When Janice Poplau came to interview at Birmingham-Southern in the summer of 1971, she took her very first plane ride from Minnesota to Alabama. Fifty years later, she’s made Birmingham and the N.E. Miles Library her home and is still helping the campus community with research and reading of all kinds.

Poplau (left) and former director Barbara Scott at a library birthday celebration in 1975.

On August 1, 1971, Poplau spent her first day on the Hilltop as a library cataloguer. She had recently earned her master’s degree in library science from the University of Minnesota, and the job opening at BSC was exactly what she wanted to do.

“I had worked four years at the library where I went to school, and I was doing the exact thing that the position required,” she says. “It was the perfect job I wanted at that time, and I would have gone anywhere for it.”

Over the years, Poplau’s position has shifted from overseeing the card catalog – which she eventually helped digitize – to managing the College’s interlibrary loan program. In both areas, she loves helping students and professors complete their research and discover books and materials that are essential to their work.

One of the first big projects Poplau took on at the College was reclassifying the library collection from the Dewey Decimal System to the Library of Congress Classification. As she completed this project, the library began to outgrow its space in what is now the M. Paul Phillips Administration Building.

In 1976, the library moved from the Phillips Building to the brand-new Rush Learning Center and N.E. Miles Library at the heart of the campus. Poplau remembers getting students’ help to carefully move catalog cards from the old filing cabinets in her car because “I didn’t trust the movers with the card catalogue,” she says.

One of the biggest changes she’s seen in her years at the College was the retrospective conversion project, the nearly two-year process of digitizing the physical card catalogue. Poplau says the process was much more in-depth than you might think and involved entering each book individually into the online catalog.

Carolyn Cooper, Jimmie Chicarello, and Poplau at an employee recognition celebration at The Club.

Now, 75 percent of her role is focused on interlibrary loans. Poplau gets to meet professors and students from all different departments – some using the program more often than others – and enjoys be a part of such an important resource.

“It’s a great service for students to take advantage of for help with research and papers,” she says. “I don’t think they know how much service it can be.”

Poplau has served on numerous committees throughout her years at the College, and she has served as the faculty meeting secretary since 2007. And throughout the changes she’s seen, the community and friendships she’s found through the library have always been strong.

“Sometimes you’re in the same building and you don’t see each other very often,” she says, “but staff birthday parties always bring us together. Everyone always contributed, and we’ve had the lunches every year until the pandemic. I have memories of so many of the staff I’ve worked with over the years.”

Poplau at another library birthday lunch.

Poplau remembers when she was the youngest on the staff, taking in all the advice from other librarians who helped her with her new position and the move to Alabama. Soon enough she made fast friends with staff like library processing assistant Jimmie Chicarello, who’s worked in the library for 36 years.

“Jimmie and I make a good team,” she says. “We’ve been together so long we can almost know what each other’s thinking.”

Poplau is excited to see how Tiffany Norris, director of the library, has led the staff since she joined the team last year. The library is always adding new e-books and databases to their collection, which Poplau has seen help many students and faculty during the pandemic.

Between different roles, buildings, and changes in her 50 years, one director once told Poplau that there wasn’t a book in the library that hasn’t gone across her desk. She says that’s probably true.

Read about other BSC employees celebrating service milestones in our 2021 Service Awards blog post.