Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic ’06
Company / School: Vassar College
Position / Degree: Humanities and Multidisciplinary Librarian
Overview
Humanities and Multidisciplinary Librarian, Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY
- BA, English, Vassar College
- MLS, Academic Librarianship, Drexel University
- PhD, Information Science, University at Buffalo
Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic (she/her) has a deep appreciation for the human, physical, and intellectual resources that libraries offer, and a reverence for the power of curiosity, information literacy, critical thinking skills, and a liberal arts education to contribute to society and the human record. She has worked in academic libraries for over 10 years at a range of institution types. She has published 10+ scholarly articles and eight academic book chapters, and has edited four book-length projects. She engages with her industry through conferences (including one she co-founded, ESiLS), journals (she serves on the editorial board of several), and committee work. Laureen’s publications have won the Medical Library Association’s Ida and George Eliot Prize twice (2021, 2023), and her dissertation won the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Competition in 2025. As Vassar’s Humanities and Multidisciplinary Librarian, her day-to-day work involves research assistance to students and faculty, collection development efforts to keep the Libraries’ collections top-notch, and outreach between the Libraries’ Academic Engagement team and the campus community.
Advice to Students:
Librarianship can be an exciting and vibrant career path for individuals with a variety of skillsets and personality types. At its heart, librarianship benefits from individuals who are people-focused, tech-savvy, and adaptable, and who enjoy community building and continuous learning. This is a rewarding field for those who are curious, enjoy problem-solving, believe in the importance of (free) access to information, and seek an intellectually stimulating career with variety and both historical and current social/community value. A liberal arts education is a fantastic match for librarianship, for lots of reasons, and just about any undergraduate degree can be useful!
