The Thunder Over Louisville festivities have been cancelled due to historic flooding, so both the Jeffersonville and Clarksville libraries will be open their usual schedules of 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 12.
Library opens at 10 am on April 17
Due to staff training, both the Jeffersonville and Clarksville locations of the library will open at 10:00 AM on Thursday, April 17.
Triangle Drive parking lot CLOSED
Out of an abundance of caution, the Triangle Drive parking lot at our Clarksville Library will be closed until further notice due to potential flooding. Patrons can still access the library through the Eastern Boulevard parking lot.
Monica: Clarksville’s Favorite Children’s Librarian!
This is the third edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Marketing Coordinator, Aliya!
When visiting the Clarksville library, you can’t leave without first seeing Monica. Her energy is infectious, and her enthusiasm for her patrons and her books is inspiring. April 1st is Monica’s one-year anniversary as Clarksville’s children’s librarian, and it’s a great time to get to know her better. I went to social media so she could answer your questions!
Aliya: Our first question is from a Facebook follower, Megan Rust. She asked: “What made you choose to be a Children’s Librarian?”
Monica: I’ve always wanted to be a librarian; even in high school I thought that was what I was gonna do.
I decided on children’s librarian after I worked in a middle school library for a while. I just loved that feeling when you get kids who come in who are like, “oh, I don’t like to read,” or “I don’t want to read,” and you find them a book and they love it. There’s just something really great about that feeling.
So I especially really love working with teens and tweens because they’re becoming little adults, and you can really have a good conversation about what they’ve read and why they liked it.
I even enjoy the tiny little ones. My Toddler Storytime brings me a lot of joy on those mornings where I really don’t want to go to work. I get in there, and it’s just joy.
“My Toddler Storytime brings me a lot of joy on those mornings where I really don’t want to go to work. I get in there, and it’s just joy.”
Aliya: Have you gotten to know regulars and the community through Toddler Storytime?
Monica: Yeah! You start to watch them grow up. We’ve got a few who are getting ready to become big brothers and big sisters. Though they don’t really know what’s going on. They just know there’s a baby in mommy’s belly. Getting to watch the regulars as they come and start to grow up a little bit is really fun.
Aliya: You grew up in Clarksville, right? Did you come to the library? What drew you here?
Monica: I did! I started going to the Jeff Library before they had anything big here, and then they opened up the Clarksville Library in the mall where the post-office is now. That’s where I went to Storytime with Ms. Lorie! And I was a summer reading volunteer because in those days you had to hand write everything for summer reading club. I think I was 10 or 12 when I started doing that.
Then I thought, where else do I get my first job if I’m already at the library? I was here for 10 years, I think? I was a page and then I was a clerical assistant for a while.
Then, I got a job as activities director at a nursing home, so that took me away for a while. And after I got my MLS I saw the job posting for the Children’s Librarian here, and I was like, “oh I have to apply for this.”
Aliya: In another question from Instagram, liminal.librarian asked: “What are some of your recent favorite children’s or YA titles?
Monica: That’s a good question! I just got a new one in called the Bakery Dragon (Devin Elle Kurtz). It has some of the best art work. The story is about a little dragon who is too afraid to steal gold from people, but he finds a bakery and ends up taking the “gold” from the bakery back to his little cave. And all the other dragons love the bread he brings. It has just glorious art work, and I love good art in a book.
I just finished a YA title too called Red in Tooth and Claw (Lish McBride), it’s kind of a magic fantasy and horror blend set in the old west. It was very cool.
Aliya: Our last question is from transient_path on Instagram: “What’s something you wish more people knew about being a librarian?
Monica: Some people will come to me and say: “your job must be so quiet and peaceful!” That’s just not the library anymore. They’ve come a long way from the days of little old ladies shushing you behind the desk.
We’ve got kids playing in the play area having a good time. It might get a little noisier than people are used too. There’s always people coming in needing help with computer stuff. We’ve got a couple of regular patrons who come in and talk about what books they’re reading and what’s good.
That’s one of my favorite parts of the job. Ask us what we’re reading! Ask us for book recommendations!
The library has shifted into more of a community hub where people are coming and going. We [librarians] are up and moving. A lot more is happening in the library, which is good.
You can meet Monica at the Clarksville library throughout the day or at one of her programs and bi-monthly Toddler Storytimes. Come by to say hello!
Checking the Facts with Diane
This is the second edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Marketing Coordinator, Aliya!
At JTPL, Diane is known for her smile, her stories, and her incredible historical knowledge. As the family and local history librarian, she always has a new tale to tell about Jeffersonville or Clark County.
I learned a dozen new things as I interviewed her this last week. Diane is meticulous about getting the right details from reliable sources in every story she tells, whether it’s a story about Aaron Burr’s time in Jeffersonville or the local African American heroes display she created in February.
Finding those sources is what she wanted to talk about when I asked if she would be featured in our blog.
“If you go around asking people for stories, you’ll get stories,” she told me. “But as a local historian you need to know where to get good information.”
“As a local historian, you need to know where to get good information”
Getting good information has been at the heart of all of Diane’s careers: from a brief stint as a journalist, to her former career as a professor, to her current work as a librarian. And it’s hard work; Diane told me that only about 10% of written material has been digitized. The rest is hidden somewhere in a library and has to be dug up by hand, something her Indiana Room is great for.
Even when information is on the internet, it’s cluttered with sites posting unverified stories to accounts on social media. Even things appearing to be local news may not be what they seem. “You follow some of these accounts back,” Diane said, “and none of them are from our zip codes… I’ve had a good record of reporting these kinds of accounts and getting them banned.”
Last month, Diane put together a local African American heroes display to help patrons get to know real local history that is often overlooked. She featured Obediah Buckner, Mary Bateman Clark, George and Molly Denning, and more. Local Black history can be hard to find and even harder to verify, but she believes it’s important work.
Investigating misinformation and determining the real facts has gotten even more difficult and important over the last decade, and Diane is concerned that it’s a skill increasingly relevant to her patrons’ daily lives. She cited the rise of anti-vaccination movements as one of the biggest impacts of this crisis of information.
Her patrons have been concerned as well, which is why Diane’s job has shifted toward helping them with misinformation.
“The main question I get [from patrons],” she told me, “is: ‘My family believes fake news; how can I stop them?’”
I asked Diane if she has any tips she tends to tell people.
“Go to some reliable information sources and professionals,” she said, “and evaluate where the articles you read are coming from.” Diane tells patrons to follow the money. If someone is benefiting off of a controversial claim or paying for you to read it, there is good reason to suspect that the claim isn’t true.
But it can be hard to convince someone to second guess everything they read, especially if they don’t trust established sources and experts. “It’s devastating because nobody has a really good answer,” she told me. “The only good answer anybody has gotten is to turn off social media. When people do that, they suddenly change their opinions… But you can’t convince somebody to do that on their own.”
Diane encourages more people to go back to print and take pride in doing their own research. She continues to invite people to the Indiana Room and to the library, and she enjoys helping them find the facts for their own stories.
And for people who want to still want to wade through social media? She suggests this article as a beginner’s course on spotting misinformation: https://library.csi.cuny.edu/misinformation/spotfakenews
Want to meet Diane or research local history and genealogy? Come to our Indiana Room in Jeffersonville or try out the online databases we have access to here.