Jennifer Johnson

Hello! My name is Jennifer Johnson and I have been the Children's Program Coordinator for the Washington County Library system since February of this year. My experience working in libraries began in college when I was a student worker in circulation at my campus library for three years. I worked in a school library for several months in my twenties, but public librarianship is where my heart belongs. I began working part-time at the Johnson City Public Library in 2012 and eventually became their full time School Age Program Coordinator in 2016. Over the years, I learned so much about the profession from that incredibly talented team of people. Now I am exercising my talents for a two-branch county library system, which is a new set of challenges for me, but I am ready to rise to meet them. My ultimate aspiration is to manage my own children's department someday.

I feel that I should also say that like many children's librarians, I did not come to librarianship in my education without trying a few related fields first. I earned a Bachelor's in English in 2009, a Bachelor's in Early Childhood Education in 2014, and finished my MLIS in 2023. For a long time, I thought that teaching was my passion, but all the time I spent working with children in schools has also helped me immensely in understanding child development and best literacy practices within the library programming sphere.

In my library career, I have not only facilitated school age and preschool programming, I have also partnered with teen and adult librarians to provide exciting all ages programming. I headed up JCPL's annual fandom convention, LibCon, for five years. I developed the Librarian-in-Training program that gives middle grade kids firsthand experience in the library field. I worked very closely with schools and afterschool organizations to provide outreach programming in the community.

I am also a huge advocate for mental health and wellbeing in a field that can be fraught with vocational awe, pay disparity, and burnout. We have to take care of and advocate for ourselves first and I am still learning how to do that.

If my experiences in the field can be an asset or a guide for your library journey, I am happy to talk about any and everything you need! I look forward to meeting you!