New Cataloguing Librarian at OCC Has Closed the Book on Stereotypes

If there is a stereotype of a librarian, it certainly wouldn’t fit Christine Ragenovich, Orange Coast College’s new cataloguing librarian.

Maybe it’s because she’s a bodybuilder, collects antiques, has trained and ridden show horses and has a passion for rare 18th-Century valentines.

But don’t tell Ragenovich that she doesn’t fit the image of a bookish librarian.

“I find it offensive when people think it’s a compliment that they don’t think of me as a librarian or that I don’t act like one,” said the UCLA and Occidental College graduate, who lives in Cypress. “There’s a lot of untruthful stereotypes.

“The outside world might think of me as being different, but librarians are no different than other women who are teachers, doctors or secretaries.”

Although the stereotype of a librarian hasn’t changed much over the years, the field and role of librarianship has certainly changed, she said.

“While you learn basic principles and a general overview of each area of librarianship, you have to specialize in order to survive and have a viable career,” she said.

The biggest change is computer technology.

“We don’t live in a cloistered world of books any more,” Ragenovich said. “There’s an information explosion, and most librarians have become computer literate.”

Ragenovich has sampled a number of adventures during her 20 years as a librarian, including a job in a rural school with 300 students in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee. She replaced a librarian who had been there 50 years.

“She didn’t let students check out books,” Ragenovich said of her predecessor. “They were required to read them in the library.”

But Ragenovich, changed that policy. And as their way of showing thanks, the students often left a king snake in her desk drawer.

“They thought that was hilarious,” she said.

During her 15 years in Tennessee, Ragenovich bought several show horses as a diversion and began traveling and showing them.

And she also decided to get into shape by working out with a couple of bodybuilders.

“I became hooked on the sport,” she said. She lifted weights two hours daily. When she was heavily involved in bodybuilding, some of her students affectionately dubbed her “Conan the Librarian.”

In her final years in Tennessee, Ragenovich opened a small antique shop, “which became a new passion in my life.”

Two years ago, after a broken marriage, Ragenovich headed to Orange County in a station wagon packed with her belongings, her daughter, her mother, who had flown east to assist in the move, and a dog and a cat. “We hit the Orange County line looking like the Beverly Hillbillies,” Ragenovich quipped. Still, it took only two weeks before she got a job at the Buena Park Library.

A few weeks ago, her longtime goal of working for a community college was realized when she got the job at Orange Coast. Students there are “such happy, fhealthy, fun kids,” she said. “They’re so appreciative when you assist them in the library.”

Acknowledgments--The National Council of Teachers of English has named Laguna Road School in the Fullerton School District as a 1989 Center of Excellence for its “outstanding English language arts program,” one of 130 schools nationwide to receive the award. “Through the program, we hope to call public attention to some of the many schools . . . in which English language arts are being taught in an exemplary manner,” said Faith Schullstrom of New York, a member of the awards selection committee.