by Stuti J., 15
For some people, growth is the building of friendships. For others, it lies in their skills or their job. Others find it in knowledge, the ever-expanding wealth of information and possibility. When talking to Sam Masler, associate librarian of the Junior Library, I discovered a woman who encourages growth, fosters it, and finds it for herself through her work with New Jersey youth.
For Sam, the goal of a library is not to sit still or to act as a database but rather to become what each person needs. She sees the library as a place “to hang out with some friends and just have a place to be that’s safe, that is kind of stigma-free.” In this environment, Sam believes the library plays “a pretty important role,” one that gives her fulfillment she had struggled to find elsewhere. Before working in the library, she explains, she had worked in corporate settings, building her career in operations management, managing a team, and handling scheduling and organization. Her work now is very different: it is very much focused on tasks and just general interaction with the public, which is an aspect of the job she says she is “definitely more what I enjoy doing.”
Sam manages the gardening and pollinating initiatives at Asbury. She assists in the growth of seasonal vegetables and teaches community-oriented classes. Her skills are not limited to nature, however. She has families who come in for literacy, education, and creative instruction, and she is passionate about spreading these opportunities to younger generations. She notes that the role of speaking to kids about their artistic endeavors has changed in the digital world, and that she hopes to preserve a love of traditional fine arts. “Anytime I can get a kid to be a little bit more analog is a fun thing to do,” she pointed out. When asked what the more difficult roles of her job were, Sam seemed to sit with the question for a minute.
“I don’t love the disciplinary aspect of it,” she confided. When someone engages in behavior that upsets or troubles others, their job is to speak up and begin a conversation. Disciplinary roles include mediating disagreements, preventing harm or disruptions, and, unfortunately, deciding when someone may need to take a break from the library setting. In her view, every person who has access to the library has the right to enjoy it, and her job is to enforce the rules that make this possible.
Sam was also visibly stressed about the difficulties her teenagers faced with reading. “We’ve seen a pretty big fall-off with the young adult section,” she observed. Around the age of 12, she noticed readers starting to ditch the library, often in favor of other clubs or activities. Because high school students are busy or physically distant from Asbury, they may not receive the same reading benefits as younger children do.
Sam’s passion for books shone through as she spoke. Her love of reading comes from a desire to learn and to experience. “I think anytime you can read a book that puts you in the feet of someone who has a completely different lived experience than you is really important!” she proclaims. One of her favorite books, Parable of the Sower, follows a community struggling to overcome a societal collapse. In it, the main character’s empathy and courage lead her to embrace the change she has experienced and lean on her faith. She encounters character after character, complex experience after complex experience, just as Sam does. For Sam, it reflects the world we are in right now, where we struggle to understand each other despite our concerns and fears.
Sam doesn’t believe in putting literature in a box. Having read many different genres, she feels it is important not to generalize the purpose of reading. “That’s where you get into the problem of judging things and judging what people are reading,” she insists. She enjoys comedies, biographies, and historical fiction, seeking anything that helps her understand another person’s mindset. She also fosters a love for David Sedaris. She feels he uses humor and observation to portray the realities of life and to expose his own experiences as a queer person in a conservative family. Literature allows her to connect with him and many others and understand their stories from their own perspectives.
Speaking to her left me reflecting on my own journey of growth and the lessons you can take from other people’s journeys. Every day, Sam experiences exactly what she hopes to find in her stories: interactions with people from different worlds, different lives, and different struggles, and with them she finds herself transformed and her mind expanded.
Bridge Ink 