Most students, no matter what grade, have probably met Tam librarian Mary Crowe at some point in their high school career. Whether helping a student with a project, suggesting a fun new book, or even telling kids not eat their lunch in the library during a last minute study session, Crowe has always been there to watch over Tam’s main center of knowledge. However, many students may not know that this year is Crowe’s last as Tam’s librarian, ending a 17-year run that began in 1997. Crowe has watched the changes that every new group of students has brought to campus.

“You have to adjust to all the new technology like cell phones and such,” Crowe said. “When I first came here in the ‘90s, pagers were the cool things to have… Then it became cell phones and iPhones and all that. The secret with teaching is that you have to keep up with what the new trends are. I was worried for a while when the emphasis was on the Internet, and it was more exciting to use, and there were predictions that we wouldn’t need libraries anymore. But it seems to have come around full circle…there’s still an importance to having libraries.”

In 1973, Crowe began work as an English and reading teacher in upstate New York, where she gained much of her early experience with students. Consequently, she worked on her master’s degree in Library Science at Syracuse. Shortly after graduating from Syracuse, Crowe began to gravitate towards library work rather than teaching.

“After I got my degree I tried getting a job in a library for the first time, and I just liked it so much. It felt like a bigger classroom… I never planned on being a librarian, but it just so happened that it worked out just fine,” she said.

Even as her work at Tam comes to a close, Crowe has continued to work diligently alongside her library assistant, Hans Goto. Goto will carry on working at Tam next year, along with Crowe’s replacement, who, although not yet publicly announced, has 26 years of library and teaching experience and will “be a good match,” according to Crowe. However, Crowe said that she will miss many things about working on Tam’s campus.

“I’m going to miss the staff and the students a lot… You really become friends with the people you work with, and [the faculty has] a lot of fun together, just like the students do,” Crowe said. “The staff has the same camaraderie, and it’s much more fun when you come to a job and don’t even consider it work. It’s a career, but sometimes it felt like something I would forget I was getting paid to do.”