TARGET: Library Media Specialists--Where Do They...

["[Barbara Avenoso Riehl]" <avenoso@TENET.EDU>]

Unlike many of you, I don't remember considering librarianship as a career
choice at any point in my pre-adult life.  Perhaps this was due to
attendance at a Catholic elementary (1 - 8) that didn't have a library,
followed by a high school with a very small library presided over by an
elderly nun. Oh, I loved to read, and visited the public library frequently,
but, when it came to career choice in college, I chose the field of
biology.  I graduated with a science degree, and
married a week later.  We moved to Gainesville, Florida where my husband
pursued his doctorate in biology.  Meanwhile, I looked for any job I
could get. Funnily enough, I was called in to be offered a job in the
University library, but a position in the Physics department had been
posted right before I arrived.  Being a science major, I took the physics
job.  I sometimes wonder how my life might have gone had I made the other
choice.  Anyway, we returned to Houston after four years with two
small children.
   When the girls started public school, I volunteered in the
school library once a week.  Loved it!  I was teaching a lab at a local
university part-time at this point, and getting very tired of coming home
in rush hour traffic everyday.  I happened to drop by the elementary
school one day, and was asked if I knew anyone who would like to be the
library assistant.  The present aide was retiring, and the librarian
wanted someone she knew she could work with successfully.  With a little
soul searching, I took the position.  After all, I loved it there, the
librarian was like my second mother, and this school was three minutes
from my house.  In the ensuing four years, the librarian retired, and I
worked under two new people. Several people were asking why I didn't go
 back to school to become a school librarian.   I had actually been
considering this myself, as I loved the work, but, in Texas, you had to
have a teaching certificate plus, at that time, 21 hours of graduate
credit in Library Science.  I had been out of school for 18 years, and
this would mean working on my teaching certificate, and my librarian
endorsement, at the same time, in two different schools, in two different
cities, while continuing to work, and while going through a divorce.  It
was a tough decision (I was scared to death), but I had
finally decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. :-)  To make a long
story short, I started in the Fall of '82, and had the credentials I
needed to be a librarian by the Fall of '85.  Unbelievably, the librarian
at my children's elementary school left that spring ( her husband was
transferred), and I was offered the position.  So I began my first year
as a bona fide librarian while studying for my comps that November.
Lucky for me that I "knew" this particular library.  That was 12 wonderful
years ago.  It took a long time to find my calling, but there isn't a
doubt in my mind that this is where I was meant to be.

Barbara Riehl
Librarian
Valley Oaks Elementary
Houston, TX 77055
avenoso@tenet.edu