The following library technicians donated their time and expertise to help me deepen and update my knowledge about library Access and Public Services:

• Yvonne Brett
• Danielle Davis
• Lora Diaz
• Melissa Englehart
• LaDonna Hankins-Ramirez
• Alysa Hernandez
• Elisa Hernandez
• Octavio Hernandez III
• Rocky Herrera
• Christina Lorenzo
• Kiana Ramirez
• Shannon Rapo
• Johnny Rodriguez
• Rachel Schneider

They generously answered my questions and, when possible, showed me around their libraries so that this textbook could provide accurate, detailed, and authentic answers about what it is like to work in libraries in southern California in the early 2020s. If there are errors or missing concepts in this textbook, they are totally my responsibility and no reflection on the excellent insights that these library technicians offered.

Note: Though some of the library technicians I interviewed have the same last name, only LaDonna Hankins-Ramirez and Kiana Ramirez are related to one another.

Yvonne Brett

Interview location: San Marcos High School Library

• Position as of spring 2023: Library & Media Technician III at San Marcos High School
• Typical duties of current position: Managing the library space and collections; using reports from the circulation software to identify and track down overdue materials; supervising library clerks and student aides; handling the school’s textbooks, including receiving, inventorying, distributing, and collecting them.
• Years in current position: 16
• Number of staff in the library: 3
• Number and titles of people she supervises: 1 part-time typist clerk II; 1 full-time typist clerk III; student aides
• Her supervisor’s title: Assistant Principal
• Most recent previous job: Library Media Technician I at Knob Hill Elementary School for 8 years
• Other previous jobs: Letter carrier for the post office; Educational Foundation tour leader for international students ages 14-18
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “They think it’s all sitting at the desk stamping books. They don’t realize how physical it is, how you’ve got to get on your knees and shelve books on the bottom shelf or books come in and they’re in 30 or 40 pound boxes.  So, it’s constantly very physical and you have to be willing to do that.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Customer service skills, including non-verbal communication; computer skills including being able to help students with software and hardware
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: Travel agent/trip planner

Danielle Davis

Interview location: Patrick J. Carney Library on Camp Pendleton

• Position as of spring 2023: Lead Library Programming Technician (Non-Appropriated Funds (NAF) III) at Patrick J. Carney Library
• Typical duties of current position: Staffing the front desk and answering phones; creating and running library programs; managing library program materials; coordinating volunteers; promoting library programs (including creating flyers, programming calendars, and social media posts); advocating for improvements to library facilities.  She also considers it her responsibility to help colleagues to complete their tasks.  Based on an Access Services course project, she started organizing a collection of instructional materials and enrichment resources for homeschooling families that she continues to work on.  This position also involves delivering materials and supporting programs at the other four branches of the library, including the auxiliary branch at Camp Barstow.
• Years in current position: 4
• Number of staff in the library: Across all 5 library branches: 4 NAF IVs (librarians); up to 6 NAF IIIs (technicians) but several positions are not filled; multiple volunteers
• Number and titles of people she supervises: Many volunteers and up to 5 NAF IIs
• Her supervisor’s title: Programming Director
• Most recent previous job: Reading Clinician for children, teens, and adults with learning differences.
• Other previous jobs: Advocacy volunteer for safety initiatives in New York City.
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “A lot of people think that we just read at the library and that’s what our job is, is just reading a book.  And that’s definitely not true.  Another thing people are really surprised about, since I’m getting my Master’s in Library and Information Science degree, is that you have to have a Master’s to be a librarian.  But I say it’s a very specific field.  It’s a balance of computer science and engaging with the community, and a service industry as well.  There’s a disconnect between the library brand and how people envision what the library really means.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job:  Being industrious, resilient, and flexible; the ability to be open to new technology and learning other new skills; fighting perfectionistic tendencies by remembering that “it always seems like we’re solving world problems and we’re not, so calm down.”
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one:  A librarian—she’s open to public services or technical services/systems work in an academic or public library.

