DAN QUAGLIANA
News Editor
Walking into Reed Library is like walking into the manifestation of academia itself.
Shelves upon shelves of books line the far windows in front of a multitude of study carrels; a research hub lies right next to the main entrance and PCs for work adorn practically every other space that would normally remain unused. It’s no surprise that many students like to use the library as a quiet study space.
But what does it take to make an academic library this effective? And who makes the decisions that get it to that level?
At Fredonia, that responsibility falls to Kerrie Fergen Wilkes, Reed Library’s director.
With a tall stature, glasses and a blonde bob of hair, Wilkes can seem like an imposing figure to those who don’t know her, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
Wilkes started working here on Feb. 1, 2001, in what was supposed to be only a temporary position that she wasn’t even sure would work out. “I moved here on great faith,” she said.
But Reed Library wasn’t where Wilkes started her career in libraries.
That honor lies with the Grand Island Memorial Library, in Grand Island, N.Y., a branch library that’s part of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Libraries.
Wilkes started out there during high school as a shelving page, where her sole responsibility was putting away books that library patrons had returned. It was here that Wilkes realized that she “was a closet librarian, there’s no way around it.”
The librarians who worked at the library with her tried to talk her out of it — they told her she wouldn’t find a job, that she wouldn’t make any money and that libraries would soon be changing the way that they worked, so librarians would be less useful than they were then.
After high school, Wilkes enrolled at SUNY Potsdam in 1992, where she graduated four years later with degrees in history and English writing, as well as a minor in French Canadian studies.
When she was done with her undergraduate schooling, Wilkes didn’t quite know where to go or what career path to go on.
She eventually decided to get a Ph.D. in history at SUNY Binghamton, where she studied medical history and 19th-century French midwives, in addition to becoming a residence director in the dorms. “I’m probably the only person in the universe who’s read ‘The History of Forceps,’” she recalled.
But after one semester at Binghamton, Wilkes again realized that she was meant to be a librarian. She couldn’t study one area like 19th-century French midwives that intensely for the rest of her life.
She transferred to University at Buffalo (UB), where she enrolled to get a master’s degree in information and library science. During her schooling there, Wilkes worked at the Audubon branch library in Buffalo as a desk page, but eventually migrated to the business library at UB, where she would work as a graduate assistant in the library school office as well.
All that experience served her well after she graduated with an MLS — Wilkes quickly got a job at the Woodward Memorial Library in LeRoy, N.Y.. But working at a public library wasn’t exactly her cup of tea: “I was also doing pre-k story [hour],” she remembered. “I had to make these dumb little colored cups … This is what I went to graduate school for?”
After languishing in a public library for a few years, Wilkes’s sister Kimberlie Ball, who is now the interim director of admissions at Fredonia, told her about a job opening at Reed Library, where she’s been ever since.
But what Wilkes has done since she got that job would take many pages to detail: “I’ve had every job in this library except for cataloging,” she recalled. “I was associate director for a couple years [where] I ran circulation [and coordinated student workers].”
Since she’s been at Reed, Wilkes has seen the job go from completely paper-based to web-based. The library was a lot busier in 2001 when librarians had to focus a lot more on reference and research help for students, as opposed to administrative and budgetary work as they do now. “[We had] 12 librarians and 15 clerical staff,” Wilkes remembered.
After running circulation, she served as the interim director on and off for a couple of years, which was, “good training for being the permanent director,” she said, which she became in September 2022.
“[The job is] harder now, since I’m an administrator,” she said. “Being the big boss is not a glory position. There’s no glory in it; it’s the most humbling position I’ve ever had, since decisions I make affect people’s lives. [The] number one thing as an administrator is that I do what’s best for my staff so they can do what’s best for the students.”
To Wilkes’s credit, her staff agrees.
“She gives 110%,” said Toni Jachimowicz, one of the circulation clerks at Reed Library, about Wilkes. “And that goes for any project, whether it’s with a student, faculty member or someone from the community.”
Julie Crowell, one of the interlibrary loan clerks at Reed, agrees. “I had a lot to learn about the circulation desk and supervising student workers. Kerrie always showed confidence in my abilities and encouraged me to learn new things,” she said. “After only six months of working here, she trusted me to become the sole interlibrary loan clerk when the previous clerks retired. Kerrie is a tireless advocate for Reed Library, always seeking new ways to not only maintain services for Fredonia students and faculty, but to expand and improve them.”
Wilkes has gotten many awards for her service at Reed: in 2005, she won the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship, and in 2022, the Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC) Excellence in Library Service Award.
She says that the one thing that’s changed most about her job since she came to Fredonia is that she and the rest of the librarians have become “more like real teachers … In print, you researched what was there, and then you exhausted it. In the online age, there’s so much [information] out there, how are [students] going to make sense of it?” she explained.
Now, as the director of Reed Library, her job is, “budget. It’s all budget,” she said. “I have to run a library on only $300,000.”
But Wilkes still considers working at Fredonia to be “the best job I ever could’ve asked for. I met my husband at Reed Library,” she explained. “His sister was the head of circulation, and she set us up on a blind date, and 18 months later we got married, [which] we’ve been … for 21 years. My life has literally been at Fredonia and in libraries.”
Dan Quagliana, the author of this article, is employed at Reed Library as a student supervisor.