Meet Your Librarians
Adam Rosenkranz
Reference Librarian
Honnold/Mudd Library
Adam Rosenkranz, a native of the Bronx, NY, was hired by the Libraries of The Claremont Colleges a few weeks after graduating from Columbia University's School of Library Service in the Spring of 1991. He has a BA from New York University (major: German; and minor: History) and an MA from the University of Chicago in International Relations. He has been a very active member of the Reference Team, assisting students both at the graduate and undergraduate levels in his areas of specialization. Over the years at Claremont, in addition to his current subjects of History, Philosophy and Religion, he has had subject specialties in Government and International Relations. He developed the faculty lecture series Claremont Discourse for the Libraries -- a series he still coordinates.
His personal addictions include literature -- especially poetry, movies, and above all, music, especially jazz. He loves to read printed text away from the computer screen and has omnivorous reading tastes, which he rarely gets to indulge these days thanks to the atomic energy of his toddler son, Eli Rosenkim.
Carrie Marsh
Special Collections Librarian
Honnold/Mudd Library
My path to a real career started with the best student job on campus. I shelved books in the university library. It was the perfect job for me because I had a passion for books. I haunted the library anyway as an English major, and being paid for working there was beyond great. I staked out my territory in the PR and PS ranges; I could find things for people quickly because I knew the collection so well, and weirdly enough, I liked shelf reading.
After I got a bachelor's then a master's degree in literature, graduation forced me to leave my library job. I taught for some years, was a copy editor/writer for a nonprofit organization, and co-administered a college program for urban high school students. All great jobs but I wasn't inspired. I wanted to be around books. So when a friend said, “You liked your library job. You should go to library school,” I didn't hesitate. Talk about the proverbial light bulb going on.
Special collections librarianship suits me. It's a privilege to work with rare books and manuscripts and photographs and documents, the stuff that testifies to history and culture and creativity. An Alaska gold rush diary is more than words on paper when you discover 100 year old mosquitoes smushed on its pages by the diarist; you don't get that sort of experience with its 21st century paperback edition (nor its digitized facsimile, I reckon).
Working with our students is one of the best things about being a special collections librarian here at The Colleges. It's thrilling to witness the students' enthusiasm when I show them a William Blake first edition or a 17th century map of the coast of California or the first Pomona College newspaper. They get it. And they teach me just as much as I try to teach them.
I admit that what I do is more than a job to me. Not to be hyperbolic, I feel called to the work. I'm passionate about our collections --the stuff-- and our mission to make them available for research. And I admit here that, besides teaching students about our collections, my favorite thing is to wander our rare book stacks and pore over the books. It's just as fun and amazing as that clueless college student dreamed it'd be.