“PAM”

by Celia Hales 

This is a tribute to Pam Wood, recently retired and recently deceased director of the library at the University of Mount Olive, from a friend and former employee at Mount Olive who knew her long ago.

Pam, as I knew her, was just beginning a long and fruitful career at Mount Olive College, serving primarily as the library cataloger. We were both in our twenties when we met in 1973. Pam was already possessed of a strong work ethic, something she needed, for she and Gary Barefoot, then director of the library, were, to my knowledge,, the only professional employees in the library, though their mission was helped by student assistants.

Everyone I knew at Mount Olive was dedicated to a mission, their vocation and way of serving God in an institution with strong religious and spiritual ideals and direction. Dr. Burkette Raper was the president. He needed dedicated people and was certainly fortunate when he found Pam.

Being the cataloger at that time in library history was no easy task, and serving in this capacity was very different in the seventies. Shared cataloging was in its infancy. Original cataloging and classification were the norm, and this norm included choosing correct call number and appropriate subject listings from the library profession’s approved sources, plus a myriad of other steps before the book found its way to the shelf. The Free Will Baptist Collection, then in its infancy, nearly always required original cataloging. Pamphlets given to the library did also. And so did many books, as mentioned, as well as magazines and journals.

Pam’s contribution went beyond cataloging; with a small staff, she had to work in many areas, including references. She said as she was retiring that this had been her favorite task, helping people who came into the library. She was always welcoming and approachable when I knew her, and I suspect that trait survived the many library changes that she had to  implement in her career, including the directorship.

Computerization was a major requirement for everyone in the library world. There was certainly no Internet in 1973, and no individual computers, no computerized library catalog. A record of books was kept at that early time in the “card catalog” by author, title, and subject. But the library patron, often a student wary of the library, frequently had to get help when coming into the library with an assignment. And Pam liked doing this.

Pam’s smooth transition throughout her long career, the way in which she moved with the times, the astounding transformation in libraries, is to be commended. But it is her personal qualities that, I think, remained constant and represented the best of her contribution. Pam stayed with the work that she loved at Mount Olive, in an environment of people who love God. The University of Mount Olive and the Original Free Will Baptist community are the beneficiaries.

Click Here to read our post about Pam Wood's Retirement from UMO

Click Here to read a public notice from UMO regarding Pam's passing