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Things I Never Learned in Library School

June 12, 2022 by Karen Jensen, MLS

Things I Never Learned in Library School: You Won’t Get Paid to Read and You Will Never Read Everything in Your Library Collection (See Also: Why we can’t pre-read the books that we purchase, even while facing massive book bans)

Teen Librarian Karen Jensen discusses why the idea that librarians should pre-read every book before purchasing is an unsustainable answer to address the concerns of book banners

September 13, 2021 by Karen Jensen, MLS

Things I Never Learned in Library School: Problems with the Supply Chain and What it Means for Libraries

There are a lot of issues happening with the supply chain, in large part due to the pandemic. This is affecting book publishing, thus it is affecting libraries. Please let your staff know.

August 16, 2021 by Karen Jensen, MLS

We Need to Change What We’re Doing About Covid for Our Children

Teen librarian Karen Jensen urges us to reconsider fall school and library decisions in light of how the Delta variant of Covid is impacting our youth

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More Recent Posts

Things I Never Learned in Library School: Training Staff to Work with Transgender Teens

September 24, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

In 25 years of working with teens in a public library, it is only recently that I have served and worked with teens that openly identified as transgender. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in working with them and they have been gracious in helping me understand those mistakes. I’ve also had to work with […]

Things I Never Learned in Library School: Public Libraries, 3D Printers, and Guns – oh my

August 1, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

We considered a lot of things when we were discussing adding a 3D printer to our Teen MakerSpace at The Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County. These things included space, time, money and staff education. At the end of the day and after a lot of research, we decided that a 3D printer […]

Things I Never Learned in Library School: Waiting for Reimbursement, aka Libraries Must Fund Their Programming

July 11, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

Earlier this week, a post about reimbursement came across my Twitter timeline proclaiming that reimbursement is not an equitable system (https://twitter.com/readitrealgood/status/1015776354074288128). Like many things that come up in my timeline, I hadn’t really thought about the inherent classism involved in reimbursement, even though I had lived with it myself in my professional career. The truth […]

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Summer Reading Chaos: How do we balance the needs of our community with those of our staff?

May 23, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

As my teens are counting down the days left in the school year, I find myself counting down the days until summer reading begin, but with very mixed emotions. This is my 25th year as a YA librarian, which means that it is the 25th summer reading program that I have planned. I have worked […]

A Wrap Up: Doing a Diversity Book Audit, more thoughts

March 1, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

Yesterday I was honored once again to present with School Library Journal about doing a diversity book audit. As always, there are questions afterwards which make you think about what you might do differently the next time. Here are some thoughts I had afterwards based on follow-up questions. Hello, I just had the honor of […]

Things I Never Learned in Library School: Toxic Masculinity and Teaching Boys to Accept No for an Answer, Even in Our Libraries

February 19, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

The first time I ever learned what can happen when you tell a boy no and was afraid, I was a Sophomore in high school. A friend has asked me out and I told him no, I didn’t have those types of feelings for him. Later that night I did go out on a date, […]

Sexual Harassment in KidLit

February 12, 2018 by Karen Jensen, MLS

As a librarian, I don’t often feel genuinely a part of kid or yalit. I’m not an author. I’m not a publisher. I’m not an agent or an editor. But I am someone who regularly talks about books and puts them into the hands of kids and teens. So these last few days, I have […]

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