Re: Where do Library media specialists come from?

[Janice Ziglin <janicez@EXECPC.COM>]

This thread has caused me to think what influenced me to be a library
media specialist.  When I was in college, 1961-65, the last thing I
wanted to do was be a teacher.  It was nothing against teaching but as a
feminist I didn't want to be stuck in the same old role women were
always slotted into.  So I joined the navy.  After two years I came out
and still didn't know what I was going to do with my life.  I took a job
as a radio copywriter.  This turned out to be a secretarial type job in
which you might be called on to write advertising copy if needed.  Of
course the pay was very low and after a year of listening to my two
co-workers rehashing the Johnny Carson show every single morning, I knew
I needed to do something else.

I had always liked books.  My strongest memories of my early schooling
are of the books, kept on a shelf in one of the classrooms or in some
room down the hall.  (I guess it was a library but I don't think they
called it that.)  When my family went on vacation to Michigan's Upper
Peninsula with a little motor home, my greatest delight was finding
little libraries in all their state parks.  So I guess it was fate that
I decided to go back to school, get all those education credits and the
library science credits and become a lib. media specialist.

When I started in 1969, libraries were turning into media centers.  I
was determined to be a new kind of librarian.  I had done my student
teaching in a high school where the library was used for study halls and
the librarians main job seemed to be assigning different tables to the
students likely to talk.  Silence ruled.  When I started I actually hung
up a sign which read "No Silence".  I needn't have worried.  My media
center was in an open school.  The kids had to troop through every time
they went to music, art or phy ed.  After 20 years, I was happy to move
to the middle school where I had a door I could close.  Of course I
never do.  It has been very exciting automating two libraries, getting
involved in the internet, working with great teachers and just trying to
keep up with all the exciting things going on in this constantly
changing field.  I've never regretted it.

Jan Ziglin, Library Media Specialist
Pilgrim Park Middle School
Elm Grove, WI
janicez@execpc.com