Meet New Red Carpet Librarian

Posted on by LaVoyce Ewing

Hello, my name is LaVoyce Ewing and I am so honored to be the new Red Carpet librarian.

A relatively short biography

I have been a librarian (officially with my degree) since 1992. But as my parents will tell you, I have always been a librarian. As a kindergartner when my parents asked me about a comment from my teacher I said “I can’t help it if I am friendly and helpful.” One of my earliest memories is reading with my mother under the big tree in our back yard. I can still visualize the children’s department at our branch of the Fort Worth Public Library.

After moving out in the county with only a small library, my parents would let me check books out with their cards because our library had a two book limit on each card and we only went into town on Saturdays. In high school I was allowed to work at our school library one hour a day because the rest of the time, except for the one day a week a librarian came to our school, it was closed. That experience helped me land an on-campus job in the education library at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas. I stubbornly became a high school English, speech and drama teacher in spite of my parents saying that I needed to become a librarian. After three years of teaching I finally grew up enough to admit they were right.

So off to library school at the University of North Texas in Denton. The first class I attended was like coming home. I loved it! Since then I have been

  • high school librarian
  • elementary school librarian
  • librarian for a sailing museum in Galveston, Texas
  • children’s librarian in the Dallas, Texas, public library system
  • director of a wonderful county library in Harrison, Arkansas
  • and now I am here at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

I am married to a wonderful man and we have two teenage daughters. They are active in sports, dance and of course school. I look forward to our adventures here at the library. Please feel free to let me know what sparks your curiosity!

Red Carpet Services

Red Carpet Services focuses on providing library materials to seniors in Topeka and Shawnee County. In the library, Red Carpet Services offer large print materials, pocket talkers and low vision assistive devices, and provides senior focused events. Red Carpet Services also deliver library materials to independent and assisted living facilities, senior apartment complexes, senior centers and homebound individuals.

As the Red Carpet librarian, LaVoyce plans senior events and helps ensure seniors in Shawnee County have access to the library materials they want. She has experience in school libraries, a museum library and county libraries in Texas and Arkansas. LaVoyce is ready to help spark your curiosity.