In order to create an educational space for the community at the Belmont Library, librarians work around the clock to make the environment as ideal as possible for all of its patrons behind the scenes.
To manage weekly events such as the Maker Hangout and Power Up Afternoons, librarians will assign themselves to a master staff schedule, according to librarian David Vargas.
The events are hosted for people of all backgrounds to strengthen the library community.
In addition to maintaining an educational environment, librarians also work to manage the thousands of books in the library. The Belmont Library sources its books from an internal library department at the San Mateo County Administrative Office.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), public libraries often choose what gets on the shelves by considering “authenticity, public demand, general interest, content, and circumstances of use.”
“We have a service through our website where the library customers can suggest a purchase that they think would be a valuable addition to the library’s book collection, this service applies to all 17 of our libraries,” Vargas said.
Another thing librarians do daily to create an organized and peaceful environment is to make sure that the after-school crowds don’t disrupt the library.
According to Carlmont sophomore Krish Hirani, librarians redirect students to work in study rooms or outside areas to keep the library environment quiet.
“Librarians often like to remind people to go outside or to work in the designated study rooms if they are being too loud,” Hirani said.
Students looking for academic textbooks to do work after class often feel that a wider assortment should exist.
“The book selection is very good, but they are missing a few of the Carlmont textbooks,” said Peter Harrison, a Carlmont sophomore.
According to junior Giulia Sorrentino, to solve the struggle of finding a physical textbook, students often use the available public computers to access digital textbooks or print out chapters of their online textbooks to do their assignments.
Even though finding a physical textbook can sometimes be challenging, students are overall satisfied with the Belmont Library and the services it has to offer.
“The library is pretty great. Everything is pretty clean and the electronic check-out machines are very easy to use. They give us a lot of time to read books and the return is very simple, other than the problem with finding specific textbooks, the library is an amazing workspace,” Sorrentino said.
