The Tuesday of National Library Week is observed each year as National Library Workers Day. This year we celebrate with a blog post from library worker who has grown up at OCLS – Victor.
The library is an institution that played a big role in my life growing up, a fact I’m sure is true for many of my coworkers. I am fortunate enough to have grown up around it and around people who worked in libraries themselves, constantly reminding me of how flexible libraries really are. While we celebrate National Library Week here at the Orange County Library System, I find myself reflecting on how it has taken on different roles in each stage of my life, and how important those roles were.
Drawn to the Library
As a child, the library was a source of learning and wonder. I remember the excitement I would have in elementary school on the days when we would be taken to the school library! Always enthusiastic to pick out new stories to read, I would scan through the covers of so many different books and always come out with the maximum count, which I recall being around 5 or 10 books (I would love to go back and tell my younger self that eventually I’d be able to have 100 checked out at a time). Though the library at my school was fairly small, I still found myself constantly drawn to it and curious about what I could find each time I went!
Then as a teenager, the library became a safe space for me, a place of solace. In my freshman year of high school, I transferred to a new community, and felt a bit out of place among a lot of the students that already knew each other. What helped me move past that anxiety and meet new people was going to after school clubs- and my favorite one was a small manga club that took place in the school library. The library at that point in my life didn’t just offer me countless stories to read, it also allowed me to connect with new people and provided a sense of comfort all throughout high school.
A Full-Circle Moment
Now as an adult, I am working here at OCLS. Being on the other side of the system now and having the opportunity to help customers of every age and background every day is extremely fulfilling. I feel like I can finally give back to the same community that helped to enrich my life so much growing up. I can now foster the very same environment that brought me so much comfort in my teenage years. This is something I have been fortunate enough to see firsthand, as I’ve begun to hold more teenage programming at my branch every month. It feels like a full-circle moment in the best possible way.
The library is so much more than just a place to check out books. It is a source of discovery, learning, connections and more, and reflecting on how it has always been a facet in my life reminds me of that. From growing up with it, to helping others grow every day now – I am truly grateful to have the library in my life.
Victor is a branch customer service associate at OCLS
