Many of you know that I used to work in a library. I worked in the Cobb County Library System for almost 8 years, the last 2 1/2 of which I worked in the children's department at the Mountain View Library. While I was there, Mountain View was the busiest library* in the county.
*This is going on number of items checked out, as opposed to total number of people in the door, where the central branch, Switzer, had us beat, or computer usage, where South Cobb held the title.
You might notice I said "worked in the children's department" rather than "was a children's librarian." I don't have a Master of Library Science, which is what you need for the distinction of "librarian" in most places. But the position I was hired for did not require the MLS, and was specifically intended to help revamp the children's programming. Having a love of literature and a creative background was more important than the degree for what I would be doing. A lot of what I would be doing was kids' story and craft hour.
One of my favorite parts of the job, and arguably what I miss the most, was coming up with monthly (or in summer, weekly) craft projects that tied to either a seasonal theme or the summer reading program theme, and a story or two that tied the whole thing together. It's not going out on a limb to say that people loved my programs. My very first story time had 13 kids attend; my highest before we started offering 2 weekly summer sessions was 30. This was within 4-5 months of my first program.
Because of such high demand my first summer, my second summer I was asked to do double sessions of each craft/story. I still look back fondly on how much I enjoyed these sessions, even though they made the rest of my day and week more packed and hectic.
Recently, I was cleaning out my basement and found a stash of art supplies - a caboodle** full of crayons and markers, and a bag full of scrap pieces of bulletin board trimmer that I had been holding onto "just in case." I guess when I left Cobb County, I had thought that at some point I might go back to kids' library programming. But now having been working in a University registrar's office for almost a year and half, and a university library before that, I figured there was no point in continuing to hoard these. But, since I work at a university that has an education department, I decided to ask if the dean of the school of education was interested in having these supplies for her students.
**80's/90's kids, you remember those?
A couple weeks ago, I took my stash over to her office, and we got to chatting about just WHY I had a stash of craft supplies in my basement. I don't think she had known about my past in the children's department and was fascinated. She even said that I should come teach a workshop. That was very flattering and we left it at, "well, let's get past the first month of fall semester..."
But I do miss the craft projects; the planning, the brainstorming, even the budget challenges. When you have a very small budget, you have to be even more creative. What can you do with what your already have lying around? What "junk" do you have lying around at home that you can use as craft supplies? (Just using Kleenex and food boxes - crackers, cereal, etc. - we had fodder for robots, shadow puppets, mosaics, time machines, and probably other cool stuff I've forgotten.)
This summer, many public libraries are using the "Libraries Rock!" summer reading program (with the awesome banner "For those about to read, we salute you" in the AC/DC "for those about to rock" font). I remember at the beginning of the summer wistfully watching my library buddies post their displays, projects, and program announcements on social media. There were a couple mornings in the car on the way to work that I was daydreaming about what craft projects I might have done with the kids, especially if I had ever had the opportunity to start working with older kids.
I do miss it sometimes. But I also know that for all the fun, there was a lot of stress - the demand keeps going up, the budgets generally go down, and there's just so much one person can do. I have a lot of respect for my former coworkers who are still plugging away at it.
For those about to craft, I salute you.