Jennifer Bergen loves helping kids discover a new book series or find out more about their favorite topics.
Bergen, Manhattan Public Library youth services manager, wants to help kids dig into the wealth of information available to them.
“We want kids to know the bounty that’s out there,” she said.
Bergen has worked in her current position at Manhattan Public Library since 1999. She’d worked part-time at the library in her hometown of Goessel in high school.
During her years at the library, the most exciting thing Bergen experienced was the expansion of the children’s room in 2014. Bergen said she has seen a change in how children and families were using the library.
“There was a shift where we added a lot of technology resources, but also I saw families coming and staying more,” she said. “They wanted to hang out here.”
This observation inspired some of the additions the library made during the expansion. She even asked her own children, now 12 and 15, what they wanted to see. They tried to add an interactive feature to each area of the children’s room, such as puppets or games. She said it was “thrilling” to be part of making the library a better place to visit.
“We knew we wanted to add more interactive things for kids to do in the library, ways to learn beyond checking out books,” Bergen said.
Bergen enjoys working with adults and teens but has always been most interested in working with kids. She studied English at K-State and said she’s always been interested in children’s literature and early childhood development. She said kids are easy to connect with and are full of life.
“They fascinate me with the things they say and the things they learn and know, and how open they are to learning things about the world around them,” Bergen said.
She said children have a pure enthusiasm about them, and she enjoys how talkative and eager to share they are. She said working with kids offers more chances to be silly, and it’s fun to witness how passionate some can become about a subject.
“When they decide they like something, whether they like manatees or tractors, they want to read everything about it,” Bergen said. “We definitely try to be that place where they can explore any interest that they have.”
Second-graders from around the area regularly come on field trips, and Bergen said their natural inquisitiveness comes out when they tour the library, such as when they learn there is no limit to the number of books they could check out.
“There’s always one second-grader who’s like, ‘Wait, what if I check out all of the books?’” Bergen said.
She said spending time at the library and reading in front of children can set an example to make them lifelong readers. Events like the summer reading program can motivate adults and kids alike to maintain good literacy skills.
“They do look at us to see, ‘How do we spend our time?’” Bergen said.
Outreach programs like presentations at schools or working with other organizations to distribute information about library programs also help spread the word about literacy and learning, Bergen said. She said helping people discover things this way is one of the most fun aspects of her job.
“Any time you have satisfied someone to where they’re like, ‘This is just what I needed,’ you get a little rush of good feels,” Bergen said.
