A Folkloristic Approach to Storytelling Performances by a Contemporary Librarian

• Main Author: Middleswarth, Victoria
• Format: Others
• Published: TopSCHOLAR® 1977
• Subjects: Anthropology; Folklore; Library and Information Science; Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/2639; https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3630&context=theses

The subject of this study is Thelma Freeman, the children's librarian at the Bowling Green Public Library. Mrs. Freeman has worked for the library for fourteen years, beginning in 1964 as a bookmobile driver and later transferring into the library building as children's librarian. The story hour on which this study centers was instituted in 1967 when Mrs. Freeman became the Bowling Green Library's first children's librarian. Although she probably acquired her storytelling art through observation and adoption of her mother's storytelling technique and through experience with her children and grandchildren, Mrs. Freeman also took an undergraduate-level library science course on storytelling which may have influenced her thinking and her style.