Astronauts and engineers get a lot of glory when it comes to space exploration. But behind every space mission are people doing a variety of critical jobs, and behind every "giant leap for mankind" are hundreds of workers who are vital to the mission’s success.
The John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland plays a critical part in many of NASA’s projects, including the Glenn library, which provides the research that makes it all possible.
Entering the John Glenn campus
The NASA Glenn campus, spanning 350 acres, looks like a military facility pulled straight from a Marvel movie. There are testing facilities with wind tunnels, drop towers and vacuum chambers to test the latest and greatest innovations in aeronautic technology. There are also administration and research buildings, where scientists and researchers crunch numbers in preparation for the next project, but tucked away, behind winding roads, clearance checks and many security barriers, is the library.
Walking into the Glenn library feels oddly familiar, like entering your local library. There are assorted workspaces with tables and chairs in the front, complete with puzzles and coloring pages for folks to unwind. Surrounding them are enormous mahogany bookshelves filled with technical documents, reports and journals, telling NASA’s storied history.
Toward the back sit four large metal cases with carousels that house NASA’s microfiche collection — a series of film cards that archive articles, flight logs and other aviation documents. All the materials are in pristine condition — there’s not a hint of dust near anything. Unlike your local library, all the books, papers and film cards here detail every step of our nation’s history in aeronautics and space exploration.
What a NASA librarian does
Robin Pertz is one of those vital workers behind the scenes. Pertz is the library, history and archives supervisor at NASA Glenn Research Center, meaning she manages NASA Glenn’s full circulating library of print and digital materials.
Most of the research databases are available online, but Glenn’s physical collection is expansive. According to Pertz, the library holds 55,000 different materials on its shelves, and nearly 1.1 million materials across the entire agency.
Not many people know about NASA Glenn’s library, according to Pertz, and even fewer know what they do.
“A lot of people are like, 'Oh, I had no idea that NASA even had libraries, let alone librarians,'” she said, rolling her eyes with a smile.
Even without the notoriety, Pertz’s role at NASA Glenn is crucial. Her most important responsibility is to provide access to NASA’s research vault for any new top-secret projects. Pertz and her team provide new or existing research for many engineering companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin that are looking to pilot new technologies.
“We want to make sure that, as an agency, we’re putting those technologies in the hands of people who are going to do good with it,” she said. “Vetting those companies and making sure that those folks are going to do good things with it is one of the cool parts of my job.”
Pertz’s journey to the stars
Pertz has always dreamt of the stars. Growing up in Willoughby, about 30 miles east of the Glenn Research Center, she enjoyed field trips to the Great Lakes Science Center and NASA Glenn in grade school. One of her fondest memories was a sixth grade trip to Daytona Beach, Florida to see the space shuttle Columbia launch from Kennedy Space Center. Pertz credited those school trips and her teachers for nurturing her love for science and teaching.
She always wanted to work for NASA, but didn’t know if she would have a place there. She wanted to become a social studies and science teacher, but didn’t think that NASA had space for teachers.
“I had a great teacher in fifth grade who was the inspiration for me wanting to be a teacher,” she said. “[But] my fifth grade brain told me, ‘Well, NASA doesn’t hire teachers. You can’t work at NASA.’”
Pertz also applied to NASA’s astronaut candidate program four times to no avail. (To this day, she still has all her rejection letters and her mother keeps one on her fridge.) She gave up on her space dream, choosing to focus on teaching.
But after a few years of teaching, she wasn’t fulfilled. Between classroom politics and the shrinking resource pool, Pertz felt exhausted and less fulfilled.
After quitting teaching, Pertz decided her life needed a change. She took a job at the Columbus Metropolitan Library as the library’s first homework help center coordinator. For her, this was the perfect blend between teaching kids and working with communities and families. She started working to become a full-time librarian, and even went to graduate school to earn her master’s degree in library science.
During one of her classes, however, she rekindled her love for the great unknown. For an assignment, Pertz had to interview a librarian in a position she would want one day. Her boyfriend recommended that she reach out to NASA to see if they had a librarian she could interview. She was apprehensive at first, but reached out to the agency and got her chance. Now, more than 11 years later, she holds the exact position of the man she interviewed.
“I was in the right place at the right time and landed a job as the librarian. Now I’ve been here for 11-plus years, and it’s been absolutely incredible," Pertz said.
‘NASA has a place for everybody’
Pertz found her place at NASA Glenn, a place she didn’t know existed as a child. Some days, she has "the biggest impostor syndrome one can have," but she remains confident in her place at the Glenn Research Center.
“To make it run, everybody has a place,” Pertz said. “The Artemis astronauts and [The Space Launch System] are incredible, but there’s a whole team of people behind all of that to make it successful and work.”
Every day at work, Pertz blends her love of teaching with her love for outer space. And though she never would have pictured herself working at NASA, she has a message for young people who also spend their free time staring up at the stars.
“NASA has a place for everybody,” she said. “You don’t just have to love math and science to be here. And definitely, you don’t have to be an astronaut.”
Day in and day out, Pertz proves that all you need at NASA is a love for the stars.
