Congratulations to Jenny Cuevas for the Technical Services Award
July 17, 2024
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Kristin Pekoll, RTSF Staff Liaison
kpekoll@ila.org
Jenny Cuevas Selected as 2024 Recipient of the Illinois Library Association
TBS, Inc. Technical Services Award
The Illinois Library Association (ILA) is proud to announce Jenny Cuevas, Head of Materials Management at the Addison Public Library (APL), is the recipient of the 2024 Illinois Library Association TBS, Inc. Technical Services Award. This annual award, presented by the ILA Resources and Technical Services Forum and sponsored by Today’s Business Solutions Inc. (TBS), is awarded to an individual who has made a substantial contribution in the area of library technical services, principally with a commitment to leadership, programming, and professional development in the technical services field.
Cuevas is the current head of materials management at APL and has been in this position for just over a year. Before being part of the materials management team, she was head of guest services at APL. She decided she wanted a career change to focus on collections and then moved to a cataloging clerk position in 2022. When an opportunity
opened to be the department head, Cuevas applied and has been a wonderful fit since March 2023.
Over the past year, she has hired and trained two full-time cataloging staff and a part-time clerk position. This often meant doing the work of multiple positions while we were posting, interviewing, and onboarding new staff. Cuevas maintained a positive attitude through all the staffing challenges. And the new staff are successful in their
positions thanks to her training skills!
Cuevas was also thrown into several large projects. Within nine months of her new position, the library was scheduled to go live on a new ILS and join the SWAN (System Wide Automated Network) consortium. Cuevas’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and positive attitude were essential to the success of that project and the ILS migration team. She managed the migration of thousands of bibliographic, item, and patron records from our old ILS to the new vendor. Cuevas worked with APL, SWAN, and SirsiDynix teams to map data fields in preparation for the migration. She worked with staff to test data, create new workflows, and oversee the training of her department.
As the library worked on plans for a large-scale building renovation, Cuevas worked with materials management staff to ensure the new workroom layout will meet staff’s needs plus hold all incoming and withdrawn materials, processing supplies, and book carts. And she is working with the collection development manager to lay out the physical collections in their new spaces.
The last significant contribution to call out is Cuevas’s active participation in the Privacy Audit Committee at APL. The committee used ALA’s Privacy Field Guides to conduct a privacy audit of our policies, procedures, practices, and staff education. Cuevas was the lead on many of these tasks including contacting all database vendors to read through their privacy policies and identify vendors to reconsider contracting for services in the future if they cannot meet privacy requirements. On any day, Cuevas is tasked with managing needs from staff, patrons, and projects. She handles all of it with a wonderful attitude and professional composure.
The Illinois Library Association TBS, Inc. Technical Services Award will be presented at an awards ceremony during the 2024 Illinois Library Association Annual Conference. The conference will take place October 8-10, 2024, in Peoria, Illinois.
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