Hi everyone. I’m Nick Haynes, a librarian and tech assistant at a middle school in the Bay Area, finishing my MLIS at SJSU. My role covers standard library duties, student PC and print support, and a 1-to-1 laptop program currently transitioning from Chromebooks to MacBook Neos. That means checking out books, troubleshooting devices, managing print queues, and preparing for a hardware rollout.
I came to this work after ten years in post-production and advertising in San Francisco. The hyperlinked library model is exciting because of what it opens up for students in terms of access. A middle school library that functions as a genuinely connected, participatory space could change how students relate to research, to reading, and to information generally.
The harder question is who does that work. Librarians are already carrying responsibilities that go well beyond what the job title suggests. Adding the infrastructure, training, and ongoing maintenance that a hyperlinked model requires means asking already stretched staff to take on something substantial. The students I work with would benefit from that kind of access, and I want to build toward it, but getting there while managing a hardware transition is a lot to hold at once.
I’m curious whether others in the course are running into the same tension and how they’re thinking about it.