'The Library Lady'

Editor’s Note: Hermosa Valley School’s sixth grade journalism class is using the Patch blog to post some of their work under the guidance of teacher Christine Duclos.

By Annika Hanson

I interviewed Christine Diaz (more commonly known as Mrs. Diaz) on Jan. 4 about being the Hermosa Valley School librarian and her relationship with the students.

Mrs. Diaz went to California State Long Beach College and studied to be a teacher.

When I asked how she became the librarian, she replied, "I had been working here for 13 years and when the other librarian left, the school needed a librarian. So I became the librarian because I thought it would be fun. And I love books."

Her favorite part of her job is, "The kids! The kids are number one," she said.

Mrs. Diaz has so many students that she has become close friends with that she can’t count them all. One thing she knows for sure is that there are about 200 kids that pass through her building of books each day.

She also loves reading short stories and books to the children. Her favorite books are Hugo Cabret and The Hunger Games while her favorite things to do outside of school vary from walking on the beach to cooking with her sons, going to music concerts and reading.

I’m told that the hardest part of being the librarian was keeping the library current.

"I have to keep the library up to speed with new technology and bestselling books," Mrs. Diaz replied as a response to a question about challenges.

She said that she believes new technology doesn’t have a large effect on the Dewey Decimal System because, "We still need a reference to find out where all the books that we are looking for are," she answered.

However, she does think that the future of libraries will involve more technology and will be advanced, or as she likes to say it, more… exciting!

Learning more about this local role model has been a great experience for me, and has brought me deeper into the world of libraries. Maybe I’ll be a librarian!