Don't Judge a Librarian by Her Cover Story

For a librarian, there's a place for everything and everything in its place.

There is order. There is a system. There is precision. The tomes of Twain are not intermingled with the sheaves of Shakespeare.

Yet Liz Hildreth laughs when she thinks about her own home library. It's a mess.

"I have way too many books," she says. "I'm lucky if I can find them. I have stacks all over the place and, unfortunately, they're not in Dewey Decimal order."

It seems so out of character for Hildreth, manager of the La Mesa branch of the San Diego County Library.

The resident of Mission Hills has been at the La Mesa branch for the past five years and with the county library system the past 13.

To meet Hildreth, 61, is to encounter a woman who could play the part of a librarian on stage. She's perfectly cast. She answers questions with a warm, welcoming smile while peering over her half-glasses. And if you have a question, she knows where and how to find the answer. She has the Dewey Decimal System memorized and can lead you down the aisles and through the stacks to just the volume you desire.

But the disorganization at home isn't the only library sin she's committed. She admits she also once had to pay a fine for returning a book late. Waaaay late.

"It wasn't at La Mesa," she says. "It was at San Diego Public. I swore up and down that I returned it. And why were they bugging me about it? But I found it a year later in a child's suitcase.

"I sheepishly returned it."

Other than that one run-in with the "library police," which she relates with a smile, Hildreth has been on the other side of the desk, checking out books and helping the public for most of her adult life.

Becoming a librarian, however, wasn't her first choice of careers.

After college at San Jose State, she worked in interior design. But when her two children were young and their school library needed help, she decided to volunteer. From that moment, she was hooked.

As she explains it, she'd always loved books and reading. So what better place to spend time than a library?

She took a library technician course at Palomar College, then went on to earn her master of library and information science degree. From there, she was hired as a library technician and worked her way up the library ladder through jobs in Chula Vista, North Park and Poway before coming to La Mesa.

She says she enjoys coming to work every day, and not just "for the air conditioning," she said one recent sizzling afternoon.

She enjoys the job, she says, "mostly because we like to work with people and help people."

A typical day for Hildreth starts with checking e-mails, then getting the desks and computers ready for the public. She'll spend about half her day out in front at one of the desks, helping people with reference questions, directional questions or the computer system. The other half of her workday is spent behind the scenes, answering calls, ordering materials and doing administrative work.

But there is more.

There is working with the Friends of the La Mesa Library, the chess club, the knitting club and the "Coffee and Books" program. And the 14-member staff at La Mesa's library runs other programs, too, for children, tweens, teens and adults.

It's because of all these special programs that Hildreth absolutely believes libraries will always exist, even if the Internet, digital media and search engines such as Google can make a stack of reference books seem as current as Herbert Hoover.

"Oh, sure, I think so," she says. "A library is more than just a place where books are. ... It's a place of resources. And if you look at it in those terms, the library is where you come." She calls La Mesa's library "a touchstone for the community ... a place for the community to rally around."

She says that during these hard economic times, the computers are in constant use by those working on resumes or checking job boards. In fact, the No. 1 complaint she hears about the La Mesa branch is people "didn't get enough computer time."

On the flip side, some of those computer users she's helped have come back to tell her, "I got a job!"

"And that's fabulous," she says.

With its computers, clubs, programs and books, the La Mesa library is constantly busy–and too small, she says, even though the 10,000-square-foot building is just 2½ years old, an upgrade from the old 7,900-square-foot building.

"All our chairs are busy all the time,"  Hildreth says.

Joe Glidden, president of the Friends of the La Mesa Library, can vouch for the bustle of the branch and the solid work and leadership of Hildreth.

"It's a busy little library," says Glidden, noting that the La Mesa branch annually ranks No. 1 in the county system based on highest circulation per square foot. "That staff, including Liz, is always busy. They've got a full plate."

Yet no matter how full that plate gets, Glidden says Hildreth remains unflappable.

"She takes things in stride," says Gidden, who credits Hildreth's "nurturing" nature for helping the branch operate to its best capacity.

As Hildreth looks to the future, she can see exciting new developments and changes born from technology. Downloading books and information to electronic reading or audio devices is taking off. Interactive picture books for children will be commonplace.

Change is coming, and Hildreth knows libraries will adapt and embrace those changes.

While she still prefers to have an old-fashioned book in her hands–"I'm not ready to use an iPad instead of a real book yet," she says–she can see the advantages.

"I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal ... about eBooks and iPads and Kindles and Nooks," she says. "It was interesting, because they were talking about a children's story in which a child can actually fill in the colors [in a picture] in this book as they were reading it. There certainly are some avenues to be explored that are more interesting than I would have imagined."

When Hildreth is asked about the frustrations of her job, she says it's hard for her to pinpoint anything specific. Despite the Internet, she can't find everything everybody wants to know. She still has to shush the loud talkers. And she's had to cool off the ardor of lip-locked teens. ("There's no kissing in the library," she says.)

But she savors some other moments, the times when her impact is tangible.

"A mom will come in and say thank you for recommending that series for my child because they've read everything by that author and now they're voracious readers,"  Hildreth says. "And that's particularly rewarding."

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