SAN JOSE, CALIF. –– Being a librarian is much more than giving out books to students and shushing them when they’re being too loud. It takes a lot of effort to be a good librarian, and students and staff are fortunate enough to have a great one working with Silver Creek this year.

Ingrid Eliasson’s story of becoming a librarian is as interesting as she is. Starting off as an art teacher with an undergrad degree in fine arts and architecture and a master’s in fine arts, Eliasson was asked to fill in for her then-school librarian right before she was set to go on maternity leave back in 2003. She noticed that the library was in chaos, so without being asked, Eliasson, reorganized the whole library and pasted new barcodes for every single book. From that day on, she became a librarian.  

Eliasson has been a librarian for almost 18 years,  working primarily in the East Bay as a librarian for two districts. She worked as the Orinda District librarian until last summer when her daughter, who is now 18 years old, graduated high school. Eliasson’s family planned to move to San Diego, where her daughter now attends college. Thankfully for us, there were no librarian positions available in San Diego, so now Eliasson now works for Silver Creek high school and Overfelt. Eliasson flies to San Diego every weekend to be with her family and then returns to San Jose to work with us. When asked how she’s adapting to living in two places, she responds, “ after working long hours, having my own apartment is nice just to crash in.” Thankfully she has a supportive husband and family back in San Diego. 

Being a big traveler, Eliasson stated that she’d visited too many places to count. Including when she studied in Italy for two summers and New York for one as a part of an NYU summer program for fine arts. She’s also studied in Sweden, where her family is partly originally from, mixed with some Norwegian. When I asked what her all-time favorite country she’s been to was, she answered Turkey. Eliasson even has a house in Puerto Rico. 

Eliasson’s mission is to make any library she works with as best as possible. You see this in all her past projects. For example, in Overfelt, she is making it her priority to find books that relate to the students by finding stories that were written by Latino authors or have strong Latino characters. And she plans on doing the same at the Silver creek. She has set up calendars for teachers to see and have her come in to teach students how to do research and avoid plagiarism; she also has a list of websites for reliable sources to use for your essays. If you are interested in finding better sources and research tips, visit Eliasson in the Library. She is also open to sponsoring clubs that don’t have an advisor and need a place to have their meetings. 

When asked what her favorite part of being a librarian was, she told me it was when students love the book she picked out for them; in other words, being able to give students books that mean something to them. Silver Creek is lucky to have Eliasson working with them this year, knowing the library is in good hands.  

Eliasson has created this survey to get a better overview of what the students of Silver Creek like to read; check the link below. If you want more information on our library, visit: https://silvercreekhigh.esuhsd.org/about-sc/library

Survey:  https://forms.gle/sxhAAWQRpTT3VRjo7