Jennifer Eckert, Northside ISD
Role: Library Support Specialist
District: Northside Independent School District
Location: San Antonio, TX, US
District enrollment: 95,000 students
As a Library Support Specialist at Northside ISD, Jennifer Eckert supports 117 school librarians, including serving as the district’s Destiny Manager. She’s been in this role for nine years, helping keep collections current, programs running smoothly, and librarians highly visible across the district.
In Her Own Words
What is your role, and how long have you been in it?
“I am a Library Support Specialist. I help support the 117 school librarians in Northside ISD in various ways, one of which is acting as the Destiny Manager for the district. This is my 9th year in this role.”
What’s your favorite part of being a librarian today?
“I love being able to visit all of our librarians and see the AMAZING things our librarians do every day. The highlight of my job is shouting them out on our social media and highlighting the work they do. Advocating for our librarians to district administrators is a big part of the job, and I love doing it because we have phenomenal librarians!”
How has your library program changed over the years?
“The biggest changes came with the COVID lockdown and more recently with the passage of state legislation that impacted school libraries. We are fortunate to have a very supportive school board and district administration that understands the value of our librarians. Of course, the lockdown opened new doors to virtual learning that are still being used in different ways even though we are back in person.”
What is the library’s most important responsibility at your district?
“The highest calling for our librarians is teaching. School librarians are certified teachers and have teaching experience. We strive to build collaborative partnerships across each campus with teachers so that we can support student learning. When librarians and classroom teachers sync up, the library stops being a destination for ‘checking out books’ and becomes a central hub for inquiry, critical thinking, and, of course, reading.”
What’s one thing about your library program that you’re especially proud of?
“We have several librarian-led district- or city-wide events each year. LibraryPalooza is a YA author fest run by some of our high school and middle school librarians. We have a high school poetry night called Fiesta of Words. There is an elementary and middle school Battle of the Books. The Great Book Giveaway grew out of COVID – we hand out thousands of bags of books during this giveaway event each year. We also have a reading fest for elementary students called Story Fest.
It’s an honor to help support all these events (mostly the boring stuff like PO’s and room reservations) and to see our librarians come together to put on such large-scale, impactful events that center reading and books.”
How Destiny Library Manager Helps
What is the biggest challenge that Destiny Library Manager helps you solve?
“Definitely collection development. Without reports that let us see which books are aging or not being used, it would be so much harder to properly weed and update the collection. Enriched reports are increasingly giving us access to analysis that helps in this effort as well.”
What Destiny Library Manager features do you and your staff/students enjoy most?
“Probably circulation is the most used and seems the most obvious. But it is literally putting books in kids’ hands, and what could be more joyful than that?”
Any “hidden gems” or unique ways that you use Destiny Library Manager?
“I think the new custom reports 2.0 feature is really cool, and I can’t wait to see what enhancements come out of that.”
Looking Ahead: AI and Learning from Peers
AI in libraries—are you more excited or apprehensive?
“Honestly, I’m more apprehensive. I see a lot of professional learning around cool ways to use it, but not a lot around how to teach ethical use of it to students.”
What would you most like to learn from fellow Destiny Library Manager users?
“Ways to use Destiny that I don’t know about! Useful reports, tips and tricks, all that fun stuff.”
Just for Fun
You’re throwing a party and can invite five fictional characters. Who’s on the list?
- Katniss Everdeen for archery lessons
- Hermione Granger so we can talk libraries
- Ignatius J. Reilly because he would provide some really entertaining and ridiculous critique of… well, everything
- The Pigeon (from Mo Willems’ books) because I just want to see him yell when I tell him he can’t do something
- Rhysand of the Night Court – self explanatory.
If your library had a theme song, what would it be?
“I think a theme song that would encompass our district-wide work as librarians in Northside would be ‘Lean on Me’ because we all try to help each other by sharing ideas and lessons and supporting one another. Plus, our librarians are helpers across their entire campus.”
