The Superior Express -

Crystal Fullerton has been the librarian at the Mankato City Library since 2016. She will have been at the library for five years January 2021. Fullerton is a native resident of Mankato and graduated from Mankato High School.

In high school, Fullerton worked at Buffalo Roam. She served in the United States Navy for four years as an aviation electronics technician. A year after she got out of the Navy, Fullerton attended Cloud County Community College and K-State University. She worked at Continental Analytical Services in Salina for five and a half years. She went to Colby Community College for a year for vet tech. Many people remember her from her eight years working at Kier's.

In her free time, Fullerton enjoys watching movies on DVD, shopping at thrift stores and sewing. Fullerton has four cats: one is a gray domestic long hair, two are tabbies and the last is a black stray.

Fullerton chose Mankato as her home so she could be near her family. She enjoys living and working in a small town because of the short transit time and the feeling of being safer.

COVID-19 has caused Fullerton a lot of stress. She is worried about her parents. At work, Fullerton said COVID has been quite a task to ensure a safe environment at the library. Fullerton has many responsibilities at the library. She is in charge of assisting patrons in their requests for materials through interlibrary loan, selecting and ordering new material, and organizing and sometimes conducting programming. Applying for grants and additional funding as it comes available is another task. She sometimes is a problem solver. Fullerton sorts the books the library can't circulate anymore. A couple of other responsibilities that Fullerton has at the library are enforcing rules, sometimes giving technical support, selling copies and making faxes.

Fullerton enjoys many things about being a librarian at the Mankato City Library. She likes the variety and her hours. She also enjoys the quiet, looking out the windows to see the sunshine and the opportunity to be creative.

Fullerton said the hardest parts of her job are the limited funds for books and the limited funds for the Summer Reading Program. Deciding how to best utilize the funding to give the youth a good summer reading program is hard.

Fullerton gets inspiration from what other libraries are doing or have done. A lot of ideas from the internet, however, one of her last ideas came from an old '70s craft book.

"The library is one of your best options for education and entertainment," Fullerton said. "I encourage the public to give the local library a try."