It all started in the beginning of the year.  My school sent out a call to parents and guardians to see who would be interested in coming to our school’s career day.  Guest speakers were sought to provide students with meaningful experiences that motivate and promote career/college readiness.  There had already been curiosity centering on the media center. What did the library media specialist do for the students?

Whenever students had free time (recess and/or lunch), they would volunteer to come and help the library media specialist in the library.  Shelving books was a popular job.  As the same students would come to the media center, they started to make the connection to information collected on them when they would check books out.  What was this all about?

The students started to understand about library records.  The library database could alert the library media specialist when books were overdue or tell her where books were located in the library collection.   All of this information could be found in a record.  The students wanted to know how records could help in different job positions.  To answer this question, Career Day speakers were found to explain their positions which also helped the students understand the importance of records for institutions, media centers, and presidential collections.

Suddenly, the students were exposed to a type of job that they never really thought about—the archivist.  Students found out that this job can be an adventure.  “Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today” (Laura A. Millar, Archives: Principles and practices, p. 74, https://goo.gl/7MVzX2).

This job type helps researchers, such as students, to gain access to information that they may need for various projects during their schooling.  Archivists preserve documents (papers, books, etc.) by keeping them in an order that would help students find the documents when needed but easy to find when stored in bookcases.  The archivist knows the documents and the authors who had written them so that they could better find documents meeting students’ informational needs.  This information can be about something from the past that could help the students understand a topic in the present.

This development started me to create an archive of interested career day speakers who want students to know that people in the information management profession are very important people to know.  This has expanded into a need for my college students as well.

Just because the students are not studying in that major does not mean that they do not want to know about it. They need to be informed that such major and/or position exists.  This will expand and open new possibilities for the students and for all of us.  Actually, this opens new doors to other ways to find information to meet students’  informational needs.

Want to join this archive of career speakers for elementary and college students?  Please fill in the form at this link:  https://goo.gl/forms/ejEOUPImQvveKqzp2