CARIBOU, Maine — Erin Albers is a mother, a sheep farmer in Limestone and a woman who has lived from North Carolina to rural Alaska. But here at Caribou Public Library, the kids know her only as “Miss Erin.”
Since late 2016, Albers has been the children’s librarian at Caribou Public Library. The position puts her in charge of the library’s vast collection of children’s books. But, more importantly to her many little admirers, she gets to spend vast amounts of time with Caribou’s children.
Albers is not a career librarian, and her entry into the position was nearly by chance. She and her family had moved to Limestone to begin a farm she had long dreamt about. Albers wanted a place where land was inexpensive and water plentiful. She found exactly that in Aroostook County.
Knowing that the farm wouldn’t pay for itself, she took a job as a library aide in February 2015. A little more than a year later, she received a promotion to the position she now holds.
Albers initially was unsure if she would take well to the job. With the planning and creativity required to implement the library’s many programs, she thought, would she be able to keep up?
“I love being around kids,” Albers said. “But, at first, I didn’t didn’t think that I would be creative enough to come up with program ideas regularly.”
But with help from the internet, and some creative thinking of her own, she has grown accustomed and confident in her new position. And more importantly, she’s had a lot of fun teaching children of all ages, from pre-K to middle school.
At 3 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 30, Albers did another installment of her weekly storytime. Children watched as she read from a variety of books, from the modern and straightforward “Bruce’s Big Fun Day” to the classic, more challenging, “The Family Under the Bridge.”
“I like to give the kids a good variety of things from different genres,” Albers said. “So, not just simple picture things, but other books that are a little more challenging.”
Albers, who has long homeschooled her children, said she uses her experiences reading and teaching her own children in her work at the library. She can read “fun, playful stuff,” but the material can also reflect higher morals and other valuable lessons.
During her weekly storytime on Monday, she laughed with the children about the cartoonish grumpiness of a character in “Bruce’s Big Fun Day.” But, she also explained to one girl, in simple terms, what a “colloquialism” is.
When not at the library, Albers tends to more than 150 sheep at her farm in Limestone, along with being a hard-working mother to her children. Yet, she relishes the unique role she plays to many in Caribou.
“I think it’s helped me grow as an individual, being able to stretch out and do something that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with at first,” Albers said.
