By Kathy Hellman
Special to Larson Newspapers
The one aspect of my position as library director that I have found the most rewarding has nothing to do with building a new library or creating new programs in the community. It has been about taking chances on people, seeing hidden potential and connecting that person to opportunities to develop professionally and personally, encouraging, inspiring, mentoring and adapting their work schedule to make it possible, then watching what happens.
Wendy Cook-Roberts is definitely one of those people with the right mix of potential and personal motivation. She has served Camp Verde Community Library exceptionally well since 2013, when she started as a volunteer. Within a few months, Cook-Roberts was hired as a part-time library clerk, in which role she willingly took on challenges like running the children’s STEAM Time program. Due to her proclivity for self-motivated learning, her capacity to take on new responsibilities and her desire to contribute to patron services, she quickly advanced to senior library clerk. In 2021, Cook-Roberts moved to the full-time position of library specialist in charge of the PC help desk and reference services and proceeded to revitalize the area with more efficient and accessible services to patrons.
While a part-time clerk, Cook-Roberts showed an affinity for IT services, ranging from networking to hardware configuration. She exemplified patience, kindness, resourcefulness and determination when helping both community members and coworkers with technology issues. As a full-time specialist, Cook-Roberts took her dedication and performance to a whole new level, shaping customer service standards in the PC help area, creating supporting documentation and effectively communicating her ideas respectfully to her coworkers to gain cooperation.
In the past three years, Cook-Roberts has taken on projects she has never done before, learned what she needed to know and completed her projects successfully. She won and administered grants to connect people to health care coverage and bring Wi-Fi hotspots to the library for checkout. When our town changed IT teams, she learned how to manage the programs that secure the teen computers and the online catalogs. She researched and recommended the purchase of a smartboard system and proceeded to handle the setup and create the training and instructions for her coworkers and the public. She found an affordable solution for securing and filtering Chromebooks and iPads for patron use and taught herself how to set them all upand manage them.
Cook-Roberts has provided support to every one of her coworkers using technology from Zoom and Teams meetings to setting up printers and scanners, managing a variety of tablets and smartphones and handling 3D printing and coding with Sphero. She created documentation for each of these tasks, taught technology classes and is considered the heart of library services by many in our community. Cook-Roberts’s capacity for learning, applying what she learns and effectively sharing what she knows is incredible. In addition to all that, Cook- Roberts completed an associate’s degree in general education, a library support services certificate, and is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer information technologies.
Having worked with Cook-Roberts for the past 11 years, I have come to know her as dependable, trustworthy, intelligent, compassionate, engaging and fully committed to assimilating knowledge that improves her understanding of how to make a difference in the lives of those around her. She is so well-liked and appreciated that to many community members, the Camp Verde Community Library is synonymous with Cook-Roberts. Hiring Cook-Roberts was one of the best decisions
I made as a library director at the Camp Verde Community Library and it has been my joy to work with her and to know her.
Cook-Roberts’s last day with us was Friday, Dec. 20. It’s hard to imagine the place without her, but we thank her for her years of service and wish her all good in her new position in Ohio and in all future adventures she embarks upon.
