Buies Creek, N.C.—Jennifer Carpenter, Head of the Reference Department at Campbell’s Wiggin’s Memorial Library, is retiring this month after 18 years of service. She describes her career and her road to Campbell University as ironic, never dull and enormously fulfilling.
“Being a reference librarian is like digging for buried treasure,” Carpenter said. “It’s just fascinating to be able to locate something a professor or student needs and to see where it comes from.”
Carpenter, whose favorite literary genre is the mystery, said she’d noticed the same trait in most of the reference librarians she has encountered. “They love searching for elusive information and most of them like mysteries,” she said.
One of the most unusual mysteries in Carpenter’s life is the complicated way in which she landed at Campbell University in the first place. Although she already had lots of Campbell ties, her dad and his siblings attended Campbell Junior College and other members of her family are Campbell graduates, the University didn’t figure into Carpenter’s future at all until she was unable to find a job in Raleigh, N.C.
Carpenter and her husband Carey moved to Raleigh when Carey, who is currently Contract Officer with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, took a job with the state.
“I had worked as branch manager, then head of the reference at the public library in Rowan County for 10 years, so naturally I was looking for a job with a public library. I just couldn’t find one at that time,” she said.
Eventually, the Pittsboro native was hired at Campbell, and has been here ever since. Working her way up from reference librarian to head of the Reference, Carpenter calls the job a “good fit.”
“I fully believe the Lord led me here,” Carpenter said. “I love the Christian environment and the academic setting. Becoming a librarian has changed my life.”
Carpenter also manages the Interlibrary Loan service in which Campbell’s library borrows from other libraries and lends to them. Carpenter and her family established a Divinity School scholarship, now fully endowed, in honor of her grandparents, Virgil Alfred Kidd, a rural mail carrier, and Annie Lee Purvis Kidd. And she is especially proud to have served on the team of library personnel that selected the learning resources for the newly renovated Wiggins Memorial Library.
Carpenter received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education fromCharleston Southern University and a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is an active member of Aversboro Baptist Church in Garner where she serves as the church librarian. Carpenter and her husband are the parents of two children, Karen and Carl Carpenter. They have two grandchildren, Hope, 10, and Chad, 8.
Although ready for retirement, Carpenter said she will miss the Campbell staff, faculty and especially the students.
“The library staff is wonderful and the reference staff works so well together,” she said. “It has been a really rewarding experience.”
Photo Copy: Jennifer Carpenter, Head of Reference Services at Campbell University’s Wiggins Memorial Library