Jennie Diaz is a librarian and former FriendShop volunteer currently approaching her four-year anniversary as the Adult Services Librarian at West Seattle Branch. Jennie recently met with Friends staff member Julia to talk about her work and the branch itself.
Jennie worked in the Tampa, Florida library system before running a private library in Tokyo, Japan; moving to Seattle, and eventually joining The Seattle Public Library system as a librarian.
Her passion for books and connecting community members to reads and resources shines through in any interaction.
“When I first visited Central Library, I thought it was amazing—the Brutalist architecture! But now I love working at an older branch. This is my dream.” West Seattle is a Carnegie Library that first opened in 1910. Jennie loves the skylight from the original building, which was covered up during World War II due to regulations on windows but later restored.
Since West Seattle is on the National Register of Historic Places, Jenny says, “We can’t do much to change the building, even adding bookshelves. We are running out of space for our books!”
Jennie is proud that West Seattle Branch has great community partners and events. The West Seattle Book Club sometimes uses the branch for its popular meetups.
“The Ladies Musical Club concerts are also wildly popular. Recently there were 90 registrants for a concert in our 70-person meeting room.” That meeting room, by the way, houses one of a handful of pianos in The Seattle Public Library system: a Steinway grand over a hundred years old. “People can sign up to reserve the meeting room and play piano as long as they have the room. One of our patrons learned to play while he was incarcerated, and now he has a piano in the community for a creative outlet.”
Coming up, Jennie is looking forward to the Poetry Potluck at West Seattle on May 4: “People can bring a poem to read out loud and share with the group.”
Thank you, Jennie, for your past service to the Friends as a volunteer, and for your dedication to community literacy as a librarian at West Seattle Branch!