Lora Diaz

Interview location: Mission Hills High School Library

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Media Technician III at Mission Hills High School
• Typical duties of current position: Carrying out long-term projects to remove shelves and create new seating areas; circulating and trouble-shooting Chromebooks; maintaining the collection; using circulation reports to support changes she proposes in the library as well as to encourage the return of long-overdue items; and managing course textbooks distribution and collection.
• Years in current position: 3
• Number of staff in the library: 3
• Number and titles of people she supervises: 2 Typist Clerks
• Her supervisor’s title: Assistant Principal
• Most recent previous job: Library Media Tech I in the Escondido Union High School District
• Other previous jobs: Library page at public libraries in Carlsbad, Oceanside, and Temcula; and a retail clerk at Best Buy where they valued her library experience because they saw it as something they could use to help them organize the TVs in stock.
• The things people think about her job that isn’t true: “They think that we read all day.  Like, ‘Oh, doesn’t that sound fun, you can just read all day?’ and I’m like, ‘I wish.’ […] That’s the big one.  I actually make a point sometimes when there’s not much going on—I’ll take out a book and read just to show the kids, I’m reading, too, on my downtime and maybe that’s something you can do.  I don’t know if anyone has noticed.  But I definitely don’t have time to read nor do any of the clerks have time to read for fun for sure.”  People also think, “librarians are really strict and want things done a certain way and are very unforgiving.  And that’s something that I’m really trying hard to move away from. Maybe the kid only needs a little extra time with the book [so I will renew it again], versus, you know, ‘Oh, you didn’t read it in time, so I need it back.’ Like, what am I going to do with the book?  ‘You need it more than I do.  Please keep it as long as you need it.’  That kind of flexibility needs to come back or it needs to start more.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: The ability to multitask and also knowing when a task requires full attention; effectively prioritizing competing responsibilities throughout the day; having an interest outside the library that you can draw upon when people ask for reading recommendations even if, overall, you are not a big reader; knowing your alphabet so that you are shelving books correctly and efficiently.  She also recommends taking classes in the Palomar College Library & Information Technology Program.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: A position working in geographical information systems (GIS), using geographical data to create maps with multiple layers of information.  She is currently taking GIS courses, including learning to fly drones, at Palomar College.

Melissa Englehart

Interview location: Wildomar Elementary School Library

Melissa Englehart is on the left.

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Media Assistant II at Wildomar Elementary School
• Typical duties of current position: Maintaining communication with the afternoon Library Media Assistant; selecting books and making them shelf-ready; planning lessons and story-times for classes’ weekly visits to the library; checking out books and tracking down overdue materials; weeding the collection; re-shelving books; creating displays and decorating the library; and selling pencils and other supplies to students.
• Years in current position: 20 years
• Number of staff in the library: 2 part-time Library Media Assistant IIs
• Number and titles of people she supervises: 0, though she is training the new Library Media Assistant II
• Her supervisor’s title: Assistant Principal
• Most recent previous jobs: Babysitting, making salads in an Italian restaurant, house cleaning
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “They think it’s just putting books on the shelf.  I had a teacher say that to me once, ‘Don’t you just put books on the shelf? Check books in and check books out?’ And I felt like saying, ‘Don’t you just stand in front of your students and talk?’ But there’s obviously a lot more to it.  We purchase the books so we have to make sure that the books will first of all be appropriate for the children.  Secondly, the parents won’t find them offensive, which gets harder and harder because people find the littlest things offensive nowadays.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: “Having an appreciation and love for reading because it helps you in recommending books to children […] I had someone working here with me who didn’t like reading and it was harder for them to connect with the children”; comfort with learning and using computers; and “making reading fun for children, because we have to compete now with video games and with iPads and with phones and with TV.  There’s so much to compete with and reading, to them, is something you’re forced to do for school.  So to be able to light that fire under them […] to try to whet their appetite for books.”
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: She could work in a library or a bookstore.

