LISNews: Librarian News

A Cape Codder of course.

Osterville’s new librarian Lee Ann Amend cut her teeth in library science as a 14-year-old volunteer in a medical library. She shelved volumes, typed catalog cards, and read “as many of the materials as I could understand,” she wrote in an e-mail interview with the Barnstable Patriot.

Amend vacationed on land her grandfather owned in West Yarmouth, “reading under the kerosene lanterns that used to light his home…and spending countless hours at Seagull Beach.”

Salt water seems to have gotten into her veins, for she served eight years in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserves security forces, and then in the Merchant Marine as an assistant purser on ocean liners.

Since Oct. 23, Amend has directed Osterville’s library. “The staff in this library are top-rate, hardworking and wonderful people,” she wrote, using e-mail because, after only one month on the job, she had so many appointments the Monday after Thanksgiving she couldn’t schedule a visit by a reporter.