The Short Story
I have an MLIS from San Jose State University and a BA in Spanish from Azusa Pacific University. I was a school librarian for 10 years and then took a few years off to be at home with my young children. Currently, I work one morning a week as Storytime Librarian at my local public library.
The Long Story
I spent a lot of time in libraries when I was younger, but I stumbled into librarianship as a career almost by accident. After graduating from college and spending some time substitute teaching and teaching Spanish part-time, I realized I did not want to be a classroom teacher. I liked being with students and working in a school environment, but I didn’t like certain aspects of classroom teaching. My mother (a former teacher herself) said she always wished she had been the school librarian. I found out there was a graduate program in library science near me, and I enrolled with the intent of just checking it out and seeing if I liked it.
It turned out that I did like librarianship, and I received my MLIS from San Jose State University. I spent three years working as the library media specialist at a small, all-girls Catholic high school in Salinas, California, and then four more years at a large, K-12 Christian school in San Jose, California. My most recent school library job was as the librarian of a small independent school in Monterey, California.
After the birth of my first child, I became a stay-at-home-mom, but occasionally did some freelance library work and consulting for both public and private schools. Currently, most of my time is still spent at home with my two young children, but I also work one morning a week as the Storytime Librarian at my local public library.
I look forward to increasing my work hours when both of my children are in school full-time. My professional interests include issues in Christian school libraries, collection development, and story time programming for young children.
I’ve been married since 2011 to my husband,Tom, who is an administrator at a local public high school. We have two young daughters.