News & Blog

This month, we are spotlighting a Downtown Campus Library hidden gem, Elyse Ugalde! From directly assisting patrons to curating new ways for patron engagement, she ensures that the UCF Library is a pleasant and inviting space for students, faculty, and community members. With her adaptability, creativity, and passion for community engagement, Elyse sets the tone for the public perception of the library, as well as the way in which it connects with its users.

We sat down with Elyse to get some insight into her work and learn more about her!

Tell us a little bit about your background and how long you’ve been with us at the UCF Libraries.
Hello! I’ve been with UCF Libraries since November of 2024, so less than a year. Even though I’m still pretty new, I feel right at home at UCF because I’m a 2-time Knight. I graduated with a BA in Humanities with a focus on philosophy and religion back in 2010, and an MBA in 2017. My work history is primarily in marketing, customer service, and social media, and I apply that experience every day here at the library.

What do your daily responsibilities look like?
Much of what I do involves assisting patrons directly by answering their various questions or pointing them in the right direction in their research or other needs. I also develop and implement patron engagement programs that are both academic and well-being focused. I’m always cooking up new ways to connect with patrons and make the library a pleasant and inviting space on campus. Finding opportunities to increase the connections we have with our student body and elevating our status as a trusted go-to source for high quality information are both central to this role.

What kinds of technical skills or knowledge are essential for your position, and how did you acquire them?
The technical skills that serve me best in this role are: research, writing, a basic understanding of social media and how to view and interpret analytics, the ability to get comfortable with data management systems like Alma and Primo, familiarity with Outlook, Excel, Canva, Word, Teams, and the organizational skills required to maintain a navigable file system to track down important files in a jiffy. Capturing data as often as possible using surveys is also a great asset, so the skills to harvest and interpret that data are important.

Some of these skills come from school, others from work, others just from being of an age where computers are a standard part of daily life. I’m not a tech-wiz by any means, and I often have to Google or YouTube my way out of a tech quandary, or even ask a pal for help. But, being adaptable enough to learn how to navigate basic tech is pretty vital.

I think technical skills can be taught to almost anyone though, and the personal ability to serve patrons in a friendly and communicative way is the actual skill most important to this position, and the one that is most difficult to learn from school or a computer.

What has been your proudest accomplishment here? Can you tell us how that came to be?
I’m gazing around the library and seeing my little touches here and there, and I’m pleased to see them, and glad to have a boss who believes in my ideas and empowers their execution. I’m most proud when I successfully create enjoyable, memorable experiences for people, so I consider fun the best metric for success. I had the most fun just a few weeks ago when playing a game I devised based on MTV’s Silent Library show. Our version was toned down, of course, but it was one of the funnest days I’ve had at work. Students had to complete challenges without laughing, some academic and some not. I was so nervous before the game because I didn’t know if the challenges I came up with would be fun, or if tumbleweeds would blow by and crickets would chirp. But, everyone had a blast, and it made me feel like Sally Field at the Oscar’s. They like me, they really like me.

We heard you are incredibly creative! Could you tell us of a time you came up with a creative solution in regards to your work, or perhaps how you use your creativity day-to-day?
What a nice compliment. Libraries tend to have limited budgets, pushing people to come up with creative solutions. I noticed that people who browse our pop-reads shelves tend to have a genre of interest, but not an author in mind. Since we organize these books by author, the genres were scattered all over the place. I scoured the internet and my mind for solutions that would keep our books in author order, but would help patrons navigate them with ease. After presenting an idea to the team, we worked together to make something that patrons have responded to very well: a “book-quet.” It looks like a bouquet of flowers, but each flower is one of our pop-reads, and they are color and shape coded to indicate genre. It has been cool seeing this go from a little problem solving idea to a tactile interactive tool that patrons engage with. We’ve gotten a lot of nice feedback about it.

The team has to be creative in everything we do, because we’re such a unique academic library. When we come up with an idea for patron engagement, we have to use what we have on hand to make it happen, and creativity follows. We design and print out our own game pieces, conceptualize fun academic challenges, get our talented clerks to edit videos or paint backgrounds. Things always seem to come together when we play to everyone’s individual strengths.

When working on the library social media, how do you balance connecting with students and making sure you get the message across?
A great way to connect with students is to involve them in the process. We have these fabulous work-study student clerks at our disposal, and they are in tune with what works and what doesn’t on social media. They know better than anyone how to speak the language of the current college generation, so they are the perfect resource to tap into. They get a sense of ownership over our account and take pride in coming up with creative ideas and funny reels. I want the students on this campus to see themselves reflected in our social media, and to know the library is not a stuffy or intimidating place.

Besides connecting with fun posts, we also aim to keep calls-to-action brief and informative. If there’s a workshop or event we want to get the word out about, we make sure to follow best practices for marketing: get to the point, provide clear details like where/what/when, and make it easy to connect with us.Though our social media following is small, analytics reveal that engagement and follows have been on a consistent upward trajectory since I started, which is something I’m proud of!

Tell us a little about you outside of the Library. What sort of interests and hobbies do you have?
I love to read, and I spend a lot of time at my used book store, which shall remain nameless because I am a gatekeeper. My favorite book of all time is The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, which I first read when I was about 15. I’ve read it maybe 10 times since then, but I’m always looking for something else that will ignite the special unnamable feeling that favorite books spark.

The library is a natural fit for my interests, and I’m especially psyched that I am now being trusted with selecting new pop-reads! I’ve read a handful off of our shelves, and I take joy in writing little descriptive cards to display under them, just like they do at the aforementioned favorite bookstore.

I also love comedy of all sorts. Sitcoms, movies, sketch shows, but particularly movies from the 80s and 90s. My favorite is Dumb and Dumber, and I can rewatch it infinite times without ever getting bored. It’s harder to make people laugh than it is to make them cry, so I have a reverence for funny people. Besides that, I enjoy spending time with my friends and loved ones and admiring my sweet little cat, who I have a normal amount of pictures of on my phone.

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