u of pitts, take two

493 words. what do you think? (qu'en penses-tu?) is the ending too cheesy?

We are currently faced with harnessing an unprecedented wealth of information, and to ensure our children’s academic success, we must also teach them to do so. In recent years, my experiences have led me more and more directly to pursue working as a CHILDren’S LIBRARIAN, enabling the next generations to use OUR BURGEONING INFORMATION STORES, and sharing a passion for a form of information that is sometimes neglected as such- Children's literature.

Fiction allows us to step outside ourselves, to critique ourselves and our society. Children's fiction captivates ME BECAUSE IT addresses a population in transition that has leisure to explore that transition. Thus FOR MY undergraduate senior honors thesis, I wrote a section of a children’s novel, having gathered quantitative and qualitiative information from books and journalS on issues related to my plot. I also included my own reviews of children’s books that had inspired my work. However, it was during my SPEECH language PATHOLOGY graduate studies that I first considered a career in libraries. I was amazed at how fellow students tended to consult only on-line articles for research projects, ignoring more specialized databases that referenced journals available in the library and often limiting themselves to secondary sources of information. I began to realize THE potential for mismanagement and misuse of information THAT accompanies immediate access to it. For many projects, I found myself more concerned about THE CORRECT HANDLING of the information than about the information itself.

As a student clinician, I combed the children’s sections of CLEVELAND’S public libraries for books to use in therapy, consulting children’s librarians for books on various topics. These trips also INSPIRED ME TO read and re-read childrens' literature for myself, and I discovered both NEW TITLES aND books I missed as a child.

Inspired by "The Read Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease and my language development coursework, I expanded the reading program at my summer daycare job, allowing children to track their reading progress, selecting books to read aloud, and experimenting with storytelling techniques. By the end of the summer, children who had shown no independent interest in books were bringing them to me to read and requesting favorites from the library.

TO PREPARE MYSELF FOR THE LIBRARY SCIENCES, I volunteered in a media center in a school for children with disabilities, cataloguing new items. In addition to gaining experience using collections management software and the World Cat database, I was introduced to both standard and specialized classification systems. Currently, I plan to use my experience to develop a cataloguing system for a library belonging to a small student organization in Rouen, France as I continue to seek experiences that will support a career in children's librarianship. I AM CONFIDENT THAT the UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH WOULD provide ME with THE REMAINING TRAINING I NEED TO provide children the means to effectively pursue the facts of life and the truths of fiction.

(stuff in caps courtesy of siatree.)