Day in the life: Elizabeth Stevenson

Elizabeth Stevenson likes to play a little Bob Marley or Mozart to help students relax at exam time. A library assistant in the Bessie Brooks Mary Winspear Music & Media Commons at UVic Libraries, Stevenson’s in tune with the highs and lows of student life. She and her colleagues at the music and media loan desk know the regulars.

“Laptop for you?”

Stevenson anticipates a student’s usual order as he approaches the Music & Media desk, and she checks his laptop out with a swipe of his ID card.

“We get to know students pretty well,” she says. “A student might show up every day for one term and then disappear. But for that one term, we make a connection with the student and we get to know what they want.”

The Music & Media desk—or M&M as it’s affectionately called by staff—loans not only music, but also audio recorders, cameras and camcorders, and accessories like noise-cancelling headphones, data projectors, graphics tablets, remotes and tripods, with laptops in high demand.

With an abundance of gadgets like that, it’s no surprise that the M&M desk is a busy place.

“Very busy!” says Stevenson. “In addition to providing service at the desk—and answering email and phone calls—we process equipment in a constant cycle, handle returns of CDs and DVDs, give orientations to the multimedia iMacs, clean headphones, set up equipment, and of course, communicate with each other.”

“It’s busy, but we listen to music and have fun, and the people we help are, by and large, a lot of fun,” she says. “We get along well, so we listen to each other and we’re friends.”

Stevenson came to UVic Libraries in 2005 and worked in the stacks for a year before starting at Music & Media. With a BA in anthropology and certification in permaculture design, Stevenson is a committed life-long learner.

So much so that she’s undertaken a self-directed program of study toward a practice in prenatal and childbirth support. Stevenson has taken educational leave for a couple of months annually for the past three years, and since last fall, she’s worked a reduced work week in order to fulfill her training goals.

Stevenson participated in a year-long training program for lay counsellors at Esquimalt Neighbourhood House, and now volunteers in that capacity once a week. She’s combining her counselling skills, meditation training and a conscious birthing study program toward her aspiration to support women in childbirth.

Stevenson says her permaculture training—the principles of which are based on systems ecology—activated her desire to apply her energy to effect the most positive change possible.

“I’ve been honing in on what that means for me—and it’s birth,” she says. “If a woman has a great birth experience, she might feel like she can take on anything. The confidence she gains will inform every aspect of her world, and she’ll pass it on to her kids as well. The ripple effects will jst keep going and going. Once a person starts to shine, others are inspired.”

Now, that seems to hit the right note.