Mary Catherine Coleman

Ms. Coleman is a librarian who primarily works with the Lower and Intermediate schools (Junior Kindergarten through fifth grade), meaning she gets to spark younger students’ interest in reading. She also gets to plan out a lot of library projects, usually in collaboration with Ms. Beebe, the Lower & Intermediate School Educational Technology Integration Specialist. Ms. Coleman has worked here at Parker for four years, and many students have many fond memories of her. As one student notes, “Ms. Coleman was always the nicest person because I wasn’t the best with technology and robots. So, when we had a project that had to do with that in second or third grade, Ms. Coleman was super nice and helped me with my difficulties with technology. She made me feel more confident in my robot project.” Another student who has a fond memory of Ms. Coleman says, “I remember when we were doing an animal habitat project and she made sure I was okay and knew what I was doing. That was very nice.”

When she was growing up, Ms. Coleman’s family moved “every couple of years,” and one of the things she could consistently find were public libraries, which helped her fall in love with books. She worked at many interesting places throughout the years before she came to Parker.

Ms. Coleman grew up moving from place to place, but wherever she moved, she always thought of her local library as a safe place for her. At first, she had trouble learning to read. As a child, she didn’t picture herself becoming a librarian, but rather living in Paris, as many people also imagine. She also pictured herself as an author, and she still thinks she might do that later in her life. One of her favorite books as a kid was A Wrinkle in Time. She also loves the Harry Potter books. In fact, most summers, Ms. Coleman re-reads the whole series for fun. When she is having a bad day, she sometimes re-reads a snippet of Book 7, in which Harry is nearly dead, goes to the dead world, and speaks with Dumbledore. The passage always lifts Ms. Coleman’s spirits and makes her believe she can get through a hard day. 

Before coming to Parker, Ms. Coleman worked at public libraries, which she loved. At one of them, she regularly had to sing and dance with six- to 24-month-olds, which she sometimes found to be a challenging task. One policy that she liked while working at a public library was that when someone lost a book, the library would ask them to come in and sort books. That protected them from financial punishment and encouraged them to continue coming to the library.

Ms. Coleman began working in schools, taking a job at one in Virginia, where the library was separate from the main campus. Though she liked the atmosphere of the school, the location of the library was a little isolated and sometimes made her feel that way too. She likes how, working at a school, one develops relationships with students who regularly come to the library. Ms. Coleman says that the organizational system of the Dewey Decimal System was greatly improved on when new technology was incorporated into libraries, making finding a book much easier.

Ms. Coleman loves her job at Parker. For several years, she has helped plan projects for the Lower School. When asked about specific projects she has enjoyed helping with, Ms. Coleman mentioned a project she did with the second graders in which they learned about the U.S. by studying the many monuments around the country. Also, she loves the “no food in the library” policy, as she used to find some truly disgusting things there before the rule was placed. 

A big part of her job, and really any librarian’s job, is helping people of all ages find books. Usually, people can use the system with the iPads but they are still sometimes not able to find where the book is. Also, the younger kids at Parker can’t use the website very well at all, so they are frequently asking for help. Ms. Coleman never has very much trouble finding books for people, but she couldn’t say she is able to find any book super fast. She definitely knows the kid’s section much better than the other sections, but she can usually find the book by going to the book’s section. Two book topics that are very popular in some of the younger grades at Parker are Halloween books and gymnastics books, so Ms. Coleman usually knows where to find those.

The kids at Parker are almost always honest if their book is overdue, so Ms. Coleman does not face problems in that area. The library can get pretty busy because a lot of older kids are hanging out and studying while younger kids are frequently coming in for scheduled library time. E-books and other applications for using them have become very popular, so the library is equipped with tools for those things. Parker gets many many books throughout the school year, and there were big shipments at the beginning of the 2017-18 year with the library construction.

When we asked Ms. Coleman about the new design of the library, she responded by saying that she loves the new layout and how it encourages kids to come to the space. There is a much more open floor plan in the library and it gives a much better feeling of a learning environment. Before, there was so much space taken up by big bulky pieces of furniture and large bookshelves. 

There are also a lot of new resources for students to use. Ms. Coleman also very much approves of the architects and the administration going to the librarians for input. She felt very involved during the process. She remembers that on her first school year week at Parker she had a meeting about the new library. The most stressful part of the process was when construction ended late. This closure of the library at the beginning of the year and the library closing early meant that the librarians had to sometimes stay late and weren't able to get as well acquainted with the library as they may have liked. Despite that, they all feel that the new space is a large improvement on the old library and “In the end, it all turned out great.”

We learned so much about Ms. Coleman and what makes her such a great librarian. We are so happy she took time out of her busy day to interview with us!