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02/16/2023 08:05 AMTeen Services and Young Adult Librarian Emily Kalotai has found a home with Hagaman Memorial Library. Not just with a supportive staff but with the young readers in the department she leads and with whom she connects.
“I like working with the teens. I like getting to know them. I think they’re all super talented,” she says. “It’s always interesting to see what they’re into and what they’re working on.”
Emily grew up in Bridgeport, then later moved with her family to Shelton, which she still calls home. She went to study anthropology at the University of Connecticut but was unsure as to what to do with her degree in the field. While she was an administrative assistant at several job locations, she pondered her long-term vision for work. She then recalled a previous field of study once considered, which took her to the other side of the country.
“When I was originally looking at undergrad schools, I went to SCSU [Southern Connecticut State University],” she says. “One of the things they had in their majors was library science, so that’s kind of been in the back of my mind for a while. So when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do long-term, I ended up deciding to pursue a degree in library science with San Jose State University. I did it all online.”
Emily’s first library job was at the Fairchild-Nichols Memorial Branch of the Trumbull Library System, where she worked while completing her master’s degree.
“I was surprised when I started looking into it; a lot of it overlaps with anthropology and sociology,” she says. “One of the things I had to do when I was doing my degree is we had to focus on a specific community, and how they would gather information, and exchange information, within that community.”
Emily selected to focus on the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons as her subject of studying how virtually gathering greater amounts of information and materials can be critical to understanding and enriching gameplay. It was a favorable choice for her, as the renowned fantasy tabletop game was a growing interest for her during her studies.
“I would talk about how people buy games, how they discuss different techniques, and how they go about getting all of the information,” she says. “I looked at different forums, things like subreddits. It was a discussion of what different communities are out there.”
Emily eventually arrived at the Teen’s Services and Young Adult department at Hagaman in July 2019. The major aspects of her role include constructing up to four programs a month for the department’s demographics, collection management in “making sure that we’re getting books every month for the teens,” she says, and that all materials are up to date.
“Sometimes we have to get rid of older books that aren’t circulating so we can get in new books. Right now, I’m working on updating our non-fiction collection and getting in new stuff that the teens have asked for.”
Currently, at Hagaman, requests for books on art, college life, and mysteries and thrillers have been received by teen readers, particularly the latter genres in fiction. Graphics novels have also proven to be popular as well, with Emily building up her department’s collection.
Emily has brought some worthwhile titles to Hagaman, including The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton, while she has seen series such as Harry Potter and Twilight remain attractive to readers. Remarkably profitable film franchises adapted from those works have contributed to that continued interest, even though Emily has seen how sometimes adaptations of films do not go down all too well. She uses The Inheritance Cycle fantasy novels as an example.
“I re-read the whole Eragon [the main human character] series…the movie adaptation manages to leave out every single important thing that would’ve been important in later books, so I don’t know how they would’ve gone on with that.”
But the daunting task of creating a visual adaptation for the silver screen can be executed well, however. It’s a relief for fans of a celebrated literary work, and Emily has seen the unlikely outcome as well.
“There are some adaptations that I think are better than the book: Ready Player One, personally, because I read the books,” Emily says. “I saw the movie first, but the movie was an improvement on the story.”
Leading the teens and young adult department presents a challenge for Emily as well, as it can be a bit more difficult to reach those demographics than the older patrons. She achieves outreach through partnerships with East Haven schools and on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram.
“I do have a weekly community service group called the Teen Advisory Group, where teens would come in and just talk with me, get to know me,” she says. “And I ask for their input on what books we’re buying, what event we’re going to be offering to them. That’s my best way of getting to know them.”