Abby Lott is East High’s school librarian, but what exactly does it mean to be the librarian? What does her job look like? Of her seven years total here at East, she’s held the librarian position for the last three. Before that she was an English teacher, and then had to get her master’s degree in order to become a school librarian.
However, despite the fact that there’s three ladies we consistently see in and around the library, only one of them – Lott – holds the official role as school librarian. The others- Ms. Smith and Ms. Wiemer – are the Media Technician and Audio Visual Technician, respectively.
During an interview on September 23, Lott was asked about the day-to-day work of her job, and what it entailed.
“Well every day is different,” Mrs. Lott said. “The beginning of the year is really busy for me, I do freshman orientations in the library…I’m invited into classrooms for different projects…I’m involved on multiple different committees, so part of my job is going to meetings and helping make decisions for the building.”
She continued with even more examples, “[I do] lunch duty in the middle of the day, but I enjoy it because it’s a time when I can work with students and I’m not grading them,” Lott said,“I’m offering them resources, having conversations, but in a different capacity than I was in the classroom.”
And there’s still even more to her job, such as attending department chair meetings, being in charge of budget and purchasing for books and library materials, assisting in classrooms on various topics, and more.
“It’s different every single day, ”Lott said. “I try to explain it as kind of like a problem solver because there’s always little things that pop up.”
Lott said that the biggest part of her job was, “Being a part of the school community. Working with students for different stuff….But also helping with different research questions.”
Lott also said, compared to her experiences teaching in the past compared to her job now, “That’s where a lot of students come to me and ask about book suggestions and research questions. I’m an academic resource that isn’t a teacher.”
Lott also said that her favorite part of her job is “that I get to help people, everyday…I love the main part of students’ lives.”
But she also said that the most difficult part is that, “We as a community are so over capacity right now. Twenty-four-hundred students, that’s a lot of students to reach.”
Lott said that, in regard to what she wants students at East to know about her, “I want them to know that the library is a safe place,” Lott said. “That they can come for academics, they can come for fun, they can come if they need somebody to talk to, it’s a place that should reflect them. My hope is that the books we have in the library reflect everybody in our school building. You should be able to find something in our collection that you can connect with, but also you should be able to find something that you can see other peoples lives in.I want it to be their space, it’s not about me, I want it to be the Spartan library.”