Affirmation: I am a Librarian
Are you a list person? To-do lists, reminder lists, grocery lists, books to read lists, errands to run lists?
Oh, I am. So much so that I love both traditional list-making (ink and paper, no erasable pencils for me, no siree) and digital list creation. Shopping lists on post-it notes and on my phone. Books on my Amazon wish lists (plural) and in a half-sheet composition book, titles written in gel or flair pen ink. As I age the need for list-making is only increasing, and, at least for now, I don't mind that fact one bit.
What I am minding is that I still haven't reached the point where I can feel the satisfaction of checking off most items on my library to-do lists, of which there are several, even though we're now in the second quarter of the school year. Of these lists, two are what I consider personally and professionally to be essential: my continued self-training with Follett Destiny (Classic and Discover), and the care, repair, and updating of our neglected collection.
Books are filthy. Books are damaged. Books are in need of weeding. Books need to be purchased and added. Book sets, though organized and counted with the help of a volunteer, still haven't been added to the collection. Digital resources still haven't been explored by teachers and students. I just discovered that there may be a way for teachers to include some Destiny resources into their instructional Google Slides. Like, who knew? Certainly not me, and if I don't know it, it's likely that my colleagues don't either. Yes, it's a wave of I-didn't-know-how-much-I-didn't-know, which I knew would arrive at some point, and which admittedly I haven't experienced in a looooooooooooooooong time, thanks to having been a kindergarten whisperer for the past quarter of a century.
The shelves are straight but so many books are out of order for myriad reasons, and I have just now been able to invite volunteers into our space for help thanks to our SITE Council's advocacy and my principal's efforts. Unfortunately, the volunteer manual for the library is so out of date I've had to X through four pages of shelving information and scribble in updated details, which means, of course, the creation of a new manual has been added to one of my lists. Reminding myself that Rome wasn't built in a day and that some projects just take time, I've been trying to determine which tasks really do require immediacy in completion and which can wait on a backburner for a while. There's so much that I want to have available and ready for our patrons, so much I want to show them. I don't want our library to fail them simply because I don't have enough time to get this substantial asset up and running with ample opportunities to keep it well oiled. A full-time librarian isn't a luxury. He/she/they are a necessity.
Perhaps this is my new normal. The audible gasps from colleagues and returning students when they saw our library after I invested a large chunk of my summer reorganizing, cleaning, rearranging and sprucing up the space have been replaced by the equally rewarding expression "Oh, I didn't know we had that" every time students and staff see a book display or I share a particular library feature with them. Those reactions make my soul happy, just as watching kindergarteners grow and learn joyfully did for so long. Knowing that students look forward to coming to the library, that parents and colleagues value reading being once again supported by the library (it was closed last year), and that I'm excited rather than dismayed by most of my library-related discoveries, my decision to leave the general education classroom has been affirmed.
I am a librarian.
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