Posted March 5, 2018
By Blaire Taylor, CIC Communications graduate assistant
Dr. Lucy Santos Green’s enthusiasm for helping students started during her career
as a music teacher in the ‘90s. Students who were failing classes lost their eligibility
to participate in after-school choir activities — a rule that meant Green was often
left hanging when it came to choir competitions. Out of frustration, she began to
work with the school librarian to help her students get the academic support they
needed.
“What I noticed, again and again, was that the problem for students is the ability
to interpret information and process what they are reading,” Green says. “The more
I worked with the librarian, the more I felt that is where I would do the most good.”
It was a realization that launched her career in school librarianship.
Green is one of the newest faculty members in the School of Library and Information
Science. Her focus is in school librarianship, which requires a certification from
the state of South Carolina in addition to the MLIS degree. Green says most of what
she investigates involves designing different learning environments, the librarian
as an instructional designer, and instructional partnership between school librarians
and classroom teachers.
Last semester, she taught a children’s materials class that introduced graduate students
to books, magazines, databases and other sources appropriate for children in kindergarten
through fourth grade. This semester, she’s teaching a course on information technologies
in the school library program.
“Being a school librarian is the best job in the school.”
Dr. Lucy Santos Green
Green stresses that one of the primary jobs of a school librarian is to help students
develop a healthy information diet —essentially, making sure they seek out a variety
of reliable sources rather than limiting themselves to only those which confirm their
own pre-existing opinions or assumptions.
“With the internet, there is a lot of information thrown at a student,” Green says.
“What a librarian does, nowadays, is help the student learn how to pick out the good
information from the bad information. That is a skill level that is needed more than
ever.”
School librarians also teach students to find the information they need through a
learning process called inquiry, which helps them identify systems, look at the variables
within those systems, and solve complex problems.
“If we didn’t do that, a student would spend his or her entire time trying to figure
out those processes instead of completing the task,” Green says. “Their brain would
be overwhelmed. That’s why we are needed more than ever.”
Being new to the faculty hasn’t slowed her down. She’s already assisting SLIS with
an assessment of its MLIS curriculum. She hopes that her background and experience
will prove useful as she and other committee members examine how the school’s courses
can be modified to meet the needs of an ever-evolving industry.
Outside of the world of academics, Green still pursues her love for music. She is
a singer and on the board of directors as the treasurer for The Cecilia Ensemble,
a professional vocal ensemble based in Augusta, Georgia. She tours with the ensemble
in places such as the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Russia. She also occasionally
performs as a chorus member with Symphony Orchestra Augusta.
But preparing the next generation of school librarians remains one of the most meaningful
things Green does.
“Being a school librarian is the best job in the school,” Green says. “You get to
work with every adult, every child — you get to be involved in all the learning activities
and all the fun activities. You are the go-to person when someone has a random problem.
You are threaded throughout the life of the school, and it’s a fun way to be involved
in education.”

Blaire Taylor
Blaire Taylor is a first-year graduate communications student with an assistantship
in the web communications office of the college. She is working towards a career in
visual communications and public relations. Outside of school, she loves to travel
and explore.