Dean of Libraries Rebecca Lubas has had a lot on her plate recently, having to juggle and deal with many recent events and occurrences. 

Lubas has worked hard with the Brooks Library team finding opportunities to engage with the community with different events. Although, with the recent vandalism of Brooks Library, Lubas had more to deal with than just education opportunities.

With the vandalism, Lubas was more concerned with the damage it had on the community rather than physical damage. Lubas stated that the damage, mainly being green Sharpie, was able to be cleaned in just a few hours, not leaving behind any permanent damage. 

“The big issue was how hurtful comments were to members of our community who have lots of good reasons, lots of legitimate reasons to feel very vulnerable,” Lubas said. 

Wanting to establish to all members of the community a welcoming safe space at the library, Lubas expresses importance in being a welcoming space as she said, “even though the physical damage was so minor, it really was a violation of everything we stand for.”

During Native American Heritage Month, Lubas helped organize programs, activities and exhibits to provide representation of Indigenous people. She expressed she’s happy to provide these events annually.

“So it’s really great that this year, we were able to do a combination of in person and virtual and as well as book exhibits,” Lubas said.

Being very passionate about her career, Lubas came to CWU in 2019, but has had a long passion for it before being hired at CWU. “I have been a professional librarian since 1996,” Lubas said. 

Lubas has an extensive education history, including master degrees in Library and Information Sciences from Louisiana State University and English Literature from Ball State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies from the University of Notre Dame. 

Having gone straight to library school directly after her undergraduate program, she had many influential experiences that helped lead her to where she is today. Doing projects and working with professors in the past and having to collect research gave Lubas the realization she had interest in that field of work.

 She said “whoa, how do I do that for a living and how do I help other people do that,” not simply becoming just a librarian, but an academic librarian.

Later in her career, she worked on different projects. For nine years she worked in the libraries at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She worked on a project called OpenCourseware, where she would be packaging the course materials for all the courses taught at MIT for free for the world. This taught her to bring together technology and resources and academics.

“I really love this profession, it’s because it is really about helping other people be successful, and what they want to pursue … a deeply satisfying way to spend your life is helping other people fully advance in their own goals and grow as scholars and as citizens,” Lubas said.