A Library Life Story

Hello, Readers! Apologies that I’ve been MIA. I started a “new” job in December 2021.

tl;dr
I worked at a library for 14 years. I left to do storytime programming at a new library and stayed there for 2+ years. The original library had an opening for a storytime programmer. I’m back and it’s wonderful!

Story time!  Not “storytime” but time for me to share my story.  I suppose I could begin in 2004, when Ms. Emily was graduating from college with an English/French double major.  I’d had vague thoughts about becoming an editor in a publishing company.  There were actually quite a few where I lived in the Midwest, but after learning they were all technical/textbook publishers, I was less interested and feeling a bit lost.  I had strong family and fiancé ties to the area and wasn’t really looking to move.  Then, my college’s English department hosted a panel discussion: “What to Do with your English Major!”  One of the panelists was a librarian, and everything fell into place.  I started looking and applying for any library position in the area and was eventually hired at a mid-sized single-branch library in a bedroom community to Indianapolis.  The position I kind of randomly fell into was their Young Adult librarian – but I’d always loved to read and was fairly okay with teenagers so it worked out.  I was super-lucky that they also had a tuition reimbursement program.  I enrolled in library school and started work. 

I learned a ton in the years I spent as the teen services librarian – how to plan, budget, and present programs to a sometimes reluctant, sometimes super-engaged audience.  How to build trust and rapport.  Teen programming was a lot of fun.  I learned how to do the Thriller dance and zombie makeup.  We did lock-ins, LAN parties, D&D, poetry slams, pizza taste tests, and all the crafts I could come up with.  I worked with teens on grant-writing and leadership.  I wrote letters of recommendation and saw kids turn into adults.  And of course, provided food at every program!  In those years I also learned how to develop a diverse and inclusive collection of books to serve youth.  How to interact with adults and children working a reference desk and a children’s reference desk.  To become part of a team of coworkers and build a work ethic.  I took on some new responsibilities, like managing our page department, first with a colleague and then on my own.  Hiring, training, difficult conversations.  For many of these employees, this was their first ever job.

I loved teens, but after eight years I was looking for something new.  When my supervisor’s position opened, I applied to run our ten-person Information Services department, which covered adult, teen, and children’s services.  In our medium library, we did a lot – all programming, all collection development and management, all reference desk hours.  We needed to be able to help patrons with technology and reader’s advisory and couldn’t forget to be engaged in community outreach.  It was exciting to work with a great team of people to serve all these roles.  To work with our equally great administration team to shape policy and a vision for the future of the library. 

After six years or so in management, though, I started feeling another itch for change.  Summer Reading was stressful – figuring out prizes, sponsors, how it would work from year to year.  Being responsible for ten people’s work rather than just my own.  The push-pull of middle management – trying to interpret and stand up for the needs of your staff as well as implementing new ideas and policies from admin.  Not to mention the eye-crossing work of scheduling, time cards, board reports, performance reviews, annual statistics.  What was once an exciting challenge was becoming a slog.  One thing that I always enjoyed, though, was filling in for coworkers’ children’s programs and offering a weekly outdoor storytime in the summer.  [We’d had problems with preschools and daycares taking up all of the spaces in our registered storytimes in the summer, so we decided to offer an extra one that required no registration and could accommodate everyone, geared for 0-5.  The regular programmers were already doing a lot of their own programs and scheduling was difficult, so I took it on, and I LOVED doing it.]  After lots of thought and reflection, I decided it was time to switch gears yet again.

In May of 2019, I took a part-time job in an even smaller community doing youth programming and desk time exclusively.  Youth services consisted of one other part-time person doing only desk, a full-time teen librarian who spent half her time in a job-share at the local middle school, and my supervisor.  I did two storytimes a week for kids ages 0-5 and collaborated with the teen librarian on weekly programs for school age kids.  My boss was someone I had hired and trained at my old library and really liked, and I was really enjoying the fun and creativity of programming.

Unfortunately, two months later, my supervisor moved to a new job.  We did a lot of interviewing (the director involved the whole department in the hiring process), but struggled to find someone.  When we did, one month later the pandemic started and they quit soon after.  I adapted, as the whole library world did, to quarantine.  The week after we closed, I missed my storytime friends so much I started offering virtual storytime and book club for elementary kids from home, learning as I went about virtual programs, Facebook Live, YouTube, and, of course, Zoom.  We slowly came back to the building in May, but continued to only offer virtual programs until June of 2021, when I started doing outdoor storytime.  Since we wanted everyone spread out, I learned more about speakers and wireless hands-free microphones and how to connect our MP3 player to play music!  I find it exciting to figure out new ways of working and serving the public. 

Even after we opened the doors to the public again, this new library was quiet.  I could go a full morning seeing only one or two families.  On my night shift, we’d see people come in after school from about 3-5:30, then I might not see anyone until we closed at 8.  The part-time person who had only done desk had gone to another job in 2020, so the youth department consisted of our teen librarian and me.  This library was also a little more compartmentalized, so I didn’t interact with other staff members very often.  It was lonely and isolating – my weekly bright spots were programming and the occasional visit from one of our regular families.  The director did the best she could, but with limited staff and budget, a library that wasn’t bustling, and difficulty filling the positions we did have open, not much was changing.  Even so, I hadn’t yet made the decision to move on.  I liked the schedule and the fact I was responsible for my own work.  I had a lot of control over how the children’s department was run day-to-day, and complete creative license in my own programming, plus a healthy book and programming budget due to an endowment (which couldn’t be used for anything else like personnel.)

Fate can be funny, though.  I just happened to see an employment ad through our state library listserv for the “Itty Bitty” programming position at my old library, and everything seemed clear.  I applied, interviewed, and was hired in the next week.  My old library felt like home, and with this new position, I felt like I could do the exact job I really wanted to do there.  I am enjoying the transition back to a “new-old” library, as they underwent major renovations right before I left.  (The admin and management team I was on worked hard on the design and picking out all the furniture, so it’s weird to see it all in place kind of suddenly!)  These past few months, I’ve been adapting to programming for a narrower audience, just 0-3½.  I’ve been reusing a lot of my old program plans, and adjusting them to fit a younger group.  I’ve also been figuring out in-person indoor storytime for myself, and have been working hard to make it safe and fun.  I’ll be working on updating my program plans in upcoming blog posts, and I’m really looking forward to my summer plans, which are very different from what I’ve done before.

If you read this far, thanks! Even if no one is interested, it was kind of fun for me to reminisce and lay it out.  Next post will come sooner than this one, and will be more program focused!