LaDonna Hankins-Ramirez

Interview location: Murrieta Valley Academy Library

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Media Tech II at Murrieta Valley Academy and she works during summer school at another school library in her district.
• Typical duties of current position: Carrying out long-term projects to remove shelves and create new seating areas; re-organizing the collection by genre/title instead of by Dewey Decimal Classification; circulating and trouble-shooting Chromebooks; maintaining the collection; using circulation reports to support changes she proposes in the library as well as to encourage the return of long-overdue items; and managing course textbooks distribution and collection.
• Years in current position: 5.5
• Number of staff in the library: 1
• Her supervisor’s title: Vice Principal
• Most recent previous job: Printer at the school district, using Photoshop and creating graphics.
• Other previous jobs: Corporate research and development tech.
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true:  “They think I’m here for their [problems]. I have kids come in here during lunch and sometimes they want to talk personally and that’s not—you never go into that conversation.  You just kind of try to listen and see what’s going on.  Like, ‘I’ve listened, but I’m not going to give you advice.’”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Intentionally reading books from many different genres so that you are able to recommend books based on students’ interests; strong organizational skills and a good memory for the different textbooks being used by the classes.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one:  She has no plans to leave.  She is very happy with the school site team she currently works with and will likely retire from her current position when she is ready.

Alysa Hernandez

Interview location: California State University, San Marcos, Kellogg Library

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Support Specialist III, Library Reserves Coordinator at California State University, San Marcos
• Typical duties of current position: Coordinating with faculty to add or remove reserve textbooks; creating new processes for acquiring, circulating, and evaluating the reserves collection.
• Years in current position: 5 months
• Number of staff in the library: 30 staff, 15 faculty librarians, 3 administrators, and approximately 50 student workers
• Number and titles of people she supervises: 1 Library Support Specialist II
• Her supervisor’s title: Library Support Specialist IV
• Most recent previous job: Library Support Specialist II Emergency Hire that got extended to a Temp Hire
• Other previous jobs: Student Assistant, Bank Teller/Receptionist, Customer Service Representative for a small manufacturing company
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “One thing about Reserves is that people don’t really know what it is sometimes and they don’t know how big it is.  So for library Reserves this past semester, Fall 2022, we supported 600 classes and that included physical materials, electronic materials, films, a variety of different materials that faculty have added.  People don’t realize how involved we are in student academic affairs on campus.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Communication is number one because her job requires collaboration with multiple departments; time management because there is a tight cycle for preparing textbook reserves for each new semester and there are reports she has to prepare to analyze how the reserves collection is being used; project management because there are projects she is responsible for moving forward over a long period of time and in collaboration with other departments.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: Librarian – she started the MLIS program through San Jose State University in spring of 2023.

Elisa Hernandez

Interview location: Escondido Public Library

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Associate II at Escondido Public Library and elementary school library media technician substitute on-call
• Typical duties of current position:
  • At Escondido Public Library: Checking books out; helping patrons with technology (including scanning, e-book apps, and self check-out); training new library associates; calling patrons about overdue materials and receiving calls about passwords and holds; overseeing the closing of the library at night; supporting library programs; helping patrons find materials; data entry from library card applications; explaining library policies to patrons; and de-escalating conflict.
  • At elementary schools: Tech support for iPads; entering new books into the library services platform catalog; generating overdue reports; trouble-shooting the circulation procedures to ensure accuracy; and textbook distribution and collection.
• Years in current position:
  • At Escondido Public Library: 10 years
  • At elementary school: 1 year
• Her supervisor’s title: Customer Services Supervisor/Operations Manager
• Most recent previous job: Circulation Assistant. She started in the library as a page.
• Other previous jobs:  She worked in a restaurant, including as a cashier.  And she worked as a childcare provider.
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true:  “People think I’m so smart because when they’re asking for a book, I go to the right place and find the book.  They say, ‘Oh, wow.’ They think I have a good memory but really I just use the Dewey Decimal System and look for the book in the system.  It could be in the display, it could be someone is using it for the book club.  I can tell the patron, ‘You know what? The book is not available but you can place a request.’ And I get, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re so good.’ And another thing people think about is the library is a quiet place and it’s not.  Some parents think it’s the safest place in the world, but it’s not, because it’s a public place.  So I tell parents, ‘Keep an eye on your kids all the time.’  If someone came into the children’s library [without a child] and is looking around, we ask if he needs help or we call the Rangers.  Sometimes downstairs in the adult area, parents just focus and they’re looking for books and bad guys know when the parents are distracted.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job:  Creative problem solving, broad and thorough knowledge of library fundamentals, excellent customer service.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: School library media technician so that she can lead a whole library.

