NASIG Newsletter

PROFILES

JOYCE TENNEY
Maggie Rioux, Profiles Editor 

I may well have met Joyce Tenney for the first time at NASIG’s 1992 conference at the University of Illinois/Chicago (my first NASIG) since she’s one of the few remaining “everytimers” who have attended all twenty-one conferences. However, the first time I remember meeting her was in the fall of 2000 in the course of a site-selection visit to the University of Maryland at College Park. Joyce was determined to get a NASIG conference in the area and since her own institution, University of Maryland Baltimore County, didn’t have the facilities to take us on, she had proposed the sister institution. Fran Wilkinson and I, a two-person Executive Board Site Selection Committee, made the campus visit in company with Joyce. College Park didn’t work out, but after some more recruiting and gentle arm-twisting on Joyce’s part and another site visit by Fran and me, we ended up holding the 2002 conference (our last completely campus-based conference) at the College of William and Mary, about 200 miles from UMBC. Joyce served very successfully as CPC co-chair for that conference with Stephen Clark[1] although I think she practically moved to Williamsburg the last month or so.

 
Joyce (far right), Greg (center rear), co-chair Stephen Clark (far left), and
other CPC members demonstrate a typical warm NASIG welcome to the
2002 Williamsburg conference. 

This tendency to stick with something is typical of Joyce. She’s been at her current institution of employment since she was an undergraduate there, has hung on to her spousal unit for a lot of years (more on him later) and has been a member of, and active in, NASIG since its beginnings in 1986. Let’s start with the first item – University of Maryland Baltimore County. Joyce was born and officially grew up in Maryland, although she spent lots of time in West Virginia as a child. When the time came for college her high school Latin teacher recommended UMBC (Joyce was interested in classical studies), they were willing to give her a scholarship and she could live at home and commute (frugality is one of her long-time assets). She worked in the library as a student assistant and after graduation she quickly got a full-time job as a technical assistant. A year later she started on her MLS at University of Maryland College Park, going to school nights while continuing to work. Her tech. assistant job involved check-in of standing orders and when the Serials Librarian left, she moved into that job as Acting Serials Librarian. Graduate degree in hand, she became Serials Librarian for real and never looked back. As of last May, she moved up to Head of Serials and Acquisitions. 

As to NASIG, Joyce heard about the newly-forming organization through a mailing list she signed up for after attending a serials conference in Crystal City, Virginia. She attended that first conference at Bryn Mawr College in June of 1986 and never looked back from that either. She’s attended every single NASIG conference since then with the upcoming Louisville conference making number twenty-two. No more than ten other people can make that same claim. And she’s been active too – Chair of the Bylaws Committee in 1993-94, Chair of Regional Councils and Membership in 1996-97 and member of the Nominations & Elections Committee in 1998-2000. Of course we can’t forget that second fulltime job she had for a year or so as co-chair of CPC for the Williamsburg Conference. She was so good at that job that we elected her to the NASIG Executive Board as a Member-At-Large in 2002 and then to the office of Secretary in 2005. In the course of all this, Joyce has also willingly shared her hard-earned conference planning expertise as Board Liaison and/or Consultant to several CPCs, including the one currently planning our Louisville Conference, for which she is a consultant.     

Back to that spousal unit … Joyce is somewhat unique in that her husband, Greg Roepke is also committed to NASIG and has also attended all twenty-one, going on twenty-two, conferences and that doesn’t count the many Board meetings and other events to which he has willingly accompanied her. Personally, I can’t even get my spouse to attend one library conference, let alone twenty-two.[2]  Greg is also a Maryland native and has both undergraduate and graduate degrees from theUniversity of Maryland, but he’s not in any way, shape or form a serialist (except by marriage). Greg’s field of endeavor is public safety. He worked for twenty-five years in the U/Maryland system including a number of years as Associate Director of Public Safety at U/Maryland Baltimore County. Joyce tells me that they actually met in the parking lot in front of his police station at UMBC. She refuses details, but I am absolutely positive it doesn’t involve his arresting her. Greg attended that first NASIG conference at Bryn Mawr with Joyce because it was part of their vacation (makes it tax-deductible, don’t ya know), discovered he liked the social events and the people (serialists really are fun folks), and also enjoyed spending the days exploring the host campuses and cities. He’s been coming to NASIG conferences ever since.[3] Just like Joyce, Greg has also done more for NASIG than just attend conferences. When Joyce was co-chair of CPC for the 2002 conference, Greg was made an honorary member of the committee and also “CEO of NASIG Ground-Air Transportation.” He organized all the shuttles between the airports and the William and Mary campus. After Joyce was elected to the Board in 2005 and she was appointed Board Liaison to your Newsletter Editorial Board, we unanimously declared Greg to be honorary liaison. I didn’t ask Joyce what he’s doing for the Louisville CPC to which she is Board Liaison, nor did I inquire as to his duties as Secretarial Spousal Unit, but you can bet that he’s helping out. Actually, Greg now has more time to spend on NASIG since he’s retired from UMBC and loving it. His domestic duties involve cooking and spoiling the dogs on a daily basis. 

Speaking of dogs (i.e., short, hairy children who walk on all fours and don’t speak clearly)… Joyce and Greg have three children of the canine variety and they want you to know about them. All three are shelter dogs. Cody is a 13-year-old cocker spaniel, Buffy is an age-unknown but at least 10-year-old cocker mix and Sadie is an 8-year-old golden retriever. Since all are light-colored, visitors are advised not to wear black and especially not to fuss about dog hair (that’s why they call it fur-niture, right?). Also, don’t put anything on the floor that you don’t want eaten or gummed. Dogs rule![4]  The dogs do not, however, attend NASIG conferences. They help her with her NASIG responsibilities by sitting on her lap and providing blood-pressure-lowering services.  With Joyce’s talent for follow-through and all this help from both spousal unit and furry kids, I think we can be totally confident that NASIG secretarial responsibilities are in good hands. And speaking of follow-through, remember I said that I first recall meeting Joyce on a preliminary site visit for a potential conference at University of Maryland College Park? Well, just to bring things full circle, I asked her if there’s any chance of a Maryland- or Baltimore-based NASIG conference now that we’re doing things in hotels instead of on academic campuses. Even after several years, she hasn’t given up the idea. She’s still interested in bring NASIG to Baltimore and if the stars (and the bids) align properly, it just might happen a few years from now. That, I think, would be the final star in Joyce’s NASIG crown and maybe then the doggies could come to the conference too.