Acquiring mind

John Blosser retires after 32 Years

When John Blosser started as a part-time cataloger in 1992, he didn’t imagine his role would grow so big that his responsibilities would be distributed among three staffers upon his retirement. When he stepped down in September, Blosser was lauded by the Libraries as a stalwart force behind the scenes, whose legacy lives on in infrastructure for which he laid the foundation.

Since 2015 Blosser was head of Acquisitions, responsible for purchasing operations for materials in all formats—print, online, microfilm, journals, books, databases—and managing their multifaceted licensing agreements. But that’s just one of the many essential roles he played, from collection development to electronic resource analysis.

In 2000, in addition to his full-time position as a department head, Blosser volunteered as a building project manager for the Libraries, drawing on his past experience in interior architecture and design. Through 2006 he managed several renovation and maintenance projects throughout the Libraries, including public spaces for students on all floors, staff work areas, plaza resurfacing, new roofing, a new fire alarm system, and the first fire sprinkler system.

He also helped the Libraries work through one of the last century’s major tech developments, the birth of electronic journals in the early ’90s. “The access to online journals grew from static web pages that linked to the individual journals, to becoming links inside bibliographic records that were then available through our online catalog,” he said.

Every year, Blosser took care of the “big deal” journal contract renewals, which account for nearly 30 percent of the acquisitions budget and provide essential resources to students and faculty. His tireless work resulted in great relationships with publishers and better deals than might have been made otherwise.

Blosser recalls the case of a faculty member’s needing a special issue of a journal to which the Libraries did not subscribe, but “because of the good vendor relations I’ve maintained over the years, the publisher actually sent it to us for free.”

Despite earning his breather, Blosser said he was in no rush to leave: “I’m a person who likes to work, so I am sorry to leave some aspects of the work behind. I’ll always have the good memories of working with some wonderful, supportive colleagues. I never tired of coming to campus and seeing the grounds and the lake. It’s always been a pleasant place to come to work.”