Director of the Library

In 2015, Wei Cen joined Middlesex Community College as an information literacy librarian. She works closely with students to help them succeed. As the liaison librarian to Allied Health and Business programs, Wei wants to be approachable in many ways. She collaborated with teaching faculty members to become an embedded librarian in Blackboard. An embedded librarian is a librarian who is integrated into an online class for a period of time to support the student’s in their research process.

Wei also loves creating instructional videos, interactive tutorials and online games to make learning fun, engaging and enjoyable. One of the tutorials Wei created has more than 55,000 views on YouTube. She’s happy that students are using these online resources.

Prior to Middlesex, Wei served as the emerging technologies librarian at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Fla. Her main focus was applying emerging technologies to promote library services and resources. She explored how technologies can better serve students in improving their information literacy skills. Before moving to Florida, Wei worked for Human Relations Area Files at Yale, an internationally recognized organization in the field of cultural anthropology. She enjoyed learning how library databases are produced and managed at the vendor’s end. Her passion for serving a community college began while working at Gateway in New Haven.

Wei is a member of the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Connecticut Library Association (CLA), and the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA). So that “the voices of community college libraries are heard,” she serves on two national committees: the ACRL Student Learning and Information Literacy Committee and the ACRL Community and Junior College Libraries Section Awards Committee.

Wei received the 2013 ALA Emerging Leader award, and she is most proud to be the recipient of the Tampa Bay Library Consortium Ask A Librarian Exemplary Teaching Chat Award. She never imagined her love of helping students while doing her job would lead to receiving awards.

Wei earned a Bachelor of Economics degree from Zhejiang GongShang University in China, a Master of Arts from East China University of Science and Technology, and a Master of Library Science from Southern Connecticut State University.

Outside of work, Wei enjoys spending time with family, reading books to her daughter, yoga, using a hula-hoop and cooking.