Alana Jacobs
13 April 2009
ENG 207
Literacy Narrative
Libraries: My One True Literacy
Five years have passed and I have learned more about myself within those years than I ever thought possible. The journey there, however, consisted of many more years, far more than five, to the place that I am today. It all began as a result of my somewhat isolated upbringing in a small, rural community in Elmore, Ohio, consisting of only about 1,500 people.
Having limited access to activities to engage in and spend my childhood years, I found myself spending the majority of my time as a child at the Harris-Elmore Public Library, walking distance from my home. The local library and its programs promoted my will to read, as there was not too many other places a child in such a small town could go. Besides the library, Elmore has two small parks to play in. My time spent at the library was always favored over the parks; this tendency has shaped my hobbies and interests I hold today.
Spending countless hours at the library, and checking out numerous books that were often too many to count, was a daily activity I participated in, winter, spring, summer, or fall. The habits I developed while visiting the library to read and check out books and involving myself in summer reading programs has followed me into adulthood─ I am always reading one novel at any particular time. It often surprises me how much the path I have chosen for my future has been influenced by the very activities I was secluded to in my past.
With the help from the summer reading program, reading was a literacy I learned to enjoy early and continued to benefit from and take pleasure in as I embarked on a life filled with reading. My writing literacy may also have been improved based on my reading practices; my reading literacy gave me advantages in writing than those who did not read.
The summer reading program at the Harris-Elmore Public Library starts in early June and lasts up until mid to late August. Open to all ages, the program encourages children to read books and win small progressive prizes based on the minutes read. This program and its essential rules and format have remained the same from the time I was enrolled as a young child all the way up until today. I can still remember how proud I felt as I earned a shape with my name that would be put up to hang on the walls of the library after reading the first increment of required minutes. My self confidence continued to grow as I persisted to read and earn more and more prizes. A shape that went with the chosen theme for the summer accompanied each prize, as well. Along with my name, several shapes hung that represented how many minutes I had read for all to see.
At the end of the library’s summer reading program, the library holds an end of summer reading party. Each participant in the program receives a reading certificate, and those who reach at least 500 minutes receive a special t-shirt designed specifically to suit that year’s summer reading program theme. I remember feeling a sense of accomplishment as every child in the program, me included, was congratulated through this celebration. I enjoyed cookies and other treats alongside other summer readers and their parents, as well as my parents. I can admit that I still have many of the t-shirts and reading certificates that I earned for countless summers throughout my elementary grade school years.
Reading developed a literacy that is still enjoyable to me today and has provoked my life choices. In reality, reading in summer reading programs held at my local library led to continued reading and ultimately, has fed my decision of where I would further my education after high school and what I would choose as a career. I can recall the revelation I had one day while sitting in my Composition I class during my first year Owens Community College. Up until that point, my interest was to become a high school English teacher. That day, however, it occurred to me that I did not really want to do this; it made perfect sense that I should become a librarian, and a high school librarian was what I considered to be ideal.
I have been employed at the Harris-Elmore Public Library since 2003, when I was 17 years old. I have since been working there for five years to the present. Being hired at Elmore’s local library after spending so much of my own free time there simply made logical sense. This logic followed me to my decision to seek out a career in Library Science. The literacy I built from reading books from the library and partaking in reading programs during my childhood summers, in the end, created opportunities for more library literacy to be developed. My understanding of the literacy involved in libraries has evolved just as much as my role in the library has: from being a child patron to becoming an adult library employee.
Many people may not recognize features of a library as literacy. The literacy involved in not only attending a library, but running one, is one of the largest kinds. Using a library and its materials requires literacy in reading; working in and running a library is closely related to managing a business and therefore involves literacy in skills such as writing, reading, organization, time management, and sequence. Being on both sides of a library’s function and purpose has been extremely significant to me and has given me the advantage of expanding my literacy in all of the abilities mentioned.
Being able to arrange library books based on the Dewey Decimal System and pulling books based on this order to be sent out to other libraries through inter-library loan may seem like an abstract literacy, but to me, is above all the one literacy I personally comprehend and appreciate the most. The more literacy related to libraries I learn, the higher my sense of purpose raises. I was recently employed at the Jerome Library, and have just begun to learn classification and cataloging based on the Library of Congress System. Through employment opportunities such as this, I expect to attain both different and additional literacy that will inflate my literacy horizons.
The literacy skills I have obtained with my connection to libraries have shaped the person I am today. Summer reading programs and working at the very institution that created them has produced my literacy in the capability to be a highly functional human being proficient in managing her time. Along with managing my time, I have learned to be a prepared, organized, and well structured student, employee, and citizen. All of the literacy I have acquired through my contact with libraries has helped me understand myself better and has separated me in vital and positive ways. Overall, I hope the literacy expertise I have will continue to grow and that the literacy in libraries will not only assist me in my academic literacy, but my professional literacy as well.