Transcript of interview with Mary L. McCoy by Claytee D. White, February 26, 2009

The population of Lancaster, New York shrank on Christmas Day 1959. That was the day young Mary McCoy and her eight siblings relocated to Las Vegas. In this interview, Mary recalls highlights of the move to dusty southern Nevada; her family's first plane trip; and what it was like to grow up in a large family. After graduating from Basic High School, Mary immediately enrolled at Nevada Southern University which was in the midst of growing into UNLV. During the summer of 1967 she worked at the university's library moving books into the expanded facility. Though she altered her studies program from education to English, she continued to work at the library and continued the job after graduation. Mary describes some of the dynamic changes that were occurring to UNLV campus at the time. In 1975, Mary and her husband Duncan McCoy moved to Bloomington, Indiana, so that Duncan could pursue his graduate studies and take a Book Mobile librarian job. For the next fourteen years the couple followed a variety of opportunities guided by Duncan's career.[He is a retired director of Boulder City, NV, Library.] In 1989, they returned to Las Vegas. Mary had agreed to the move—as long as it was to a city where she could find a college library position. Mary speaks of her enjoyment of working at the UNLV library until her retirement in 2009. Among her favorite UNLV library memories is a story about a ride in the book lift, as well as how her library roles ranged from acquisitions to Special Collections to documents.