This is the eighteenth edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Outreach Coordinator, Aliya! Click Here to read the entire series.
Chances are that if you ask a JTPL staff member about Bruce, they’ll tell you how he solved a problem at the library. In the last two months alone, he’s chainsawed down trees blocking the parking lot in our Clarksville location, disassembled and sold our old Jeffersonville Youth Services’ shelving online, and managed updates to our second floor camera system for renovations.
In many ways, Bruce is what keeps the library running smoothly. His willingness to take on a wide variety of tasks has saved JTPL countless amounts of stress and money, and he enables the rest of us to do our jobs without worry.
Bruce jokingly calls himself the library’s “jack*ss of all trades.” Although his name badge says “IT Assistant,” he does a bit of everything around here. And he likes it that way.
Bruce shared this adorable photo of himself as a toddler.
“The idea of ‘oh stop this and do this,’ you know, and ‘go from here to there,’ really kind of works for me,” Bruce told me. His helpful and scattered style means he is always working on some new project or two (or three) that the library needs done behind the scenes.
As I interviewed Bruce this last month, it became clear that he’s always enjoyed being the man behind the scenes. His undergraduate degree is in technical theater. In high school and college, he was the student technical manager behind big stage productions, art festivals, and concerts. Bruce enjoys learning how things work and helping them operate from the inside.
“I was the kid in school who the teacher got to run the 16mm projector,” he said. “It’s just fascinating to watch, you know? I guess I’m a voyeur; I enjoy watching the process.”
The most memorable tech development he watched was during college in the late ‘60’s. There, Bruce listened to and assisted in the development of the world’s first online library catalog, the OCLC, at Ohio State University. The ideas behind the OCLC are the basis of the catalog system libraries still use today.
After college, Bruce taught librarians about audio-visual technology all across Ohio, where he’s originally from. He and a friend founded a business repairing slide projectors, films, and video recorders while they were still a new and developing technology. Then, he transitioned to managing IT for the Chillicothe library system and helped them implement web cataloging and computers for their patrons.
If we can call a library a stage, which is probably a little ostentatious, then Bruce is still a vital technical manager in the background. His work has been largely invisible to patrons, but it’s indispensable to keeping everything running. Here at JTPL, it has saved us thousands of dollars.
Earlier, I mentioned several jobs that Bruce has taken on over the last several months. In June, he volunteered to take a chainsaw to several trees in Clarksville even as it started to rain and he was quickly covered in sawdust. He’s also spent weeks taking apart the old Youth Services department and selling unneeded items online.
His efforts have earned over $5000 so far. That money will go directly toward making the new Youth Services department better for our youngest patrons.
These are just two small examples of the work Bruce puts in daily. Although he may say he only enjoys “watching the process” from behind the scenes, we at the library know he is a bigger part of it than he might believe. His work at JTPL isn’t as flashy as founding companies and building online catalogs in his past, but it makes a big difference to us.
If you find Bruce throughout the library, thank him for all the hard work he does!