Elsa Loftis

Background

About Elsa Loftis

I completed my MLIS from the Pratt Institute in New York in 2009 with a certificate in Archives and Museum Librarianship. During my years in New York, I worked at the Pratt Institute Library, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Museum Archives. I returned to the Portland area where I found employment at Everest College as their librarian, and worked there for three and a half years. Some of my main duties were reference, teaching, circulation, hiring and managing part time student workers, cataloging and collection development. In August of 2013, I became the Director of Library Services at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. It is an amazing community, where I am responsible for the management of the library (all aspects), information literacy program, visual resources, and teaching our freshman seminar course during fall semesters. Our collection is specialized, being the academic library for an art college, but we also serves as a member of the Washington County Cooperative public library system. We are also a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. I served as President of the Oregon Library Association in 2016-2017. In 2018, I became the Humanities and Acquisitions Librarian at Portland State University, where I am responsible for acquisitions and am the subject liaison to the Art + Design department, and the World Languages department. My priorities are a commitment to public service, intellectual freedom, and the teaching of information literacy. I believe that I am most effective in my work when I can serve the public, process and organize materials, and I am interested in management, reference, and instruction. I studied metadata, digital archiving, and reference work. Specialties: Public service, instruction, reference, art librarianship and archives.