Holley School library bustles at 7:30 in the morning with a couple of dozen students squeezing in a little time on computers, playing games and looking at books.
And in the middle of it all is Debbie Pugh, clearly enjoying herself immensely as she moves around the room, helping the youngsters find what they need and figure out the computer programs.
“I love reading to kids. I love making the library inviting,” said Pugh, who is in her fourth year as paraprofessional librarian at Holley €“ meaning she has a two-year degree in library science rather than the four years of college training that teacher-librarians must complete.
“I love making the library inviting,” Pugh said. “I like the idea of helping the students and the teachers get information and books that they want. In general, I love it all, every bit of it.”
Pugh has been honored with ahe 2009 Oregon Library Media Paraprofessional of the Year from the Oregon Association of School Libraries.
She has worked for the district for six years, the first two at Hawthorne School, where she started working with Michelle King, who taught her how to run a library. Pugh substituted for King and other librarians and completed the two years of classes at Linn-Benton Community College to earn her paraprofessional degree.
Pugh authored an article for the Fall 2009 edition of Interchange Magazine, the Journal of the Organization of School Libraries, about her enthusiasm for library work.
“It is a joy every day to place new books on the shelves so that students coming in will have new adventures to search for, locate and enter into,” she wrote in the article. “To watch Holley Elementary students get excited about reading the next book in a series, discover a ‘new to them’ book, or ask excitedly if a book is in that they are waiting for, just thrills my heart.
“But when I think of the one activity in my busy schedule that gives me the most pleasure, I have to say it is reading to a whole classroom full of students, she said, launching into a description of how she enjoys doing the cock-a-doodle-doos with the first- and second-graders in reading “The Rooster Who Lost His Crow,” having third- and fourth-graders protest that she’s stopping at a good part of the book when reading time ends, or challenging fifth- and sixth-graders to read books that “must have excitement, drama, the unexpected, and sometimes elements of grossness!”
Her enthusiasm for her work at Holley prompted Tiffanie Lambert, who was principal at Holley last year before moving out of the area, and Jan Sharp, who was principal before Lambert, last spring to recommend her for the professional award from the state library association, the professional group for school librarians and library personnel throughout the state.
The OASL presented Pugh with a 2009 Oregon Library Media Paraprofessional of the Year plaque, a book for the Holley library and a $200 cash award at its awards banquet on Oct. 10 in Salem.
Sharp said Pugh handles all the daily operations of the library, since the only interaction she has with a library media teacher is one day every seven weeks, whcn she gets a visit from an Education Service District representative.
“The other 97 percent of the time she works independently in daily operations, technical services, collection department, budgeting, and assisting staff and students.
Pugh “is an exceptional resource for teachers and students who are looking for information or just good literature,” she said. “Debbie’s enthusiasm for books and technology is contagious.”
Pugh emphasized that she credits the other district library professionals, as well as the teachers at Hawthorne and Holley, with her success as a librarian.
“I feel like a turtle on a fencepost,” she said. “Turtles can’t put themselves on a fencepost. Someone has to put them up there.
“Every paraprofessional library assistant, I’ve learned a lot from every single one of them. Tiffanie Lambert and Jan Sharp,
they’re the ones who put me here Every one of them deserve this, every one of them.”