Librarian Interview #4
Janet Allen
Greenville High
School
Interview Date:
November 17, 2020
Curate
My
interview with Janet Allen was a Google Meet. She had chosen to speak with me
about the foundational standard of Curate.
“It’s something that I spend a lot of my time doing. I try to put together resources for students
and teachers.” Here is a link to the Research section of her media center website with her curated resources.
Mrs.
Allen taught Biology at Greenville High School before becoming a
librarian. Her history as a teacher helps
her when she reaches out to teachers to offer them resources. Allen says, “I did it. [teaching] I did it
there.” She says that the teachers have
a level of trust for her because she knows what pressures they face and what
they prioritize as teachers. Allen
added, “It’s a part of our job that we speak the language of ours boss [the
principal], but we also speak the language of teachers and we speak the
language of students. That’s a huge part
of my job.”
“Teachers
need to know that you’ve done their job.” Janet Allen
With
the arrival of COVID in the spring, and the sudden change in teaching and
learning that occurred across the state, Ms. Allen made it a priority to gather
resources for teachers. “I wanted them
to have these things in a place where it would be simple.” She saw teachers being overwhelmed by the
sheer amount of resources that were being shared with them from many different
sources. She created a separate page on
her library website that she labeled COVID-19 resources. “Teachers are tired. They are busy. They don’t have time to waste.”
Mrs.
Allen also spoke about how she addresses the National Library Standards with
students. “I worked with a 10th
grade CP English class on gathering information. I wanted them to understand how to determine
whether what they were looking at was good information. It’s something that is a daily struggle for
all of us. I wanted the students to see that I am making decisions about that
on a daily basis in my personal life. We
have to be with students, not talk at them.”
Mrs.
Allen also has student resources collected on her media center website. Her priority for students is ease of
access. “It’s got to be super user
friendly, because they just want to go to the web.”
Photo by Ben
Kolde on Unsplash
Some of
my additional questions for Mrs. Allen concerned some topics that had recently
been addressed in some of my university classes. I asked Ms. Allen if she had a formal,
written collection development policy.
She quickly affirmed that she did have one and it was at her fingertips
in her library. “My collection
development policy is at my desk and at the circulation desk. It is the librarian’s responsibility to make
sure that is in place. It is your job as
a librarian to be an expert on that.”
Because
I had recently spoken with Gaelynn Jenkins from Riverside Middle School, I
mentioned Mrs. Jenkins’ plans for a diversity audit in her library. Ms. Allen considered the question. She explained that she had in the past
created a display which she named, “Read Woke.”
She also had titles available in the library when students and teacher
returned this fall. She specifically mentioned
White Fragility. She said that
she had books in her library about racial tension, both YA and adult
titles. “You have to remember that you
are serving teachers too.” She
considered the question of a diversity audit.
“It’s something to think about. I
think we do a good job. Maybe I’ll find
that out, maybe I won’t.”
Mrs.
Allen shared with me that she had genrified her library’s collection a few years
ago. Mrs. Allen mused about her
collection further, saying, “I used to have a section labeled ‘Urban.’ I decided to get rid of the label. Not the books. I just moved them to other sections. It worried me. I wasn’t sure that it was what we needed to
have.” Mrs. Allen also offered this
perspective on collection development, “What you add to your library needs to
be good books. Not just adding a title
because it’s diverse. Some YA stuff is
bad. Just badly written.”
The
last question that I asked Mrs. Allen was about fines for library
materials. I asked because of a recent
in class discussion where the idea of eliminating fines was raised. Mrs. Allen stated that she had not completely
eliminated fines in her library. But,
she admitted, “I am super relaxed about charging fines. There is never going to be a situation where
you can’t check out a book because you owe a fine. I’ll say to the student, ‘Don’t worry about
it. I’ll delete that.’” She went on, “I have relaxed policies about
how many books they can check out. The
fines don’t seem to be a point of contention.”
She continued, describing how she used the money collected in fines in
her library. “We put the money right
back into the library. I purchase things
that are supplies, not books. I have a
supply table in the library. The
students know that they can come and get things like paper, pencils and Post-It
notes.”
Our
conversation ended with Mrs. Allen describing the ways that she has made
accommodations for the pandemic. “I have a huge space in the library, so there
is no problem with social distancing. I’ve
sent e-mails out to teachers to let students know they can come in before and
after school. We still have kids come in
and say, ‘Are you guys open?’” She also related
how she and her clerk are checking for and delivering holds on a daily basis.
Mrs.
Allen wished me luck with the program.
She was very complimentary of USC and their library program. It made me feel good to hear the affirmation
that I would be graduating from a respected program.
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