Hello!

I am a children’s librarian in a public library in Connecticut. I previously worked in the international education field and I taught in a bilingual school in Spain. I am always interested to merge my interests in children’s literacy and cross-cultural learning. I chose this course to engage and learn about ways that I can connect with the community beyond books and regularly scheduled programs. I am particularly excited to learn about global library trends and the power of stories. I am also a student lead for the Nigeria team on the Global Ecosystems internship course so I am interested to see how what I learn can be applied to the children’s literacy project I am working on in Abuja.

One of my favorite events this year was attending the ALA Conference in Chicago with other Global Ecosystem interns to present about the Soma Safari project in Kenya that launched six Little Free Library sites in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. It was so fun to learn from the other students, connect in person and help gather books for a book drive to send to the literacy project in Ukraine. I am learning a lot about how communities can build their own culture of reading with book ecosystems in underserved communities that may not an easily accessible public library.

I plan to finish the MLIS program in Spring 2027. I am looking forward to the reflective and exploratory aspects of this course to connect the dots on everything I’ve learned in this program so far along with my perspectives from working as a children’s librarian for the past year.