Spotlight: Living the library life

LACONIA — J’Lillian Mello got her first job at the Belmont Public Library, and within a few years she amended her career plan to keep her working in libraries for the foreseeable future.

Mello, who works as an assistant librarian at the Laconia Public Library, is working to qualify herself to someday be a director of a library.

“I originally wanted to be a marine biologist,” Mello said. But she couldn’t afford to go to the University of New England, so she decided to get an associate’s degree in liberal arts from Lakes Region Community College and figure out her next step from there.

In the meantime, she continued to work as a page, then part-time assistant at the Belmont, then Laconia Public Library. She then spent a couple of years at Plymouth State University for her bachelor’s in English and writing, and is now pursuing a master’s in library science online.

“I just figured it would be easiest to have a career in the field I was already in,” she said. “I just kept learning, kept liking it,” she said.

Most people she meets have little understanding of what the job of librarian is, she said. It’s not just checking out books for patrons and re-shelving the returns.

There’s a surprising diversity in the daily life of a librarian, and that’s what keeps Mello interested, especially since she came to Laconia. She liked working in Belmont, but it could be quiet. On a busy day in Belmont, 40 patrons would visit.

“Here, we can easily get 1,000. It’s a bigger population, bigger budget, we’re able to do a lot more programming for them.”

Lately, Mello, who has been working for Laconia since 2014 and full-time since January, has found herself doing a lot of work in the children’s room, where she is developing the collection by ordering new materials and cataloguing them as they come in. She is also working to develop the adult music collection and the assortment of passes – Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Castle in the Clouds – that patrons can check out along with their books and DVDs.

When it comes time for her to become a director, she would prefer something that has a little of Belmont and a little of Laconia – a place with a small-town feel, and where she could access the resources to provide interesting programs for her patrons.

“We should be focused on what the patrons want,” she said.

Wherever it is, it will likely be in New Hampshire, where she and her husband, an automotive mechanic who grew up in Bristol, have already begun to put down their roots.

“Family is around here, I grew up in New Hampshire and it’s a really beautiful place. I don’t mind visiting other places, like Florida, but, I don’t know, (New Hampshire) just feels like home.”