You might have seen her in the halls observing and keeping an eye on the students, but you might not know who she is. She is the Media Specialist of Winslow Township Middle School, Mrs Storako!

Our school media specialist, Mrs Storako explains, “I started at Winslow in 2016, so this my ninth year at Winslow Middle School and my nineteenth years as a school librarian,”

Mrs Storako has had a big experience as a school librarian and loves to read! 

“My favorite book is Harry Potter as you can tell from my lanyard and that it is a fantasy book.” She responded, as she showed her yellow Hufflepuff lanyard, a symbol of loyalty and kindness in Harry Potter.

We wanted to know a little more about her educational background and what it takes to become a media specialist. 

“So I got an undergraduate degree from Lehigh University in Business Economics and then I got my Masters in Education in Librarian Sciences from Arcadia University”.

What an interesting background! This proves she’s a very hardworking person! Lets see what motivated her to be a librarian next.

In Mrs Storakos words she says, “I was drawn to being a librarian because I love to read, I love the experience of reading and to see places that I otherwise wouldn’t get to see”.

From this you can really tell that she has a very creative mindset for being able to let reading take her to another place in her mind! Lets see what her day to day duties and responsibilities are as a school media specialist.      

“I start my day coming into the library and setting up for that day’s classes. I normally have classes come down in the mornings. We do some lessons on research how to evaluate sources. Right now we are doing an orientation because we just had a renovation in the library. So students are coming down for that and then i have students come down to check out books, do some research, do some work. Students are doing I-ready right now and the students come down during lunch periods and get to use the resources here in the library.” 

On the subject of technology, how does Mrs Storako think technology has impacted libraries over the years? 

“It has changed libraries significantly. In terms of research all of our researches used to be done with books so we spend a lot of time teaching students how to  locate a book and locate the information they need within that book but obviously technology has changed that all of our research is basically done online now so a big part of the job is showing students how to locate information online and then evaluate the information to make sure that it is reliable information, Storako explained.

Classes and technology are always evolving.  So, how is the library any different?

“So it’s really exciting time for libraries right now with AI we see a lot of changes coming around with how we get our information and checking where that information comes from ai now that it’s been around for a couple years were starting to see some issues pop up with it things like biases of the information that were receiving based on the person who created that ai software. Seeing where that information came from sometimes I see fake citations being used so it’s interesting to see where things are going over the next few years”

Nowadays, you hear people who say that they don’t like to read.  

“So there’s a quote by James Paterson that says,  “A child that doesn’t like to read just hasn’t found the right book,” and I truly believe that quote.

And to anyone that is looking into exploring a career as a librarian, Mrs. Storako has one thought for you. 

“I would say go for it! There’s so many fun things happening in the library right now. I think it’s a great career for anyone who’s interested in it!”