Getting to Know TS Law Librarians: Pat Sayre-McCoy

1. Introduce yourself (name & position).

I’m Pat (Patricia) Sayre-McCoy, Head of Law Cataloging and Serials at the D’Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago.

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?

Not really anymore. I am very much involved in our Law School institutional repository, Chicago Unbound—my staff adds new issues of Law School publications, such as the Law School Announcements, and the alumni magazine, the Law School Record. This requires computer skills, such as editing documents and photos, adding metadata, and creating links to individual sections of the issue. We’re going to rename ourselves in Cataloging as soon as we come up with a good name; for now my copy catalogers are Metadata Assistants.

3. What are you reading right now?

I tend to read multiple books at the same time as I either lose/temporarily misplace a book or decide I’m in the mood for something else. For work, Digital rights management edited by Catherine A. Lemmer and Carla P. Wale just arrived in my In-box. For fun, I just started Laura Anne Gilman’s fantasy novel, Silver on the Road, about a fantastical US wild west in the early 1800s.

4a.If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?

I’d love to work at the Field Museum library or any other natural history library. I have a degree in Physical Anthropology and studied human and primate evolution. I love bones! Also, working in a natural history library, I could put some of my rather obscure knowledge to use. However, one of the reasons I wanted my current position is because I love serials cataloging—it’s like a puzzle and working in a law library you really learn serials! And the people at the D’Angelo Law Library are so great to work with. It would be hard to find a better group anywhere.

4b. You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on?

I have a lot of procedures to document and I’d probably get to work on them. The IR is relatively new to us and I don’t have all the procedures worked out yet. And then for a break from procedures, I could catalog some of the new faculty podcasts and videos that have been posted by the Law School. I really like to catalog them because some of our professors are great speakers with a good sense of humor. And I learn lots of new things from the podcasts.