There is an old adage that goes “the only constant is change.” For the past several decades at Temple University Ambler, however, the only constant is Sandi Thompson.
Thompson, Head of the Ambler Campus Library, marked 55 years of dedication to Temple University last fall and every sign points to that tally continuing to rise. Much of that time has been spent at Temple Ambler, ensuring that every student has the resources they need to succeed, and every faculty member and researcher has the support they require.
In 1969, however, Thompson was a fresh face in the former Paley Library at Main Campus applying for a job after seeing it listed in her local newspaper — no Internet searches or LinkedIn then. She began as a Bibliographic Assistant, first in the Acquisitions Department followed by service in the Business Library, Government Documents and finally in the Mathematical Sciences Library.
“I remember that the first thing I had to do for Human Resources was take a typing test. Well, it just so happened that I was a piano player, and I had taken typing in high school — I passed the test,” she said. “My first job was in the prep area where we searched for books, where we bought books, where the books were processed — it was behind the scenes, not face-to-face. I soon realized I missed the person-to-person contact.”
In the Business Library, Thompson was a bibliographic assistant working with three professional librarians.
“That was public-facing and that was when I knew that this is what I was meant to do,” she said. “When I could match a person with a resource they needed to get a project done or a paper written, that was the moment when I was sure I was exactly where I was meant to be.”
What has kept Thompson at Temple after all of these years “is the people,” she said.
“At Main Campus, at Ambler, I have had this wonderful opportunity to really relate to our students, to the faculty and my colleagues; to get to know them on campus and acknowledge their contributions and have them acknowledge me as well,” she said. “At Ambler, I found that students were quite inclined to come up to the desk, to ask questions and ask for help. That’s when the closeknit culture of the campus really started to shine through — the people are what make the campus so special, and they are what make this campus work regardless of any challenge.”
Thompson recalled one particularly memorable introduction she had with a graduate student.
“She came in and introduced herself and said ‘I just want to let you know that I am a graduate student in business and I’m just coming back to school. I know I’m going to need your help so I thought I would begin this journey by giving the person who is going to help me a gift,’” said Thompson who served as the Interim Head of Suburban Campus Libraries beginning in 2006 and then Head of Suburban Libraries through the transition of the Tyler School of Art (now the Tyler School of Art and Architecture) to their present location at Main Campus. “She opened her handbag and handed me a bottle of aspirin and said, ‘Before I’m done, you’re going to need this.’ That student became one of my best friends.”
Becoming Part of Temple Ambler’s History
In 1984, Thompson arrived at Temple University Ambler after earning her M.S.L.S. at Drexel University. As Bibliographic Services Librarian, she became deeply involved in the campus community and its library while advocating for Temple Ambler and participating in many services and activities on the Main Campus.
“Everything was manual back then. When you checked out a book you had an old-fashioned card that you had to write your name on,” she said. “If you were looking for a book, you went to the card catalog, and you have no idea how many people loved that card catalog.”
Thompson said she truly misses the “serendipity that came with the card catalog.”
“No matter who was filing the cards, mistakes were made. You’d sometimes find the weirdest combinations,” she said. “You’d be looking for a literary book and come across a book about the science of physics or geography. It made things interesting and provided unexpected opportunities for discovery.”
In addition to her more “traditional” duties as librarian, Thompson also set about building an historical archive of the Ambler Campus, preserving key documents, photographs and memories of the campus and the former Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, which preceded Temple Ambler.
Thompson said her interest in Temple Ambler’s history dates back to the heyday of the Temple Musical Festival and Institute, which was located at the Ambler Campus and served as a school for young professional musicians in addition to offering a 3,000-seat concert venue.
“I worked at the Main Campus when the Music Festival was here and it was my first introduction to Ambler,” she said. “That initial interest blossomed from there. The campus has such a rich history that you can’t help but get immersed in it.”
