who won the copier races?

I did [laughs]. It was just something fun to do, because, I mean, copying. And at that time – later on, we would have the foot pedal, but before, it was just like, you have to press that button, you know?

Right!

Hit the button and flip it. Copying was no fun, but we tried to make something fun out of it, so we had a competition once in a while.

To make a tedious task interesting somehow.

Exactly.

Have you always worked in resource sharing during your time at Minitex?

Yes. I think I have worked almost all the tasks, like referral processing, campus location retrieval, verification… I remember when we had a reorganization. Dave Paulson managed the campus locations, and I was at referral processing. The managers had a meeting, and they said, “Agnes, you should do campus location work.” I was surprised, because I loved doing referral processing. You can look at it as an opportunity, but it's just like, “okay, I'll try that.”

Do you feel like that helped you learn more about the whole resource sharing process?

Definitely. Because I always tell my staff, you cannot just do one thing. You need to know what is in the beginning and what is at the end, so that you understand, right? But if you learn only one task, say, verification, they only do verification, and they don’t always know why we need to put certain information on the request. It’s so that the person who's referring doesn't need to recheck again.

So I always try to make sure that they understand the whole process. I like to say that I hate having another staff member touching a request. If you can do it, do it all, please.

From the beginning to the end.

Exactly, if you can.

You touched on this a little bit already, but how would you describe the differences in your day-to-day work between when you started back in the late 80s and now?

Back then, I wasn't a manager or supervisor, so I had tasks to do – retrieving, copying, and getting the items back over to the West Bank. I have been managing for a long, long time now. So, I always look at the Mira [Minitex’s current request management software] queues, because I don't manage one single area, and see where it needs help. I always jump in when needed. And there are plenty of opportunities with staff on vacation, or out sick.

The thing that I most enjoy is helping library staff. I do a lot of the online training, so it’s helpful to make sure they know how to submit requests correctly, rather than us having to go back and forth and delay the request. So now it's more customer service that I work on.

Even though you didn't start out that way, for a long time now you have been a manager and a supervisor at Minitex. Are there any staff that you've hired who still work with us today?

Oh, let me see… The thing is, with how resource sharing is managed now, I could be the lead worker for a number of staff, but I don't supervise them. Now, I remember Chau Nguyen [Resource Sharing Lead], when we were in Wilson, she was working upstairs with the University Libraries. I have worked with her for a long time.

But I’m not sure if I have hired anyone who is still working with me throughout the duration.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like when I first started at Minitex as a student (around 1996), Paul Swanson [current Minitex Technology Director] worked for you at that time?

Oh, Paul, yeah. I did not hire Paul, but now I remember, because he was managing the requests coming in. At that time, we had to manually count, so he was doing that part. I worked with him for a long time as well, but I did not hire him.

Oh, okay. And I also feel like Beth Staats [current Minitex Outreach & Instruction Librarian] worked for you when she first started at Minitex, too.

Yeah, you're right. You have a good memory. Yes, I did hire her full-time, but then Mary Parker [retired Minitex Associate Director] stole her away!

I think that's it, I don't remember anybody else that I hired. Bob Fredrickson was working for Raquel Franklin, and then I hired him into the Library Assistant 3 position. So it's like, if we have a good staff person and there are opportunities, then we move them up.

During your time at Minitex, you've worked with 3 different directors, right? Bill DeJohn, Valerie Horton, and now Maggie Snow. What do you see as their differences or similarities in how they lead the organization, specifically with respect to resource sharing?

I actually started before Bill, when Anita [Branin] and M.J. [Dustin] were the interim management team. I think with them it was very hands-off because they had good people in Kathy [Drozd] and Becky [Ringwelski, retired Minitex Associate Director]. So they moved into management at that time and did it well. I think Bill had a lot of confidence in both Becky and Kathy when he started, so he, in a way, was able to be hands-off, too.

I felt the closest to Bill. He had a good understanding of when to back up and let people do what they do. I always enjoyed working with Bill.

In terms of Valerie, I think the same thing, because she also relied heavily on Becky for resource sharing and Kathy for MLAC [Minnesota Library Access Center, the high-density storage facility managed by Minitex] at that point. I didn't know her as well, but she was also hands-off, I would say.

Maggie has not been here long enough to say, from my perspective. I'm comfortable with her, but I would say I don't know her style as well. But again, I think she relies on Gerri [Moeller, current Minitex associate director for Resource Sharing and Delivery] to run the show.

You've also worked in many different spaces during your time at Minitex. So you would have been in the sub-basement of Wilson Library, and then Andersen Library, and now back in the Wilson basement. Which one of those was your favorite space to work in?

Depending on the type of work, the sub-basement of Wilson. At the beginning of the day, the campus retrieval staff all huddled around, and it really felt like a library. I got a sense of camaraderie. It was like, you don't have to go to a cubicle and find someone, right?

But Andersen was great too. I mean, I had a window. How can it not be great, right? [laughs] But our request volume was very high when we were in Andersen, and the one thing I didn't like was that “war of requests” in the space between the cubicles. This was before Mira, and we just all had to stand there and put the paper requests in the bins.

But now, the space in Wilson is huge, right? And we intentionally have all the managers in a specific area, so all of us could easily huddle and just have a conversation.

So, I think it worked well in each of the places, because of the work. There weren't any obstacles for us.

That's an interesting take on it. It seems like the space almost evolved along the work in a sense.

Yes. When we first moved into Wilson, we felt like, oh my gosh, this is so far away. And I remember Becky saying that she intentionally had us far away from the main door so we wouldn't be disturbed. I mean, it works, right?

What was the most impactful technological development in resource sharing during your career?

Well, I have to say Mira, it really changed everything. It's like a complete overhaul. It's just amazing when we think about how things have changed over time. Early on, we had a lot more student employees. And we had one student who, while manually alphabetizing the requests, would sing the alphabet song! [laughs]

And now everything is, you just hit click, print, and off it goes, right? And before, too, legible handwriting on the requests was always an issue. Now we don't have to worry, because everything you just copy and paste into the request slip. So I would have to say Mira really changed how we work for the better.

What do you see for the future of resource sharing at Minitex in the next 10 to 15 years?

Wow, that's a long, long time! Technology is really driving how we do things, and it changes so fast, right? Even right now, we're starting to do OCR and AI transcription for scanned articles. I think what we are good at is that we have the talent and the expertise, so technology drives us where we need to go. And also, because the IT staff – you, Matt [Niehoff], Paul [Swanson] – you have all worked in resource sharing, right? So you have that foundation, you know why we need what we need.

So, I think you guys push us in a direction where all we have to do is basically see how technology would fit into our processes. There are many, many opportunities, but it's changing so quickly that I feel like I don't know where it’s going. But I always say that at the end of the day, we want to do everything more efficiently, because on the other end, there is a patron waiting for what they have requested. We can’t stand still and not do anything, because it's changing much too quickly.

And I think libraries are looking at us to guide them. I think COVID changed things, and now we have to find better ways to reconnect. And one way we can do that is by showing them what else we are doing. What new things? When I am at the MNPALS meeting, they will ask, “What is Minitex doing?” So then they can go back and talk to their colleagues or directors and say, “Hey, Minitex is doing this, how can we look at that as well?”

Also, before COVID, we were going to in-person site visits and things like that. Then, during COVID, we tried it over Zoom, and it was just not good, you know? When we go in person, we learn things from other libraries’ staff. We don't just concentrate on resource sharing. We can be talking to their reference staff, or delivery. So I think that's what we need to get back to, embracing that sense of responsibility. Libraries are coming to us because they want answers, and we can provide them.