Lana Servies Receives October 2024 Employee of the Month

The Escambia County Board of County Commissioners is pleased to recognize Lana Servies, Librarian in the Technical Services Division of West Florida Public Libraries, as the October 2024 Employee of the Month. Servies' selection was recognized at the Oct. 3 BCC meeting.

Servies began her career with WFPL in October 2006 before its transition to Escambia County in 2013. As a librarian in the Technical Services Division, Servies works to improve and enhance WFPL's online public access catalog classifications and descriptions. She is responsible for cataloguing and verifying the bibliographic data in the WFPL collection - approximately 400,000 items. Servies also trains new library staff on best practices for descriptive cataloging and other technical services and library resources.

A lover of jazz music, Servies worked with Jazz Pensacola to curate a jazz collection at the Pensacola Library, making the location the only public library in the United States with a dedicated jazz music room. Her dedication to the collection has helped the room to be featured in jazz periodicals multiple times over the last decade.

Servies' history with WFPL dates back to the 1970s, where she volunteered with Friends of the West Florida Public Libraries. As a volunteer, Servies sorted donated books each Thursday and came to know many of the staff. Years later, a librarian in charge of the genealogy collection was about to retire and encouraged Servies to apply for a part-time position opening up at the library. Since then, she has worked with the genealogy collection, providing assistance with cataloging in other areas.

Her rich history with the library system has made her a subject matter expert. Servies worked during the transition from a paper index card catalog system to the online public access catalog, and also cataloged the entire genealogy collection during the system's transitionary period. This involved several years of meticulous conversion of paper indexes and partial electronic entries into unique bibliographic descriptions for the historical materials that can be sourced using the online catalog.

"It is an honor to be Escambia County's Employee of the Month," Servies said. "It has been both an adventure and a pleasure to work with the supervisors and co-workers of West Florida Public Libraries throughout the years as the library system has expanded its reach."

Outside of her duties with WFPL, Servies is active in her community through her volunteer work at the Saenger Theatre, the Pensacola Jazz Festival and the Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival. She enjoys attending lectures on local history and sessions at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Servies also enjoys musical events and regularly attends RadioLive.

"Lana has been a quiet force within the team for many years," Library Director Todd Humble said. "Her dedicated service and quality of work is admirable and appreciated not only by staff, but by our valued patrons as well. We are proud to recognize her as the October Employee of the Month."

Lana Servies was joined by her fellow WFPL colleagues as she received her Employee of the Month proclamation at the Oct. 3 BCC meeting