IACRL Member Spotlight: Jennifer Clemons
September 27, 2023
-
Interviewed by Janis Shearer, University of Illinois
What is your current professional position? And what do you like best about it?
My current professional position is curator of the Butler Children's Literature Center at Dominican University. I also serve as an adjunct faculty in the SOIS (School of Information Studies) youth services track, teaching materials for children and an international children's book course. So, I get both sides of the SOIS program here, some library/research related functions and the teaching, which is somewhat new to me, but I have really enjoyed so far.
What's the best thing about it? I feel truly fortunate in my job. It's really fun--and I know a lot of people don't get to say that about their job. The best thing about it is definitely the people-- the students, the faculty, the authors and illustrators, the publishers, just getting to spend my time with people who are passionate about youth literature and see the value in youth literature in the same way that I do. I think that's probably the most fabulous thing about it.
Tell us about Butler Children’s Literature Center, what would you like our membership to know?
The Butler Children's Literature Center is an examination center for children's literature. We focus on both children's literature review and research, and supporting the adults that work with kids--the teachers, librarians, caregivers, parents, grandparents that share books with kids. “Sharing great books with great kids.” We do that through programming, lectures, online tools, recommendation lists and reviews. I have a book collection that has two focuses: We have a new book collection that's used for book reviewing, mentor texts for book authors, illustrators, and creators. It's also used in LIS courses, so a lot of our youth services courses meet here, even some undergraduate courses that focus on literacy and learning. Students can use the books to work on collection development and readers’ advisory, to understand the depth and breadth of materials for children and young adults that are coming out of the publishing world at any given time. The collection spans from birth to the age of 18 and covers the whole age range of children and their literacy needs. We also have permanent historical collections, which are very cool and serve the research portion of the center's purpose.
We have an extensive folk and fairytale collection—the Ellin Greene Storytelling Collection--named after Storyteller and Professor Ellin Greene who made the initial donation to the center to start that collection.
And we have a collection of African American focused children's books—The Effie Lee Morris Collection-- that were donated to us by Morris, a public librarian in San Francisco. She was working at a time when that wasn't a real popular topic in youth publishing. She was collecting whatever book she could find on her own, even when the public library wasn't adding them to their collection. Once she retired, she had a massive collection of children's books and was looking for something worthwhile to do with them; her relationship with our prior curator allowed us to become the beneficiary of part of her collection. We’ve been able to steward that gift, and add to it over the years, as a research tool for our students and the public, librarians, teachers, parents to use the collection.
The center is mainly donation funded, and all 3 of those collections come primarily from donors. We have some very generous publishing partners who supply the review copies and then some really, fantastic donors who have given us books and other resources, and financial donations to keep the rest of the center running - everything from the programming to activities and collections - really come to us through generous donations.
The center also functions as a library lab space for graduate students. We have 1-2 graduate assistants who work in the Butler Center at a time. They get a little bit of a different experience in the Butler Center than they might get at a public library or an academic library. We combine the two, so while they're here they're learning about book reviewing, about library social media, some cataloging, and about programming and programming promotion as well as support for university students. Then get to take those skills out into the library world with them.
I think graduate assistantships are an amazing opportunity for students because they build professional skills, but they're also meeting their classmates in a new way, they're meeting faculty and staff in a new way. It's a networking opportunity. I’m a big proponent of graduate assistant roles because it's such a valuable experience.
One of the main roles of the center and the graduate assistants is to produce online tools, so we have a blog called The Butler’s Pantry where you can find event information, book reviews, and recommendation lists. We have a graduate scholarship for underrepresented groups in library science that we award every year, and scholarship announcements and scholarship projects go out on the blog. It's a one stop shop for all things Butler Center. So, if anyone is looking to find us and our resources that would be a great place to visit.
Does your collection circulate?
Butler is a non-circulating collection. We only hold a year of the newly published books, so taking the time to catalog them and sticker them and do all the things that come along with circulation is a huge time commitment. And with the permanent collections, a lot of those books are vintage, so stickering them and adding RFID tags is not good for the integrity or the value of the book in some cases. They're sometimes first editions, they're old, or they're signed so we try and keep them as pristine as possible.
The lack of processing saves time, but also limits the access to the Center a little bit. The Center is housed within a suite of rooms in the University Library, accessible on a more limited basis than the library collection.
As a curator what type of materials have made an impact within your collection?
I think about that as two separate parts of the collection. As far as the review copies go, it's far and away going to be the assortment of diverse titles we have at any given time. Diverse characters and diverse authors are still not as common in publishing as they could be or should be. Having as many of diverse titles, and as many different voices, as we can is so important to our students knowing what's available. As students go out to serve communities, they have experience with what they can and should recommend to people. It helps to be able to explore the books in a not-so-hectic, I've-got-an-ordering-deadline kind of situation. It stands them in good stead when it comes to entering the professional world and having to make those purchasing decisions. There is a lot of pressure on collection development when you have a limited budget, and you want to spend it on the most worthwhile books you can find. Being able to learn about that in a lower-stakes environment is a good skill for them to take away from school.
We’re lucky we've got some pretty fabulous publishing partners who send us a fairly good representation of what's available. Then we get the chance to lift those authors and illustrators by sharing them with the Butler community. That is an important part of what we do, and I think that an important role of the collection.
For our permanent collections, the storytelling collection and the African American children's book collection, the most valuable or most impactful parts of those collections are really the hard to find and out of print things that we get from collectors. Like I said, we're an entirely donation funded endeavor here on campus. I can't purchase the really important, hard to find titles that might benefit one of those collections. So, having very generous donors who keep us in mind when they're looking for a home for their books is really pretty fantastic.
For example, during the pandemic, we had a collection donated from a Chickasaw storyteller who is local to us here in Chicago. Indigenous American tribal stories, myths and legends are something that I just didn't have. She donated a tremendous gift of several hundred titles from a variety of tribal traditions. That really increased the depth and breadth of the storytelling collection in a way that I never could have hoped to do on my own. For both financial reasons and that I don't have the same experience as an Indigenous storyteller. Having relationships with donors like that, who can contribute in unique ways is a wonderful gift.
If you had a year off with pay, what would you do?
Oh, this was a fun one. At first, I was thinking, I would go to the beach, obviously. But then I started thinking of a sabbatical focus. If we're talking about a work-related year with pay, there are really some fabulous youth literature collections out there that I would love to spend time in. The Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature at the University of Florida at Gainesville. It's a huge children's literature resource that I would love to explore. They do offer a fellowship that I would love to apply for one day. An uninterrupted, deep dive into historic children's literature would make my nerdy librarian heart happy. And of course, there are others around the world - there's an international youth library in Munich that would be really exciting to see. Last spring, I taught an international youth literature course where we took the students to Italy for the Bologna Children's Book Fair. My co-instructor and I were trying to figure out how we could take a side trip from Italy to Germany so we could see both things in one trip. It didn't work out, but you know, in my dream sabbatical perhaps it would.
It's obvious you love your work, what does it overflow into your free time?
Absolutely, I don't think there's a way it couldn't. Well, I know this is shocking for a librarian, but I read a lot in my free time, which is why I became a librarian in the first place. When it's not youth literature, historical fiction is my go-to genre. When I find historical youth literature, that's always a giddy moment for me. I love to travel, do yoga, cook, and I love to taste my cooking. So, things like a trip to the Bologna Children's Book Fair are really fun because they combine a lot of the things that I love to do—travel, books, and food. I also have a delightful 10-year-old, so spending time with my family is high on that list. Watching little league games or family travel--always fun.
iREAD Summer Reading Programs
Latest Library JobLine Listings
