Lisa Jacobs-Haberstroh has worked in the insurance industry and has had her own business as an artist. For five years, she was an enthusiastic roller derby competitor in her spare time.
But she has really found her niche working for Johnson County Library, first at the Gardner branch and now as a clerk at the Lenexa City Center branch.
“I have very much enjoyed my time. I basically have been put on this planet for camaraderie and collaboration,” Jacobs-Haberstroh says. “That’s what I’ve learned about myself. The people that work at the Library are amazing. They are creative and nice and great to be around.”
Jacobs-Haberstroh’s father was in the Army and the family moved around a lot. She was born in Germany and also lived in New Mexico, New York and Florida. After graduating from an arts magnet high school and community college in Florida, she moved to Kansas City to attend the Kansas City Art Institute, where she studied printmaking and art history.
She had a passion for drawing and for printmaking (linoleum cuts and wood cuts) but had student debt and knew she needed to make a living. So after graduation she got an insurance company job.
As a kid she had enjoyed roller skating. Some Art Institute friends talked her into joining them in the Kansas City Roller Warriors, a roller derby league at the Winnwood Skate Center.
“That’s what I did for fun and relaxation, for release, camaraderie,” she now says. It was a lively sport, complete with fake fights. It’s where Jacobs-Haberstroh met her husband, Ryan, who was a roller derby referee and would “break up my fights.”
Injuries forced her to quit, but she has kept in touch with those good friends and now does yoga to stay fit.
After she got married in 2013, she left the insurance company and created her own printmaking business, called Shorticorn Studios. But doing art by herself in her Shawnee home was lonely.
Several roller derby friends had enjoyed being Library clerks in Kansas City, Kan. Jacobs-Haberstroh had always loved to read, so she looked for Library job openings and was delighted to be hired as a page at Gardner Library in 2015.
Ultimately she became a clerk at Gardner, went to Oak Park, and then was hired on the team that helped open the Lenexa branch in 2019.
She really enjoyed interacting with patrons on the desk. Clerks now work mostly back office, and Jacobs-Haberstroh cherishes her colleagues. She also loves helping patrons at Lenexa’s drive-thru and while she’s shelving books.
“It’s a really beautiful space,” she says about the Lenexa branch.
Even during the pandemic, Lenexa has remained busy. “We’ve been really excited seeing how the public will use the space,” she said. “They can finally come in and start getting comfortable.”
She now pursues art for enrichment, not business, and has a stockpile of prints to share with friends who visit. Her home studio is called “The Glitterdome” because she glittered the floor with 16 pounds of gold glitter and floor epoxy so it shines like a diamond.
Her husband enjoys wood-working, and she sometimes accompanies him when he flies his model planes. She has four cats to cuddle with in winter and enjoys gardening in summer.
Working for the Library feeds her soul. “I really believe in Libraries, in what they give to the community,” she said. “The way we are open and there for whatever the public needs us to be.” 