Octavio O. Hernandez III

Interview location: Encinitas Public Library

• Position as of spring 2023:  Library Specialist II at North Central University
• Typical duties of current position: Processing interlibrary loan and document delivery requests; creating procedure manuals and other documentation of work processes; answering questions for online students; and arranging licenses for online textbooks for students.
• Years in current position: less than 1
• Number of staff in the library: 8 including librarians and library specialists
• His supervisor’s title: Library Director
• Most recent previous job: Legal Technician, then Legal Docketing at the Department of Justice Law Library in San Diego, CA.  Before that he worked as a Document Delivery Specialist at National University.
• Other previous jobs: Arborist
• The thing people think about his job that isn’t true:  “Because I’m not allowed to call myself a librarian, people might think I’m limited to not work on certain things, but I’d say that’s not true. I can do whatever I want in terms of taking on responsibility.  And that’s liberating and also scary, but I like that.  As much as I want to stand in solidarity with unions [where I worked in the past], I didn’t enjoy the fact that you couldn’t work outside of your job description.  In this job, the sky’s the limit.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for his job: Knowing that when you’re on the clock, there’s always something to do and developing time management. Knowing which professional development opportunities are valuable and which are a waste of time.  Putting students first and providing for them the optimal, best experience.  Prioritizing duties so that the most impactful ones get done in a timely way.
• Job he hopes for if he leaves this one: He doesn’t want to leave his position, but could become an attorney or law librarian because he is starting a law degree program through the university where he works and will receive free tuition for the degree.

Rocky Herrera

Interview location: Oceanside Public Library, Mission Branch

• Position as of spring 2023: Hourly Library Technician at Palomar College
• Typical duties of current position: Checking books out; providing course reserve materials to students; helping students with software and printing; keeping track of software and printing problems; checking study room reservations and escorting study groups to the study rooms; and adding study room reservations to the calendar.
• Years in current position: 1 year
• Number of staff in the library: 1 library manager, 9 librarians, 9 staff
• His supervisor’s title: Library Manager
• Most recent previous job: Recording engineer
• Other previous jobs: Busser in a restaurant and warehouse worker
• The thing people think about his job that isn’t true: “They think you’re just reading or they also think that I’m constantly shelving, which is not true.”  They also think that people don’t need libraries anymore, but they don’t realize how library workers create a place “where people can feel the comfort of another human telling them, ‘Look, slow down.  Let’s get you on the right track so you don’t have to stress about whatever you’re working on.’”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for his job: Liking to take your time and be precise, “it is not really a job for a fast-paced person, it’s more for people who like to take their time” for example, making sure to carefully reshelve books; “have patience with your patrons and make sure everybody gets treated well and equally; keep your biases at home”; “have a thirst for research or for wanting to know new things and just always have that interest in trying to learn new things.  In the library you have these opportunities to always learn something new”; and “use downtime to either get projects done at the library or just learn the library even more—search around, see what the library has to provide, and it just gains your knowledge for when patrons need help with something that you might not know about.”
• Job he hopes for if he leaves this one: Recording engineer if it were possible to find full-time work in that field.  But libraries are a good “realistic job” and “I would like to make that my main thing because it fits my personality great because I like things to be slow and mellow and not too hectic.”

