The libraries at Salt Lake Community College are places for students to gather, get resources, build community and find support.
“My typical day is not a typical day,” laughed the public services and outreach librarian, Erica Gudiño. Every day looks a little different for Gudiño; some days she helps at the desk and others she helps host events to build outreach for services offered through the library, traveling to other campus locations or reading books to children at the Eccles Lab.
“The string that connects all the little parts of my job and career is being able to recognize people,” said Gudiño.
Working at the SLCC library seemed to be a “beautiful collaboration” of everything that Gudiño had been looking for while she was studying to become a librarian. Before becoming a librarian, Gudiño mainly worked in non-profits for building community support systems.
Pop-up libraries expand student access
Gudiño also did an internship with a mobile library, an idea she brought to SLCC through the pop-up libraries that occur throughout the semesters.
These mobile libraries provide a space for students to connect with services and librarians, especially on campuses that lack a physical library, such as West Valley.
“It [pop-up libraries] was really a way to expose the library, market us, get students really seeing our faces and engaging with us,” said Gudiño. “A large part of it is relationship building and having that face recognition and saying, ‘We are here for you’ even if they may not know what they want.”
While Gudiño’s office is found at the Markosian library, she frequently travels to other SLCC campuses, especially West Valley. “We don’t have a physical library there, so even doing the pop-up libraries is really useful,” said Gudiño.
Additionally, Gudiño added that places like West Valley typically see the same volume of usage, such as checking out books that they would see at campuses like Taylorsville Redwood.
Head to the library for an ‘escape’
Another service that Gudiño highlighted was the escape room that the library hosts.
The escape rooms are often used by classes and students, staff, and faculty as team-building activities or for professors to introduce students to the library resources. Gudiño said the goal of the escape room activities is to make the first interaction between the library and the SLCC community something “fun and silly” that they will remember while also being exposed to the resources available through library services.
“It’s a nice team building exercise … Using the summer BRIDGE classes [as statistics] we got 93% of students saying it was effective and they learned a lot of skills,” said Gudiño.
Gudiño added that she was excited about a Utah State Library grant that awarded $30,000 to support SLCC’s hotspot and laptop lending program.
“We have kind of been running off of grant funding for the last academic year, because we have [these] hotspots that students are able to check out for free,” said Gudiño.
Gudiño said that Library Services has also been working with Rene Zepeda, the basic needs coordinator from the Thayne Center, to ensure that the free internet services go to those students with the greatest need rather than on a first-come, first-served basis.
“We know in [2026], you can’t be a student without [the] necessary technology … so with this new grant that we got, we will be purchasing new laptops,” said Gudiño.
The laptop and hotspot program updates will happen when the spring semester starts.