Thompson was an integral part in the research and development of historical content for the celebrations of the 90th and 100th anniversaries of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women and the 40th and 50th anniversaries of Ambler as a campus of Temple. In 2005, she was also deeply involved in researching the history of the campus for Temple Ambler’s Best of Show-winning Philadelphia Flower Show Exhibit, “Progressive Women in Horticulture: A Driving Force in Philadelphia — 1904 to 1924.”
What followed was a book about the campus’ first 100 years — A Century of Cultivation 1911 to 2011 — 100 Years from the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women to Temple University Ambler — written by Jenny Rose Carey, former Director of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, and Mary Anne Blair Fry, a graduate of the Class of 1958 and a the creation of a corresponding artifacts collection, which were developed with the assistance of Thompson and the Temple University Ambler “100-Year Club,” a group of dedicated alums.
“These were all joint ventures between the campus, the Arboretum and the Library. The campus community makes you want to do what you do and spend the time that you spend,” she said. “We work together, regardless of our titles or who we are, and we work for the benefit of the campus and the students. In my time here, my goal has been to help students find the right resources they need or help them discover where their interests truly lie. Hopefully I’ve helped faculty members find new ways to discover information or pushed them in a different direction to help them make their classes come alive.”
Perseverance Conquers
Preserving campus history and supporting the campus community became all the more important after the hurricane and tornado that struck Temple Ambler in 2021, which devastated the Library Building and threatened the archives that Thompson and her colleagues had worked so meticulously to build over the years.
“The next morning, I had to get to the Library — all I could think about was all of the glass windows in the building. Computers were strewn on the floor, shelves were broken from the weight of the books that had gotten soaked, and water had seeped into places that were thought were safe spaces,” she said. “The first thing we did was find a dry space to store the historic archive materials — we just started a chain and moved things out to get to work on preservation measures. With the archive and the general collection, we had well over 100,000 items and we had to determine what could be saved, what wasn’t salvageable and what would need be replaced.”
In a series of defining moments in her decades of service to Temple, Thompson helped ensure that Library resources and support remained available to everyone in the tornado’s aftermath. Two weeks after the storm, when the campus reopened, Library staff were on hand to support the community.
“Everything went down to Charles Library and everything that we were able to preserve remained accessible to our students, faculty and staff,” she said. “We set about determining where the Library would live on campus, how we could best provide the services we offer to our community.”
Thompson, working closely with Information Technology Services and campus administrators, developed the Information Commons in the Learning Center, a hub of learning, collaboration and resources for the campus community, which today houses about 45,000 pieces of the Temple Ambler’s Library’s collection spanning books that support the Landscape Architecture and Horticulture programs, history, literature and other areas of study, in addition to leisure reading and children and young adult sections.
The Information Commons also has its own Ferris Wheel not to mention a menagerie of owls of all shapes and sizes that Thompson has collected over the years. Created from a toy building set, the Ferris Wheel was an icon in the former library building. It withstood the ferocity of the tornado and found a new home in the shared space.
“It was still standing after the tornado, which was really an emotional moment for all of us. Now it’s an icon for the Information Commons — it’s become a symbol of our continued resilience,” Thompson said. “I think we’ve created a very welcoming space here — we may be a little smaller, but we are mighty. We want students, faculty, staff and researchers to know that if they need help, we are here to provide it. With a person to provide assistance and guidance for an area of study or research needs, the library system becomes much easier to navigate."
Today, Thompson said, librarians are more important than ever, “with many students brought up on computers and technology and trusting all that they read.”
“There are many ways students can study material with a critical eye to make decisions about what they are reading, and we can help teach them these things. Being able to look at material critically is an integral part of learning and reading and becomes even more important with the current state of disinformation, misinformation and the burgeoning growth of AI coming at us from all sides,” she said. “Although book banning is not usually found in the academic library, its very existence and the chance of censorship should be important to all of us. What I truly aim for is that students who find themselves interested in reading will be lifelong learners and find knowledge, respite, fun, adventure and whatever else they might need or enjoy in reading.”