Working Class Stories - Local Librarian On Duties, Opportunities

BOLINGBROOK, IL — Welcome to Working Class Stories, a weekly column where we dig into the everyday and exceptional stories of the people who make society run. For our first story of 2020, we sat down with one of the less-thanked but no less-important types of public servant: a Librarian.

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Nancy Korczak is a native of Cicero and a lifelong lover of books and languages. For some time, she has been serving Bolingbrook and the surrounding communities as the Deputy Director of the Fountaindale Public Library District. Patch spoke with Ms. Korczak on Friday, Jan. 10 about what her job entails, how she got where she is, and what aspiring librarians can expect when they enter the field. The following is a transcript of the conversation that took place, lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Patch: Just to start, would you mind telling me your name and your position at the library?

Korczak: I'm Nancy Korczak and I'm Deputy Director here.

P: Would you mind walking me through your own story? How you came to be a librarian and how you found your way to Fountaindale?

Korczak: I grew up in Cicero... and at the time I was living there it was about 80 percent Latino population, so a lot of Spanish speakers. I'm fluent in Spanish; it's my first language. And I remember anytime I would go to the library, the library didn't have any Spanish speakers. So it was always the staff asking one of the kids, 'Oh, can you translate for me?' So I always thought it would be cool to come back and work for a library. I had no idea what you needed to work in a library.

It wasn't until I got to college that I realized... you can actually get a Master's [Degree] in Library Science. And I thought, 'Oh that would be interesting.' I could go back and work at a library and help people speak Spanish and help the community... Since I got my Master's Degree I had been looking for a community similar to the one I grew up in, and I hadn't had that kind of community until I got to Bolingbrook.

Before that I had worked at Wheaton, I had worked in Lisle, which were really great communities, but not with a large Latino population. It wasn't until I got here that I was like, 'I feel like I can work and make a difference in both English and Spanish.' So I've been very lucky. It was about three years ago when I got here.

P: So you mentioned that you came to Bolingbrook partly because you can do work for the community. Do you do, to this day, a lot of work to make things bilingual or trilingual for people in the neighborhood?

K: So we have a committee called 'Grupo Oye,' which is both Spanish and non-Spanish speaking staff in the library. We come together once a month to consult on, one, how do we get the word out about the library out into the community, and two, how can we do more programming in Spanish. It's a place where the children's' librarians can bounce off ideas of, 'will this work in Spanish?'

That's how our librarian who does our 'Diez Deditos' Spanish storytime; she gets ideas from the group, she tells us what works and what doesn't. Also the adult services librarian can ask, 'where can I get a contact in Spanish,' because we do have afternoon programs in Spanish.

We make sure that once in a while we do have blogging in Spanish so I'm the one who reads that. We also put together a Spanish-speaking schedule so that any time anything comes up with a person, and they don't speak Spanish and they need to, that person can look at [the schedule] and say, 'Oh this person can help me translate.' I do a lot of meeting-and-greeting in Spanish... and I do give tours in Spanish to our community members.

P: On an average day, what do your responsibilities look like as a librarian and a director?

K: It's very different from day to day. So to give an example this week, we are a week away from our winter carnival. So that is taking up a lot of time. My responsibility as a deputy director is to manage the public services. Our public services are the ones that do all the interactions with our patrons. So the week started with a meeting of our programming librarians to talk about the winter carnival... then the next day was following up with each one of them... and then I do have check-ins with each department to see what they're doing, what they're planning. We tend to plan... about three to six months in advance with our programs. A lot of my check-ins are 'what are we going to be doing for our summer programs?'

I'm also out in the community sometimes. On Tuesday I went to a Rotary Club meeting because our Communications Manager was doing a presentation on the50th anniversary of the library. So her and I attended just to get the word out.

P: It sounds like right now you're doing a lot of managerial things. Before you became a director, when you working just as a librarian, what kind of work did you do during the day?

K: That was when I was working at the public service desk. It depends... So you start your shift at the public service desk and you get everything ready and you just wait to see what kind of help the patrons are going to need. It's anything from 'I heard you have e-books, how do I get them on my phone?...' to other times, people are like 'I just finished reading this really cool mystery book, what can I read next?' And so you do what's called a reader's advisory interview and you ask, 'well, what did you like about that book?...'

It's anything from looking up information for patrons on the computer to looking up books on the computer, but the bulk of the day is really spent on one-on-one instruction for patrons who want to learn how to do something. It could be anything from checking out books, to learning how to use photocopy, to they want to do genealogy research... that's a lot of the work a reference librarian does, is helping people find information.

P: If a lot of the job for a reference librarian is this customer service or technology service, what is all the education you need to be a librarian?

K: It's a Master's in Library Science, and it depends on the focus that you want to take. So for example the classes I took were anything from collection management... knowing where to look for books, where to look for reviews, how to asses what your community needs, looking at statistics. I also took reference services [because] it teaches you how to look for reputable information. Especially in this day and age, some librarians are doing courses or teaching classes on how to identify good sources of information.