Christina Lorenzo

Interview location: A Carlsbad coffee shop

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Assistant in the Library Bilingual Services Department at a public library in Southern California
• Typical duties of current position: Running kids and teen programs on-site and online; supervising library techs; assisting her supervisor with administrative tasks; diffusing conflict; and working at the central service desk to provide reference, circulation, and computer help.
• Years in current position: 2
• Number of staff in the library: 5 full time and 20 part-time
• Number and titles of people she supervises: 10 part-time Bilingual Library Technicians and sometimes part-time literacy technicians when their supervisor is not on-site
• Her supervisor’s title: Bilingual Community Outreach Supervisor (who started as a Bilingual Library Technician, too)
• Most recent previous job: Bilingual Library Technician at the same public library for 7 years
• Other previous jobs: Recreation Leader for the City; Administrative Assistant for a water-filtration company called EcoWater
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “They say, ‘Oh, you work in a library, you must read a ton of books.’  Little do they know, I have no time to read books unless it’s Magic Treehouse for my book club or my story time books.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Customer service experience; being organized and being able to prioritize tasks so that you can make progress on projects while also “constantly being interrupted”; and being okay with multitasking because there is seldom a time when you can dedicate all of your attention to one task.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: Working with people in prison or recently released from prison, for example as a facilitator for counseling circles.  Or becoming a librarian, though it would be hard to choose a specialization since in her current job she gets to do everything.

Kiana Ramirez

Interview location: Wildomar Elementary School Library

Kiana Ramirez is on the right.

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Media Assistant II at Wildomar Elementary School
• Typical duties of current position: Maintaining communication with the morning Library Media Assistant; selecting books and making them shelf-ready; planning lessons and story-times for classes’ weekly visits to the library; checking out books and tracking down overdue materials; repairing damaged books; weeding the collection; re-shelving books; shopping at used book sales to add fifty-cent and one-dollar books to the collection; and selling pencils and other supplies to students.
• Years in current position: 7 months
• Number of staff in the library: 2 part-time Library Media Assistant IIs
• Her supervisor’s title: Assistant Principal
• Most recent previous jobs: Special needs classroom aide and COVID liaison for the Murrieta School District
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “One of the big things I hear from people is always that it’s easy and it may look easy because you’re sitting at a desk, but there’s a lot of stuff that goes into being on the computer […] There’s a lot of parts that aren’t easy—just cataloging and inputting, trying to take stuff out of the system or making sure kids are in the system.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: “The biggest thing is to have patience”; “leave your problems at the door—that’s the same with every job”; and “the ability and willingness to learn” from your co-workers but also to teach yourself skills that no one is available to train you to do.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: “If I were to stay in the library field, I would want to go to a higher grade.  I think high school would be the one I’d want to fully try.  But if I didn’t stay in the library field, I’d probably just want to do something with animals because that’s what I’ve been doing [as a pet sitter] for the last so many years. I go to a farm where I have dogs and ducks and chickens.”

Shannon Rapo

Interview location: La Costa Meadows Elementary School Library

 

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Media Tech I at La Costa Meadows Elementary School
• Typical duties of current position:  Selecting books and making them shelf-ready; planning lessons and story-times for classes’ weekly visits to the library; checking out books and tracking down overdue materials; re-shelving books; creating interactive displays in the library; and planning and running special events like a read-a-thon, reading diner, and monthly promotions of the Accelerated Reader Program.
• Years in current positions: 1 year
• Number of staff in the library: 1
• Number and titles of people she supervises: Occasional parent volunteers
• Her supervisor’s title: Principal
• Most recent previous job: “I was at home with my children for the past 11 years.”
• Other previous jobs: Marketing and event management
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “They think I sit in the library and read books all day and that it’s a really easy job with not much to do. […] I don’t think, unless you come in here or you step into someone’s shoes, you have any idea how much work goes into it—even just to process a book.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Organizational skills, feeling joy when working with children, and dealing with and communicating with adults to “navigate the sometimes hard waters of public education.”  This final skill of communicating with adults includes working against institutional silo-ing in which people avoid working with people in other offices or departments and also managing the change process so that people who are used to established procedures can get on board with the changes the library media tech needs to make.
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: None. She hopes to work in her current library until she is ready to retire.

