Librarian Interview: Fort Dorchester High School

One of the librarians at Fort Dorchester High School is a former science teacher from my middle school. I was able to sit down with her over Thanksgiving break to speak with her about the Curate competency. Anna Musselman first started by explaining a bit more about her high school community. Fort Dorchester is the most diverse high school in our district. Ms. Musselman said they have a very large Spanish-speaking population, as well as sizeable Vietnamese and Filipino student populations, as well as some Arabic-speaking students. Ms. Musselman wanted to focus on curating her collection and adding books for her students who speak languages other English as their first language.

Ms. Musselman began by reaching out to her ESOL teacher in order to find out what the needs were in terms of languages and reading levels. She asked the ESOL teacher if she would be willing to bring her classes to the library so she could meet with the students about their wants and needs for the library. Students mentioned some books in popular series they would like to have in Spanish. Ms. Musselman has so far expanded her selection of fiction in Spanish from 68 books to 95 this school year. She has also added to her nonfiction section - i.e. a student requested a brief history of the United States in Vietnamese, and she was able to find one to add to her collection.

She has also worked to model curation and the search process to students, involving them in the process of looking at books in Titlewave and searching for reviews. Ms. Musselman and her students use Titlewave and Mackin to find the majority of titles to add to the collection. She has also used some translation software to help make sure she is ordering the right texts and to make sure she understands exactly what a student is asking to be added to the collection.

While she feels she has found some success so far, Ms. Musselman has also run into a few challenges. She said many of the popular series students want to read take a while to release their translations. She is also worried some community members or even teachers may not understand why time and money is necessary in this area in order to curate a collection which serves all students and school community members. Finding appropriate nonfiction is also trickier since Ms. Musselman does not speak a language other than English, but she has had help from students and the ESOL teacher.

Ms. Musselman feels her curation so far has been challenging but a huge learning experience. She hopes people remember librarians are buying and curating for their entire student population, not just one group or one specific student. She is working to curate a collection for the entire population.