Competency 1: Why I Want to Become a Librarian

This blog was created to satisfy the requirements of my masters level course Library Science 5013 Information Storage and Retrieval course.

The reason why I wanted to become an elementary school librarian goes back to my first year of teaching. During the spring semester I went to my school librarian and asked her to recommend a book series that I could read aloud to my students. She recommended the series Marvin Redpost by Louis Sachar and the rest was history. From the moment I introduced Marvin to my class, it was like I introduced them to Michael Jordan. Marvin Redpost was a superstar, and all of my students were glued to their seats waiting to hear what he would do next. They wanted any and everything Marvin, and when it was library day they would trample all over each other to check out any Marvin Redpost book. When those books were all checked out they would then check out books that Louis Sachar wrote as well. That's when I had an epiphany. If I repeated this formula with different stories and genres of literature, my students will continue to be excited and motivated to read. However, the more years I was in the classroom the harder it got to capture the students attention. Like never before in history children are throwing down books in favor of tv, movies, the internet , and video games. We, as librarians and future librarians, have got to find a way to get our students to turn off the video games and television and pick up a book!

For this reason, I have chosen my topic of interest to be the tools librarians can use to encouraging all students to read for pleasure.