I also took library management because at some point or another, a lot of librarians will become managers or manage volunteers, or just manage the day-to-day... There's also a lot of classes on patron privacy and intellectual freedom, and just how to help a patron while maintaining their privacy. Libraries, especially with the American Library Association have been advocates of patron privacy. We very highly value our patrons' right to access information, whatever information they would want... It's a lot of knowing that and knowing the history of librarianship and things like that... It's all different aspects of librarianship, because librarians, they're dealing with all of it at once.

P: Fountaindale is a lot bigger than a lot of libraries out there, and I see all these different people working in all these different roles. What would you say is the ratio of volunteers to full-time workers?

K: Anybody you see at a desk is full-time. We don't have volunteers do the work of staff. That has to do, more than anything, with labor law. The only time that we would put someone behind a desk would be a practicum [library sciences] student, that is getting actual credit for the work that they're shadowing people through...

We do use teen volunteers some times. So if you've ever seen, one of our programs is sometimes there's teens handing out flyers; those are volunteers. But that would be for big events. Or sometimes we have smaller summer programs and you see the staff member have a volunteer with them who's helping out. So while we do have volunteer opportunities, they're not here everyday and they wouldn't be a percentage of everyone that works at the library.

P: And is everyone here a librarian, or are there tech people, or...?

K: No, they range from different backgrounds. We do have our non-degree masters... we call them 'specialists.' So the majority of our staff are specialists. Especially here for the [technology] studio, we need someone with that technical knowledge. So we have people who have worked in the recording industry, we have people who have [worked with] technology in the past, we have people who have been professional photographers. We need that skill set...

Our second floor circulation desk, a lot of them are specialists because we focus on customer service. We can teach them how to do the check-out and the check-in, but we can't teach them the great attitude that they have... It's really in our children's department... and the adult services department that we have the reference librarians with their Master's Degrees. And they're the ones that do most of our program planning; they do most of the committee work, they do the continuing education work, and they work together with our specialists.

P: So now I'm going turn to something that's always a little awkward to talk about: economics. All the work that you do, and all the work that the librarians do, for what you get compensated, do you think it's worth it?

K: Well I think none of us do it for the money. We always say that if we were to work in the private sector, we would probably make more money. We are very lucky that we do get an up-there salary here in Bolingbrook, but I don't think any of us are in it for the money. All of us go into public service because we want to serve the community. And that's what we're looking for when we're interviewing people, we're looking for somebody who has interest in serving the community.

So to me, yes, it's more than worth it, because I am doing a job that I love.

P: Recently, among a lot of different non-industrial trades - for example teachers, special education workers - we've seen this kind of rise in labor militancy to unionize or demand better contracts. Do you think there's any indication that a library workers' union might be on the horizon?

K: I don't know. I do know that some libraries in the area do have unions. The Aurora Public Library, part of their staff belong to a union. As an administrator, I haven't heard anything from our staff wanting to do that. Most of our staff are paid on an hourly basis, they do get benefits, they are part of all the benefits that come with working in public service. So I don't know honestly if that's on the horizon or not.

P: Now, let's say that you have a kid just out of grad school that wants to be a librarian or a library worker. Where would you recommend they start?

K: I think it depends. If you have someone certified with a Master's Degree, there's a lot of entry-level positions for librarians around. However, I would say don't start when you get out of library school. Star earlier when you're in college. A lot of the people that we hire have worked as 'Shelvers;' we call our Shelvers 'Library Aids.' They started in high school, shelving books. I started in college shifting books and reorganizing books. You know, just being a Library Aid, you get that experience of moving to another collection and learning how a library works...

I would say if you don't have a degree yet but you have an interest or curiosity, a great place to start is our circulation desk... that's a great opportunity to get to know how the library works, because every material goes through circulation, you get to meet a lot of people. You get to know what the community likes... it's one of the busiest departments. It's a good gauge to see if working in a library is right for you.

P: Let's say someone puts all their time in, gets some good experience, gets their degree and is ready to join Fountaindale Public Library as a full-time librarian. About how much would they make per year?

K: I honestly don't know, it depends on the position... I do know it's about $30,000. Way above that, actually. Library salaries, depending on the size of the library and depending on the resources the community has, and depending on the work that the librarian has to do, vary anywhere from the low $20,000s through the high $50,000s.

P: I think I have just about everything I wanted to ask. Is there anything else you wanted to put on the record?

K: No, I think that's everything.

P: Well thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it.

K: No problem.
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Do you or someone you know in the western suburbs have a working class story they'd like to share? A slice of working life you'd like to show your neighbors? A labor issue that needs to come to light? Contact dave.byrnes@patch.com to set up an interview. Special attention will be paid to residents of, and/or workers in, Oswego, Romeoville, Plainfield and Bolingbrook.