Reference services.  Vital to the job, yet I do put reference services third on the list when talking about a children’s librarian.  As discussed in previous posts, if you’re not approachable, and if you haven’t established with your patrons that you have an excellent knowledge of children’s literature, you won’t have earned the trust of your patrons, and they won’t come to ask you those reference questions.

In a perfect world, the schools and the public library would communicate freely and regularly about school assignments, but the truth is that teachers have many balls in the air and work many hours a week (the best teachers I’ve known have worked 60+ hours a week), and it well may slip their minds to inform the public library about upcoming assignments.  A good children’s librarian will make sure the lines of communication to the school are open and available, yet won’t make a pest of him or herself in an attempt to learn of assignments.  So, once again, it’s important to keep ears and eyes open, watching for assignments that have just been issued, and to also keep a log each year of assignments and the dates of their occurrence, and the volume of materials required to fulfill the needs for that assignment.  And when requesting books from other libraries to flesh out the collection for a given assignment, watch for books of value that you don’t have in your own collection.  If the assignment will reoccur in future years, purchase those additional books for your collection.

An interesting part of reference services in a children’s room is holding back and observing.  Many parents want to teach their children the necessary skills to locate materials in the library catalog, and many of those parents do an excellent job teaching their children.  It can be tempting to jump in and help a parent/child team with their searching skills, but it’s so important to value the bonding aspect of this family interaction.  Though I have no scientific proof of this, I suspect that a child who learns to navigate the library from a parent will become a life-long library user, much like the child who has been read to on a daily basis by a parent and who observes a parent reading for pleasure is more likely to be a life-long reader than a child who doesn’t have those parental role models.  When I witness a parent and child searching the catalog together, I pay close attention, but only jump in to help if I see the pair going far astray or becoming frustrated. 

In contrast, there are times when a child comes in to the children’s room by him or herself and desperately needs assistance finding materials for a school assignment.  In those cases, time permitting, I love to take the time to go beyond just locating materials, and teach the child a few tricks for searching on their own.  This is obvious to the job description of a reference librarian, but to teach children well you must first have that affinity for and relationship with the kids that I discussed in the first post of the series.  It all ties together, see? 

Coming up:  Budget and organization.