Interviews with ALCTS Leaders: Harriet Wintermute, Fundraising Committee Co-Chair

Headshot of Harriet WintermuteWhat is your full time position?

I am a Catalog and Metadata Librarian at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. My daily work involves original cataloging, metadata remediation, and workflow efficiency development.

What are some interesting things you’re working on?

Some interesting collections I’ve worked on include the comics we have in our digital image and media collections, materials published or written by local authors and faculty, community cookbooks, and quilting books and newsletters. A lot of these materials fall into the gray literature realm, which is my favorite to work with because it can be challenging to describe sufficiently.

How did you come to serve in a leadership role with ALCTS? What prepared you, and how did you get the position?

After I finished my MLIS, I put in my name to volunteer for ALA a few times before I was selected to serve as an intern to the ALCTS Fundraising Committee in 2014. This is my fourth year on the committee; I was chair last year and requested a co-chair to train and work with this year. While at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I served as Fundraising Committee chair and then treasurer for the ALA Student Chapter, which provided me with some experience in fundraising and budget matters. Also, I learned a lot from Lenore England, past chair, who laid the foundation of the committee as it operates today (see Focus on: Fundraising Committee in ALCTS News).

What do you do in your leadership role with ALCTS?

Along with my co-chair, Melinda Reagor Flannery (see Interviews with ALCTS Leaders: Melinda Flannery, Fundraising Committee Co-Chair on ALCTS News), we coordinate corporate sponsorship requests on behalf of ALCTS. These sponsorships support ALCTS events, both virtual and in-person, including preconferences, ALCTS Fest, the ALCTS President’s Program, webinars, and Preservation Week. We advise and guide our wonderful, hard-working committee members in the ask process. We also monitor ALCTS event planning and wrangle vendor matches to event topics. Once the vendors confirm a sponsorship, we wrap up the process by preparing and issuing invoices and acknowledgement letters on behalf of ALCTS.

What accomplishments are you most proud of?

In the past two years, the committee has strengthened its outreach efforts and increased the sponsorships for ALCTS. Last year, we reached several new vendors who ended up sponsoring or expressing interest in future opportunities. Last year, in a desire to strengthen the continuity and success of the committee, I developed new documentation including a timeline, chair procedures, and historical notes on vendors.

Tell us a little bit about your family or pets.

Last year, I adopted a gray tabby medium-hair cat and named her Lulu. She has proved to be an excellent guardian of my apartment against insects. She also would prefer I let her play with yarn instead of hogging it to myself.

What do you do in your spare time?

I knit while reading or binge-watching TV and movies. I prefer fiction and am eclectic in the genres I like, including mystery, sci-fi, steampunk, or dystopia. I’ve just started Beastly Bones, the second Jackaby novel by William Ritter.

What is something unique or intriguing about you that you’d like to share?

I’ve won several ribbons for my knitting in the Minnesota State Fair Creative Activities competition.

What is your professional or personal philosophy?

Information is power.

What else would you like readers of ALCTS News to know about you?

I used to have a purple office. We’re allowed a palette of only ten colors now at my library, so when I relocated offices recently, I couldn’t pick purple again.

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