Editor's note: In conjunction with International Women's Day on March 8, The Republican is featuring more than a dozen area women and their accomplishments in profiles during March, which is also Women's History Month. Jean Canosa Albano is the manager of public services for the Springfield Public Library. For a child who grew up reading books under the blankets...
Jean Canosa Albano
Editor's note: In conjunction with International Women's Day on March 8, The Republican is featuring more than a dozen area women and their accomplishments in profiles during March, which is also Women's History Month.
Jean Canosa Albano is the manager of public services for the Springfield Public Library. For a child who grew up reading books under the blankets with a flashlight, it’s a dream job.
“I don’t think I could have chosen a better career for myself. There’s so many things that I have done and opportunities that I’ve had. I’m naturally a helper and this is a good place to do it,” she said.
Canosa Albano reminisced about finding the notice for the entry-level library job after graduating from University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
“The posting said ‘with an ability to speak Spanish preferred’ so I applied for it and here I am 26 years later,” said the Spanish major who studied in Seville, Spain, and travelled as an American Field Service student to Peru.
For the past five years, Canosa Albano has overseen the librarians at Central Library who serve children and adults as well as those in the nine other city library branches. She’s also collaborated on a programs to help countless area residents.
The Family Childcare Language and Literacy Project is an ongoing program to help educators get professional development on language and literacy development for the children in their care.
“There are six early literacy skills and children need to develop them so they can be ready to learn to read. The most important is print motivation, or interest in books. If they don’t have that, they won’t be able to build on other fundamental skills,” she said.
The course, taught in tandem with the Preschool Enrichment Team on Saturday mornings, counts toward one of the required classes needed for early childhood education certification.
“The class and the many ways that the library supports it can help teachers prepare their kids to be ready to learn to read when they get to school so they’ll have so much more success. They’ll get to the point of reading to learn, will want to stay in school and have success in their careers. It’s hard to imagine that it starts so early but it really does,” she said.
While attending the University of Rhode Island for her master's in library and Information services, Canosa Albano took a class in library services for teens and that inspired her work in that area.
“In the days before testing, I used to visit middle school and high school classrooms when I was the teen librarian here. I’d take with me huge bags of books to do book talks and tell just enough so they’d want to read them,” she said.
“I knew that it was working when one day when there was an evacuation emergency and the kids didn’t want to leave without checking out their books.”
Since then, Canosa Albano’s taught other teen-friendly programs like a service program for library staffers to better understand young adults and, most recently, an alliance with WGBY Latino Youth Media Institute.
“It was patterned on Chicago Public Library’s ‘maker spaces’ where teens can learn how to record music and spoken word or film something and present it for others,” she said of the alliance
“It’s a way for kids who don’t know what they want to do but like to ‘geek out’ and learn more about something they can really have fun with as a potential career.”
A “tech camp” was held in February and another will be hosted in April to train ages 12-18 in the media projects they want to pursue.
Students will be able to keep working on their projects for a teen festival and attend a career fair where they can meet people who have the job they would like to have after college.
Technology will also play a role in an upcoming outreach that Canosa Albano is excited about, one that will connect with people of all ages outside the library with a new language-learning program.
“We’re going to be ordering a new database called MANGO where people can log in with their library card and learn a language for free. The library is here to respond to what the community is interested in and want to do everything we can to meet needs out there,” she said.
The community of Springfield is important to Canosa Albano.
Whether bringing in the Say Something Nice program to the Central Library lobby for positive awareness or growing a new partnership with the Mason Square Health Task Force, she hopes that her post at the library serves as a connector to all.
This year, Canosa Albano will assist in putting together the second annual Springfield Partners for Community Action provider resource fair for the community advocacy group that helps adults, seniors and families.
“I feel driven to make the library be part of the community and I think that has to be an ongoing effort. People are overloaded with information coming at them from many directions and they don’t always realize what is available to them,” she said.
“We have a lot of people in the community who are helpers to others and I’ve started helping providers in the community come together so they can be better connected. The more I can do, the better.”