Originally from Tomsk, Russian Federation, I am fluent in English and Russian, and I also have basic knowledge of German and Slavic languages. I graduated from the University of Alberta Library and Information Studies School in 2005, and I accepted the position of Community Development Librarian at Red Deer Public Library in October 2006. Earlier this year, I became the Manager of Red Deer Public Library’s G.H. Dawe Branch.
When I started in my role as Community Development Librarian, I was responsible for identifying and leading library services, programs and collections for many segments of our population: seniors, immigrants, Aboriginal people and people with disabilities. One of the programs that I was running at the time was our Russian Story Time. At the time we were getting some books in multiple languages on loan from Alberta Multilingual Book Consortium, but we didn’t have much flexibility in terms of the types of materials that were coming to our library. Because of my background, I knew of a great publisher in Moscow who is passionate about publishing high-quality children’s books. I discussed this idea with our Children’s Librarian and she approved the purchase of a small collection of Russian picture and juvenile fiction books for our library.
