Staff Spotlight – Emily Eklof

Emily is one of our newest staff members working at the Verona Shelving Facility. Prior to working with us, Emily received her bachelor’s degree from UW- Madison with dual majors in Literature, with a focus on Medieval Literature, and Gender and Women’s Studies. After that, Emily worked at Epic as a software tester for three and a half years. She grew up and has lived in Madison her whole life. She told us, “I have a lot of friends who work and have worked for the university and they’ve all loved it – I wanted in on the fun!”

We asked Emily what is most surprising about working out at Verona. She said, “The most surprising thing about working at the Verona facility specifically is how much quieter the chamber is when you’re in between the shelves. You don’t realize how much all those hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper are dampening the fans and other sounds until you walk out the end of an aisle and everything gets at twice as loud. Another fun thing about the Verona facility is getting to know everyone else who works out at the SWAP warehouse – for example, the electronics department likes to play Katy Perry on Fridays.”

Emily hopes her job with the Verona Shelving Facility will be a good starting point for learning a lot of new skills in a unique environment, more specifically, a library in a warehouse. She also hopes it will give her a great opportunity to grow a career with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Some fun facts about Emily are:

• She is a fiber artist and does a lot of art including weaving, embroidery, beadwork and spinning.
• She has 37 tattoos!
• Her favorite food is sweet potatoes.
• Her favorite thing about libraries is the book smell!