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I Want Her Job – NOW!

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The worst ever school librarian transformed my life.

Once, long ago, I was 13 and fielding questions about what I wanted to do with my life. No month went by at my new school without another test to aim us toward a 100% fulfilling career.Normally, a relief would have been Library Period. (My family loved books and we read favourite pieces to each other while doing the dinner dishes.) But an hour in the library at THIS school left me in shock. The big room was welcoming, and the collection itself was a joy. But our first hour with the lady in charge turned the whole experience sour. It didn’t help that she had a grating voice, blue-rinsed hair, and harlequin glasses that glittered when, ominously, her head turned your way. To this day, I really hope she wasn’t a fully trained school librarian – more likely, a teacher repositioned that year to where it may have seemed she’d do less harm. Still, this was a wonderful resource serving a large school for kids in their early teens, and now she was its only public face. Humourless, rigid, autocratic: it seemed she’d saved it all up for us. Our private name for her was Miss Fitt.

Library Period became Book Boot Camp. No noise, no sharing, a 1-page review required for anything you read, and laughing aloud at a funny line would get you locked in the cloakroom. I learned that a Miss Fitt in charge of a school library can poison the whole experience for youngsters who’d hoped for more. Some were brought to tears. I watched this happen until – the family claims – I burst in the kitchen door one day after school, yelling, “We’ve got to get her out of there and someone like ME in!”

Eight years later I won the largest scholarship in Canada for a postgraduate student entering library school. By then Miss Fitt was long gone, and I’d been inspired by more excellent librarians and staff than there’s space to name. Now in 2014, the (far longer) list is a tribute to a great, multifaceted profession and its contributions to patrons of all ages who trust us to put their needs first.

Still, one thing hasn’t changed. When new decisions arise in any library job I’ve ever had, I ask myself, “What would Miss Fitt do?”

Then I do the exact opposite.

Elsie Wollaston
Admin. Librarian Emerita, University of B.C. [1968 – 1999]

Volunteer Librarian [2000+ ]
VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver

 


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