Johnny Rodriguez

Interview location: Cerritos College Library

 

• Position as of spring 2023: Library Technical Clerk at Cerritos College
• Typical duties of current position: Managing the library’s course reserve collection and its budget and processing course reserve materials; returning phone calls and emails; supervising hourly staff; overseeing the service desk and doing circulation; communicating with the Dean about concerns; collecting and reporting circulation statistics; and managing the system of Amazon lockers that the library installed during COVID to facilitate no-contact materials pick-up.
• Years in current position: 5 years
• Number and titles of people he supervises: 6 hourly staff including 3 student workers
• His supervisor’s title: Dean of the Learning Resource Center
• Most recent previous job: Hourly student worker in the Cerritos College Library for 10 years
• Other previous jobs: Public library page
• The thing people think about his job that isn’t true: “The stereotype of the library as dead quiet and you’re just kind of reading a book to pass the time.  The library is way more busy than people imagine.  That’s the biggest misconception, that it’s supposed to be a chill job where you’re just twiddling your thumbs waiting for someone to ask a question.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for his job: Be comfortable “coming out of your shell” when working with the public; “being able to handle routine work but then switch it up and have to deal with small fires throughout the day”; and how to manage a small team, which Johnny says he learned from watching his supervisors, understanding the workers’ struggles and frustrations, and developing his ability to be an empathetic supervisor.
• Job he hopes for if he leaves this one: None. “I feel like I’ve gotten really lucky with this position where I could stay here and retire if I wanted to.  And that’s just so hard to find nowadays.  Being 34, I prefer the stability.”

Rachel Schneider

Interview location: Palomar College Library

    

• Position as of spring 2023: Substitute Library Media Tech for the Poway Unified School District and parent volunteer
• Typical duties of current position: Working with teachers to coordinate class visits to the library; consulting with the Library Media Technician to select books that add diversity to the collection; processing books; checking out books; and running circulation reports to identify and track down overdue materials.
• Years in current position: Substitute for 3 months, Volunteer for 1 year
• Number of staff in the library: 1
• Her supervisor’s title: Library Media Technician
• Most recent previous job: Full-time child rearing
• Other previous jobs: Recreation manager for the United States Navy running intramural sports for the sailors
• The thing people think about her job that isn’t true: “People think libraries are quiet and boring and they’re definitely neither of those.  There’s a lot going on under that roof.  It’s like a revolving door of books in, books out and questions and working with teachers to help provide resources and help them with projects that they’re working on.  They’re definitely not quiet either.  I think the days of shushing kids in the library are changing.  I won’t say they’re gone, but it’s definitely a fun place to be and [students] like to come.”
• Skills, habits, or experiences people should have for her job: Have some sort of library education “to know how to classify the books, the different systems in the library”; “if you’re not the one creating the systems, you have to be respecting the systems that are established in order to keep things tidy and organized”; “not letting things pile up and using the downtime you have [between class visits] to be productive”; and “have a level of creativity in order to keep things interesting for the students and the teachers, having fresh displays, seasonal things, and displays ready to coordinate with what they’re doing in the classroom or things going on in our culture […] We use a lot of online help, looking at other people’s displays to get ideas.”
• Job she hopes for if she leaves this one: A part-time tech job in an academic library or a project-based job cataloging for a historical society.