Although Elissa Plank has been the Head of Circulation in Middleton Library only a few short months, she hasn’t wasted time evaluating and enhancing her department’s services.  “One of my goals for my new position is to make the Circulation Department more accessible to patrons.” explains Plank.  “To that end, we’ve updated and created a new online version of the lost book form.   I am also volunteering to help Mitch Fontenot [LSU Libraries Outreach Librarian] at events where he does Outreach to make our patrons more aware of the services offered by the Circulation Department.”  Elissa enjoys the challenges of her new job and the opportunities it gives her to solve problems, and she feels fortunate to have cooperative and helpful co-workers.

The Texas native was born and raised in Nederland, near Beaumont and Port Arthur, but because both of her parents hail from central Louisiana, she often visited family near Alexandria.  Elissa says that she always felt that her roots were in Louisiana, so when she moved to Louisiana for the first time in 2001, it felt like a homecoming.  In fact, she first visited the LSU Campus as age twelve, and she reflects that, “seeing how beautiful a college campus can be made me want to go to college so that I could learn in an environment that looked like this. I never attended classes as a student, but when I was first hired here I felt that I was doing something that I had wanted to do for a long time.”  Before returning to the South, Elissa spent eighteen years in Rochester, New York, after moving there to attend graduate school at the University of Rochester.  Following her graduation, she worked for a contractor who provided document delivery services and staffing for the corporate libraries at Kodak and Xerox, and she worked as the company branch supervisor from 1996-2001.

Prior to succeeding Floris St. Amant as Head of Circulation, Elissa was the student supervisor in the Government Documents and Microforms Department, a position the prepared her well for her new station.  That position also included supervising the stacks and resolving questions regarding the circulation of government documents and microforms.

Elissa is a voracious reader, an amateur photographer, and has eclectic tastes in music.  She enjoys cooking and playing with her two cats, and she also tries to do a certain amount of volunteer work every month.