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Livening North Slope libraries, one story at a time

January 27th 2:33 pm | Hannah Heimbuch Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

By the time North Slope District Librarian Lisa Sobienak completes her first year in Alaska, she'll have made at least two trips to each village in the district. As the sole librarian for 10 schools — three in Barrow and seven outlying — she has slated every other week for travel.

The impacts of her job have a heartier ripple effect than they might in other locations, as rural school facilities serve their communities in multiple ways. The schools are centers for the village to gather — be it for sports, meetings or to make use of library resources.

One of Sobienak's primary jobs this year has been to organize upkeep and training so that the district libraries can serve as a greater public resource.

"Some of the libraries haven't been continuously staffed, and so I've spent some long days just organizing the library and getting it to a place to where it was welcoming and easy to use for people," Sobienak said.

She said this organization was vital to create the free access the communities need from a public space.

"I think that's always been the most important thing about the public library is that it's free information for everybody," Sobienak said. "It creates equity throughout our country, that everyone has that access. And (it) creates a community space where people can gather."

Thanks to a unique organization of funding, the libraries can offer extended hours with movie nights, book contests, DVD rentals, Internet access and of course access to the book collections. Staffed by part-time library aids or just teachers themselves during the school day, the libraries then shift hands for the evenings.

In support of school libraries serving double-duty as public libraries, the Tuzzy Library in Barrow employs someone from each village to staff the rural school libraries during evening and summer hours. Tuzzy funds this through a grant.

Since the North Slope schools are too small to each have their own librarian, this pooling of resources is essential to keeping the library available to the community.

"It's a very unique and valuable collaboration," Sobienak said.

Another multi-year focus that Sobienak is working to support is an Inupiaq learning framework aimed at making school lessons more culturally relevant.

"I want to continue building the Alaska sections, with a particular focus on the Inupiaq cultural books," she said. "And continue to make it a part of people's lives."

Each time Sobienak visits a school, she schedules activities that aim to foster the joy of storytelling and the tools of information access. With the younger kids, this means bringing out the bag of tricks.

"I do all kinds of book talks, story times; I use puppets, music, whatever I can to engage the kids in the books," Sobienak said. "With older kids I find relevant fiction that speaks to the issues they're going through."

She's also introducing many aspects of information literacy through technology. She teaches students how to navigate within an online world and how to seek good information. She couples this facet of education with literature appreciation.

One of their projects this year, for instance, is to make a book trailer — similar to a theatrical movie trailer but for a novel. Also, student teams from all levels are participating in Battle of the Books, with a total of 100 kids representing every school in the district.

Between raising levels of library maintenance, drawing young people into the world of books and supporting spaces for entire communities to gather, Sobienak has her work cut out for her. But she maintains that it's both rewarding and vital to the communities she serves.

"I think that it's really important to support libraries and realize how important they are in the community for building literacy and a sense of community," she said. "Oftentimes people will look to the library as a place to cut budgets, and I think that's a disservice to everybody."

 

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