Meet MLC Monday: Lucinda Ogden

Meet Lucinda Ogden, CE Coordinator at the Mississippi Library Commission! She arranges all MLC-hosted CE and non-CE training, both on and off site, and is point man during such events. Lucinda is also the coordinator for MLC's meeting rooms. She is available to answer questions about CEs and other MLC training and handles all the recordkeeping for these. In addition, she coordinates and facilitates webinars for the agency. She began at MLC back in February of this year, leaving a job at UMMC's Ryan White Program.

Ogden holds a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from the University of Chicago with a focus on history, philosophy, and literature. She's worked in technical processing and acquisitions for libraries all over, including Cook Library at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, the Center for Research Library at The University of Chicago in Illinois, the Jackson/Hinds Library System in Mississippi, and the Government Documents Repository at the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens, Georgia. "I love being around librarians, books, and bibliophiles. I feel at home around them. These are my kind of people." About MLC itself, Ogden said, "MLC is such a wonderful library. It's a library devoted to libraries. Not only that, the building itself is beautiful. What more could you ask for?"

When asked why she thinks libraries are important, Lucinda replied, "You can self-educate at the library, any library. You can follow your own impulses to knowledge and go wherever it is that leads you. You can browse and make discoveries on your own. There's no set curriculum or testing or anything like that. It's pure information revelation."

As you might think, Lucinda is passionate about reading. She describes her tastes as ever evolving. Recently she was entranced by the latest discoveries in genetic archaeology, which led to an interest in paleolithic Europe. Even she doesn't know what she'll read next! She cites Doris Lessing, Morgan Llywelyn, and Thomas Hardy as a few of her favorite authors. Lucinda stays busy when she's not at the library. She likes to sew and makes Barbie and American Girl clothes for her nieces' dolls. Every year she keeps a garden; mustard greens, lettuce, and ginger are growing in hers right now. If she sees a need for something, she'll create it. Recently she decided an empty spot in her home was lacking a table. Instead of buying one, she built one herself. Ogden lives in Jackson with her husband.