"What a Rich Career I've Had!"

She grew up in small towns in Vermont and (for a while) New York and lived most of her adolescent years in a 200-year-old house in Redding, Connecticut, the town where Mark Twain spent his final two years.

 

She earned an undergraduate degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, then taught third grade in Westport, Connecticut, a cosmopolitan bedroom community near New York City frequented by authors and poets.

 

Yep, Allison Williams was a New Englander through and through.

 

“I never expected to be south of the Mason-Dixon line,” she said one day recently as she took a break from the process of closing down shop in Collegiate’s Lower School Watt Library, where she has served full time for 31 years, most recently as head librarian. “Coming to Virginia was a real wake-up call. It was really different from Connecticut.

 

Allison’s move came in the late summer of 1969 when she married John Williams, a Richmonder to whom she was introduced by his sister Ginny, her college classmate. She’s lived here ever since.

She received her introduction to Collegiate through John’s son Russ, a 1980 graduate, she’s raised her family here, and she’s enjoyed a fulfilling career that began as a library volunteer when her children Meg ’88 and Max ’92 were in the Lower School.

 

“I realized that Collegiate in many ways was like the big public schools in Connecticut,” she said. “It did not have an isolated view of the world.”

 

Ginny Tilson, her predecessor, became a mentor.

 

“Meg was friends with Anne Watkins, Ginny’s mother,” Allison said. “Ginny and I were kindred spirits. We were book lovers. She was from the Philadelphia area. She had a northern sensibility. We had lots to talk about and bond with and joke about.

 

“I got the perspective of the library that she presented. She treated her library patrons – and I mean the students – as mature adults who knew what they wanted and could make decisions. She really respected their opinions. That’s the way she taught me to run a library.”

 

Allison’s career has included time in Collegiate’s long-demolished, bursting-at-the-seams library, then a cramped double-wide during a massive construction project, and, since 1999, the spacious, state-of-the-art facility which will serve the Lower School well into the future.

 

“It doesn’t seem like a lot of years,” Allison said, “but it is.”

 

Changes? Wow!

 

“Ginny (Tilson) put bar codes on every book the first summer we moved over to the electronic card catalogue,” she said. “She was a visionary, no doubt about it. Not afraid of technology.”

 

Nor is Allison. But the rapid advancements in technology are just one part of the metamorphosis of libraries.

 

Over the years, Allison, ever the learner, has traveled widely, visited libraries, studied, picked brains and educating herself about ways to make the Lower School library as efficient and positive an experience as possible.

 

She initiated the 2nd Grade Junior Books program and the 4th Grade Philosopher’s Club and brought a host of authors including Lois Lowery and Steven K. Smith to North Mooreland Road.

 

She earned a summer grant to travel the Fairy Tale Road in Germany to study the stories of the Brothers Grimm, visited Denmark on the 200th anniversary of the passing of Hans Christian Andersen, and participated in a library seminar in England under a grant from the Oxford (University) Academic Program.

 

And during a period when libraries have reduced their collections in favor of electronic databases, she’s overseen a proliferation of offerings from roughly 10,000 volumes to 34,000.

 

“This is a place where kids come and check out armloads of books, both picture books and chapter books,” Allison said. “That’s something that’s never changed in our library. Reading is one of the fun things we do and one of the fun things our students expect of us.”

 

That said …

 

“Librarians before were the conduit for all the information students would get,” she continued. “Research now is a collaborative effort. We collaborate with classroom teachers and the tech team in databases and the internet. Much of what students are looking at is online. Our role is to help students vet websites and separate fake news from authentic news. We take that responsibility very seriously.”

 

Our interview time was winding down. Allison had details to finalize, t’s to cross, i’s to dot, a one last Summer Quest program to implement before shoving off.

 

What’s been most enjoyable? I asked.

 

She smiled the smile of one who was thinking, Where do I begin?

 

“One of my favorite things I do is Junior Great Books,” she began. “As with my 4th Graders, I try to tackle stories in depth. We go into motivation of the characters. I do a unit on empathy at the end of the year which connects with their capstone project because empathy is something they’re encouraged to develop.

 

“When we talk about empathy in the library, we’re talking about characters in a book. The idea is for the student to put himself or herself in the mind and shoes of the character or their friend or anybody else. I tell them that this is getting them ready for Middle School where they’ll meet new people and it’ll be important to build connections and understand how people think and do what they do.”

 

Thirty-one years is a long time. What’s kept you here that long? I asked.

 

“The people,” she responded. “That’s what everybody says. One of the things I’ll really miss is lunch, sitting with different groups, hearing about not just their personal lives but what they’re doing in their classrooms and at their grade levels.

 

“I’ve been offered so many opportunities here at Collegiate from conferences to going to other countries to further my study and seeing what’s going on at other schools. What a rich career I’ve had! Just awesome.”

 -- Weldon Bradshaw