Meridian Library Librarian

Human Services Career Cluster

Supervisor: Pamela Johnston, Meridian Library District

Job Description:

Perform a variety of actions and tasks that allow patrons to be taught, helped, and enjoy different
events to bring the community together in a comfortable environment.

Tasks:

Learn more about the library and libraries in general, help the library bring patrons together in a
form of gaming, enter in data, and be informed about what kind of things can be done if a
pandemic were to happen again.
Goal #2: Be flexible and dependable in completing a variety of tasks and work.

I felt that we met this goal the most, because many different things came up that allowed
this to happen. One thing to start is that I was able to submit comments and questions that
were given to the library from their paper form into electronic form. This was a long task,
but it wasn’t too hard to complete because of it. There were just many forms that were
made and used by the patrons that needed to be converted to electronic form. This also
wouldn’t be the task that I would be doing the whole time, because the paper forms were
only a limited thing. The second thing that I felt was significant about being flexible in
different tasks mainly was the pandemic. The pandemic was not planned by the library to
happen and cause the library to close. However, I was able to do some more
apprenticeships while at home by learning from an online info sheet Pamela gave me to
learn from. There were different readings and videos about libraries and the pandemic. I
was able to learn more than what I knew and tried coming up with different ideas for the
library based off of that information. I, therefore, was able to learn and complete work on
different things in and out of the library.

Career Standard #5.3: Understand that work is an important and satisfying

means of personal expression.

It didn’t occur to me that this standard would be what I had mostly experienced in this
apprenticeship until I read it. I realized that each librarian is able to express themselves
with a different category of helping others and doing what they would like to do. Unbound is
the ability for patrons and librarians to use technology in creative ways. The children’s area
allows the librarians to help children explore more about the world around them and learn
different things that will help them in the future. The front desk is able to help the adults
and the librarians in the teens space are able to help the teens. One of the things that I like
to do is create, discover, and learn about and how to use technology. Help creating a
Minecraft server was one of those things that had a bit of both. All of these things are what
 can bring people together and help people together in their own ways, along with being able
to show some personal expression.

How did the apprenticeship help you towards your career decision? Provide an

example.

This apprenticeship was able to further help my knowledge of the library and give me a
better idea of what I could do for the library. I realized that I could bring my expression of
what I am able to do and find a way to turn it into something that I could do in terms of
helping the library. An example of this was helping with the build of a Minecraft server. It’s
a small thing that is in the library, but it is something that I could help with as an event
along with any others that come up with an idea. I like the idea of being able to help people
that are into these kinds of things to be able to come together.

How did the apprenticeship connect to your education at Compass? Provide an

example.

The apprenticeship connected to my education at Compass by showing me similarities of

how people can connect with each other and work together in their own way. I realized that
the teachers are just like the librarians and each have their own way to express themselves
through teaching what they enjoy. It also reminds me of the time when we had our Business
project and how each person was given an assigned part of the project based on their
expertise. However, I don’t get to experience that as often in any of the group projects we
would have now. But team building is what I see mainly in both the apprenticeship and
Compass education. How a team becomes a strong team is if they each do their part and
work together to get things done as a library team or as a group in Compass.