Jeff Papier, reference librarian and assistant professor at St. Louis Community College-Florissant Valley, is currently the featured librarian on the Missouri Library Association website.
Papier’s duties are quite varied. At the reference desk, he teaches students how to conduct research; in the classroom, he conducts bibliographic instruction sessions. In addition, he serves as the library liaison to a number of academic departments, and devotes a fair amount of time to collection development.
“Committee work is a substantive part of my position, too,” he said. “To round things out, I’m also a faculty co-sponsor of our LGBT student club.”
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Papier received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard University, and his master's in library science from Rutgers University in his home state of New Jersey.
“Languages are a lifelong passion of mine, but I found out after college that teaching French at the high school level was not,” Papier said. “Deciding what I wanted to do when I grew up became a real Zen koan for me. That koan was solved in a flash when a librarian friend of mine told me he thought I’d make a good reference librarian.
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“Thinking ‘I love research, have wide-ranging interests, and am fairly outgoing,’ I started the library program at Rutgers in 1993,” he added.
Papier was a reference librarian in public libraries for approximately 14 years before he joined STLCC-Florissant Valley in 2007.
Papier says the sheer variety of students who come through the library doors is the best part of the job.
“We help students who are fairly well academically prepared and wish ultimately to transfer to a four-year college," he said. "At the same time, we help students who struggled through high school and who need lots of assistance in realizing their goal of receiving a college education.”
Established in 1962, St. Louis Community College is the largest community college district in Missouri and one of the largest in the United States. STLCC has four campuses – Florissant Valley, Forest Park, Meramec and Wildwood – that annually serve more than 81,000 students through credit courses, continuing education and workforce development programs. For more information about STLCC, visit www.stlcc.edu.