During high school, I worked as a student assistant at the Avondale Library. While there, I discovered Audubon’s The Birds of North America. I wondered if it was part of the original collection bought when the library opened in 1913. Librarian Miss Thelma Morris allowed her student assistants to create displays in the glass case. I was excited to showcase this book and others about birds.
I graduated high school in May 1986. Avondale didn’t need a full-time student assistant, and I needed money for college, so I accepted a summer help job at the main library. That summer the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote about the Carnegie Libraries in Cincinnati, but they left out Avondale! I wrote a letter to the editor highlighting all the great things about Avondale, and it was published.
I had no desire to work in libraries permanently, but that would change. In 1992 I earned my MLIS at the University of Michigan. When I could, I visited Avondale and Miss Morris, who once told me she knew I would be a librarian. Life took me overseas and far from Cincinnati. Avondale was instrumental in making me the librarian I have been the last 32-plus years.
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