The Unlikely Librarian

“Sometimes I think my life has been guided by forces outside my knowledge,” states David Giff. He’s seated in the Lynn Taylor Library, a locus for students gathered around computers, tucked away in corners doing homework and giggling with friends, and, of course, browsing books.

Giff has no complaints as he reflects on how he came to HPA last school year and officially started his third career. He arrived in Waimea by way of Oregon, where he taught fourth and fifth grade for 16 years; one year at Caitlin Gabel where Jim Scott (Punahou’s current head of school) was headmaster and 15 years at the Oregon Episcopal School in Portland.

In his “previous” life, Giff designed electrical systems for hospitals, schools, and buildings, including Nike’s campus in Beaverton, Oregon and the very first Nike Town in Portland. He also was involved with the underground utilities design for much of Orange County “during its heyday.”

As he was enjoying his 15-year engineering career, life threw Giff a curve ball when he came home from work one day and found out his wife had signed him up to volunteer at his son’s elementary school. “She told me, ‘I signed you up to teach art,’ and I said, ‘Excuse me?’”

Giff fulfilled his obligation and taught a unit on Picasso to his son’s kindergarten class. That experience changed his thinking about teaching.

“I’ll never forget the first time I taught,” he recalls. “I literally came out of there walking on air; it was so exciting and fun!” Giff eventually ran the art literacy program at his son’s school and decided to apply to Lewis and Clark College, where he earned his master’s degree in elementary education.

As a teacher, Giff worked closely with the librarian at Oregon Episcopal School, who kept telling him, “You should be a librarian.” Giff was very happy with his teaching career and never thought about another career change.

But in one of life’s darker moments, Giff and his wife of 30 years divorced in 2005.

“I didn’t want to be sitting at home alone, so I tested the waters with the librarian program.”

Giff did weekend and online work through the Emporia State University’s Science of Library and Information Management Program and earned his master’s in library science in December 2008.

“Shifting from engineering to teaching was a paradigm shift intellectually for me,” he says. “A wonderful thing to do at age 38; just looking at the world in a very different way. The same is true with the library program, again, a shift.

“Most people think of libraries as a repository of books, but libraries are so much more than that,” explains Giff. “I’m seeing the library becoming more and more of a gathering place for the school.”

During this interview, the library was a beehive of activity, with students, faculty, and parents coming in and out, chatting with Giff, and asking for old newspapers, student art, books, and a host of other items. A few weeks earlier, the library was packed as students visited the school’s first (and very successful) book fair, which Giff organized, with assistance from the Friends of the Library.

“It’s a very interactive place,” observes Giff. “I’m pleased and honored that the kids do like to come in.”

With the proliferation of online resources, Giff sees the librarian’s role evolving into one of an information specialist, facilitating the acquisition of material—regardless of form—for all library users. He still prefers the librarian title, however.

Along with material acquisition and developing research skills, students also must learn how to be critical thinkers and be more discerning about information.

“In the past, the hard part was finding information. Today, the most difficult thing is determining what information is the information you want and whether it’s true,” he explains.

Giff teaches students how to use databases because, “Databases are authenticated; relying on Google is not going to serve our students well in their lifetime.” He cites an example of searching Google for MLK and coming up with what appears to be a legitimate site, MartinLutherKing.org. On the surface, it looks good, but as the user starts diving in, it becomes obvious—very quickly—that this is a white supremacist site owned by David Duke.

“It’s very easy for kids who are doing a report, especially the younger ones, to buy in to whatever they see,” says Giff. “We’re trying to teach them to distinguish between Google-ing or Wikipedias, which anyone can write, and authenticated, accurate sources; if you look at three sites, you might get three different sets of information. Our students need to have the skills to synthesize and decide, ‘ok, which is the truth.’ I think that’s critical.”

Hand-in-hand with today’s easy access to information is another important area for Giff—ethics, more specifically informational ethics— giving proper credit to research sources and avoiding plagiarism.

“It’s important for our students to understand a topic and use their own words; this is critical to the ethics of not using other peoples’ words and ideas as their own,” Giff says.

Gaming and the use of social networking sites also are burgeoning areas with the many online gaming and social networking sites such as Club Penguin, Northpole.com, Paradise Paintball 2.7, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

“There are pieces that are good and there are pieces that have to be monitored,” maintains Giff. “The challenge is introducing social networking to students in a positive and productive way; ultimately social networking will be a valid research tool. For example, my best friend is a researcher at Temple University. Sometimes, if I have something I think he knows I question him on FaceBook and he sends me information. That’s going to become more and more normal.

“The danger of social networking is, ‘Are the kids mature enough not to spend their time on negative activities, such as cyberbullying?’ That takes monitoring on our part as adults, it takes education on the children’s parts, and a little risk taking, knowing that kids are going to mess up a few times. That’s how they learn.”

At the Village Campus, teachers are incorporating blogs and other social networking sites in their classes, such as YouTube.

“We might all have our opinions about linear logic and the processes that we teach, but by the same token, if we’re astute educators, we’re paying attention to what the students are doing and we’re providing ways for them to utilize whatever means necessary to develop their thinking, to develop their collaborative work, and obviously, at times, producing traditional things, such as a report or a paper.”

As for gaming, Giff notes that, “We’re definitely feeling our way through it right now.” His own observations might counter the common perception about kids who play computer and game system games.

“Some people are concerned that gamers don’t have very many social skills, but to be honest, what I find is that the kids are sitting there and talking to each other; they’re watching each other. It’s actually quite a social, interactive thing,” he says. “Obviously, I watch the type of games they’re playing. All the kids know they have to be school-acceptable type games. There are some amazing things out there that are true networks for both social and academic skills.”

Despite the rapid changes in technology and the way people gather and use information, Giff is at ease with it all. “Part of the excitement about being in the libraries is the need to be up to date on all of this; we’re teaching the 21st century student. We have to do that.”

Of course, books—in their various forms—still are a big part of every library.

“If there is some way of summing up why I love my job, it’s definitely that I discovered a true love of children’s to young adult literature. It’s considered one of the most prolific today and they are great pieces of work; they are pieces of art.”

The outside forces that might be guiding Giff’s life, certainly have taken him to the right place—and not only in the literal sense because Giff loves diving, fishing, and surfing.

“Being a librarian is an extension of being a classroom teacher. I get to share new books with students, I get to open their eyes about research materials, and there are some great opportunities for me to connect and help these kids and see their possibilities. It really is a wonderful thing.”

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DAVID GIFF’S BOOK PICKS

• Lower School:

• Alex Rider Series, Anthony Horowitz
• The Black Lagoon Series, Mike Thaler & Jared Lee
• Captain Underpants Series, Dav Pilkey
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series, Jeff Kinney
• Flat Stanley Series, Jeff Brown & Macky Pamintuan
• Percy Jackson Series, Rick Riordan
• Ricky Ricotta Series, Dav Pilkey
• The Star Wars Collection, Various
• Warrior Series, Erin Hunter

• Middle School:

• The Boy Who Saved Baseball, John H. Ritter
• Carbon Diaries 2015, Saci Lloyd
• The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
• Invitation to the Game, Monica Hughes
• Pretty Gritty Rather Pretty City, Pleasant T. Rowland
• Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• The Twilight Saga, Stephenie Meyer
• The Uglies, Scott Westerfeld

[MKK Spring 2009-2010]