Pitt-Johnstown’s new Library Director Eve Wider has an affable smile, both in her profile photo on University of Pittsburgh’s library system’s websiteand when seen in person.

Wider said she had worked at Pitt-Oakland for 17 years.

Wider also had worked at Hillman Library’s reference desk at the Oakland campus for seven years, she said.

Although she still teaches a course – Introduction to the Arts and Sciences at Pitt-Oakland on Fridays this semester, she said she has directed her focus to her work at Pitt-Johnstown.

Living in both Richland Township and Pittsbutgh, Wider said she is at Pitt-Johnstown from Monday to Thursday.

She started working at Pitt-Johnstown Sept. 1, and said everything had been going well; she hopes to get to communicate more with faculty members and students and understand their needs better.

The launching of Pitt-Johnstown’s new engineering majors would allow more connections with Oakland, and she said it would give her opportunities to get more involved more with freshmen.

She said all librarians and library staff members have been doing a good job, and she wants to make sure they continue to do so.

Compared with her experience at Pitt-Oakland, she said she is able to work with more undergraduate students across disciplines at Pitt-Johnstown, while she worked with more business students and graduate students at Oakland.

An International Game Day is to be held by Wider and her co-workers from 7 to 10 p.m. Nov. 13 in the library, and there are to be prizes for attendees, Wider said.

An enthusiastic traveler, Wide had many souvenirs in her office, including a Chinese knot. She said she had been a librarian for two voyages of an academic program called “Semester at Sea”.

The program, according to Wider, is a study abroad program in which students can travel to different countries on a ship that used to be sponsored by the university.

Wider said the sea project was one of the reasons she was attracted to the university. She went on her first voyage in a Fall semester for 100 days; through the voyages, she was able to visit Cuba and China.

Though she had a hard time finding her way on public buses when she was an exchange librarian at Nanjing University in China, she loved the street foods there, she said.

She is also a faculty adviser for the Pitt Amnesty International Student Group. According to Amnesty International’s website, it is a global human rights advocate for more than 50 years.