Hi there! My name is Adilene (Addie) Rogers. I am a librarian in the Bay Area. I am Mexican-American and bilingual. I have dedicated the majority of my career to better serving Spanish speaking patrons by helping improve language collections, creating diverse programming and working on spreading cultural humility in librarianship. I am a firm believer that libraries have a great impact on the communities they serve and it is my hope that this blog will help spread the knowledge that I have gained working with my communities.
Why Did I Create This Blog?
I created this blog as a resource for librarians serving Spanish speaking communities and to share the successes (along with failures) that I have experienced in my career. I am always looking for better ways to serve the communities I work with and I love sharing ideas and insight. Librarianship is all about improving how we serve our patrons and I hope that this blog will help make it easier for some. I cover a wide array of public librarianship themes and I am fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of groups from babies to adults, this blog holds a little bit of everything.
Why Did I Become a Librarian?
I feel like I get asked this question a lot. They are not many latinx librarians out there so it doesn’t surprise me when a child, teen or even an adult asks me why I chose this profession.
I chose this profession for quite a few reasons; the main one being that I wanted to give back to my community. I grew up in a not so great neighborhood in a not so great part of town. I did what most kids in those kinds of situations do, I hung out with friends and caused havoc for my neighborhood librarians. I was one of those tweens that loved to be loud and a pain to every librarian who met me or my friends. I had a lot of energy, too much energy and it wasn’t long before my friends and I were constantly being kicked out for bad behavior. Why was I being such a pain? Because I could. I was young and the library never felt like a place I was “welcomed”. I never felt like I really belonged among the big books and constant shushing. I felt, at the time, that the library had nothing to offer me. It wasn’t until the summer before high school, when a couple of the librarians began taking an interest in me and my friends, that I began to take an interest in libraries and librarianship. They started talking to us, asking our opinions and eventually convinced me to volunteer. It was through volunteering that I had a chance to really see the impact that libraries have. I ended up volunteering all through high school and eventually got a job at the library once I started college.
I was originally going to be an English teacher but decided on librarianship after having worked in a library for 4 years and loving every minute of it. I liked the freedom I had to create programs and interact with the community. I always tell people that public librarianship isn’t about loving books, it’s about helping people–connecting people to services, resources and, of course, books. Librarians have an integral role in the communities we serve and it is constantly changing which is something that I enjoy because it means I never get bored.
I love my job and I want to spread that passion. I hope this blog helps you, I hope you learn something new and I look forward to learning a few things myself.
-Addie
