One thing has puzzled me about the children collection at my PFE library. It is very diverse, more than my local library is but there was something that puzzled me about the collection. I figured it out while reviewing the collection today. There are many books about being in lower social-economic situations. My epiphany happened while I read You and Me and Home Sweet Home by George Ella Lyon & Stephanie Anderson then Going Down Home with Daddy by Kelly Starling Lyons. This collection touches every aspect of every child’s life. I have read stories about migration, every culture I could think of, living with extended family members, finding community support after leaving your home with nothing, being departed, making tough decisions about what friends to invite home… because it does not look like what you see on TV, and so many more. This collection is amazingly built for the community it serves by librarians that listen and see their patrons. They do not seem to listen to trends the book companies push. Maybe it is because everyone has the responsibility to create lists of items to purchase. They review items for all sections of the children’s room. You can see the diversity of the librarians within this picture book collection. I love this project! It truly is getting me out of my white middle class environment and into the world of my neighbors and a community I may not have seen before.

Before this project and even before entering this GSLIS program I knew… how do I say this… I knew that the face of the library should represent the faces that enter the library. I knew that the collection should have diverse authors. What I am learning is that the collection needs to represent more than just what the patron looks like; being brown, black, gay, straight, bilingual; and just having diverse authors is not enough. The collection needs to represent the life experiences happening in the world around us that we may not be experiencing ourselves. We need to look beyond our likes and needs. We need to pay attention to the stories we hear through our programs and simple conversations with our patrons. We need to include these stories by way of items within our library collections. Diversity is in every town, large and small. As a librarian, we need to shine our light into every corner of our community, looking for the story not being told or represented then finding items that match. This is my unexpected takeaway from this professional field experience.

Thank you to the Cranston Public Library Central Branch Children’s Room, Emily Brown, her staff, and the central branch staff for welcoming me into their lives and offering me the chance to work on this PFE project.