Meet the librarian: Lisa Collins

Enthusiastic!  But, professionally speaking, I have a degree in General Librarianship  with Graduate certificates in Storytelling and Working with Children and Youth in a Library Setting.  Which means I’m any kind of librarian you need me to be.  I’ve worked as an academic librarian at a small Christian university, a reference librarian at a public library and now I’m the library director at a base library–everything to every patron.

I graduated in 2009 and have been working in libraries ever since!

This is a convoluted answer.  I did not grow up wanting to be one.  I wanted to be an “-ologist” geologist, archaeologist… I ended up as a biologist.  But when I got married and had kids and stayed home to raise them, it’s hard to stay up-to-date and relevant in that field.  So, as the kids got a little older and I decided I wanted to go back to graduate school, I looked through the book Careers for Dummies and saw under “working with people and information” the profession of librarian.  Things just clicked after that and I’ve been happy ever since.

I use some common selection tools: Publisher’s Weekly, the New York Times Bestseller list, Kirkus reviews, and some others.  I also rely on my own reading experience, patron requests and talking with as many avid readers as possible of all ages.

That’s another tough question.  I think I have favorite authors within certain genres.  I love Terry Pratchett and his Discworld series.  I also really enjoy Bill Bryson in non-science science nonfiction.  I avidly read Amanda Quick and Gaelen Foley in historical romance.  I loved Ransom Riggs’ Peculiar series in YA and I adore Mo Willems for children’s books!

I talk with them.  I ask what they’ve read before, I ask what they’re interested in.  I ask if they like to try new things.  I talk about books that I’ve read and what I liked about them.  I also ask them to come back and tell me what they liked or didn’t like about the book they eventually pick out.