By: Jen Cywinski and Tracy Reilly

If you’ve ever visited the Kelly Library at the Greater Allegheny Campus in McKeesport then you’ve probably seen Linda Ferriss behind the service desk. Linda started there in January
of 2012 as an instructor for reading specialist classes. In August of the same year, a position opened up for an Information Resource Specialist so she applied and the rest is history.

Like many of these positions on smaller campuses, Linda wears many hats. She is in charge of interlibrary loan, cataloging, collection maintenance, weeding, processing new materials, as
well as overseeing student workers’ hours and payroll.

Linda attended Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a Bachelors in Elementary Education with a concentration in reading. Her love of books and reading later inspired her to go on for a Masters specializing in Reading Literacy. What you may not know about Linda is that when she first joined the job force after college, she attended a job fair and decided to teach English in a foreign country, including Venezuela for two years and Spain for one year!

Having grown up in Williamsport, PA, her family always had season tickets for Penn State Football, so family and PSU go together for Linda. Speaking of which, she and her husband Ed have a 14-year-old Lab mix named Jasper, and she has two sons, James and Daniel.

Though Linda was hired for the Kelly Library specifically, she loves being part of the big picture at Penn State- “I have to know people throughout the system and across the state!”