Who would have thought that one of the more sought after Summer Reading Program Prizes would be a shift as “Librarian for the Day” in the children’s room! When my coworker, Bethany Schmidt, BHML’s Community Technology Coordinator, first suggested the idea, I have to admit I thought it was a little bit crazy.  Surely, no kid would choose to put their hard-earned raffle tickets in a drawing to spend a day in the children’s room working as a librarian. Boy was I wrong! Not only did summer reading participants put their raffle tickets in, quite a few of them put all of their raffle tickets in the box for Librarian for the Day! While I didn’t get a chance to count the number of raffle tickets, to my surprise, the box was full! Each raffle ticket was earned by reading for five hours, completing five reading challenges or writing a book review. Overall, we had 657 raffle tickets entered! That equals a lot of reading!

Our lucky winner, Katherine, arrived at the library at 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning to officially unlock the doors for the day. She started the morning by pulling books requested by patrons to be sent off to other libraries or wait on our hold shelf to be picked up. She spent quite a bit of time learning about how the children’s room is organized and shelving the books that had recently been returned. She learned how to check in and out books on the computer and even got to use the scanner! Katherine created a book display of her own with some of her favorite books and designed a sign to go with it. She chose some really great books, so check it out next time you are in the library! Throughout her shift, Katherine didn’t hesitate to jump in and help out by making book recommendations to children and families. As part of her experience, Katherine got to choose a book to add to the children’s collection and she chose “Raya and the Last Dragon” by Golden Books. When it arrives at the library and is added to the collection, a bookplate will be placed in it with Katherine’s name. Katherine finished her day by having a celebratory lunch with her fellow librarians. She was a joy to have in the library and I can only hope she enjoyed her experience as much as we did. If you were one of the ones who put your tickets in to be “Librarian for the Day,” don’t worry, you will have another chance next summer! Maybe we will pull a few more names!