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Have you ever felt that the wrong person got a particular job? It really can happen! I once had a particularly difficult colleague who, to be frank, was the bane of my life for a number of years. (She later took early retirement and is no longer involved in libraries, so there is little chance of her ever coming across this story). A former boss of mine told me how she happened to get the job in the first place - the boss in question was not involved in the process.
The interviews took place on the traditional British model. Four people were invited at the same time - they sat in a room and were called in for interview one at a time. Afterwards they waited for the decision to be made. Eventually, a clerk was sent through to call the winning candidate in to be offered the job. For some reason she called the wrong person, but the interview panel preferred to save face rather than admit that a mistake had been made, and offered the job to someone who was not the preferred candidate. The library and its customers had to suffer the consequences of that mistake for years!
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I'm not making this up. The librarian at my elementary school was named Ms. Book.
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..and I'm not making this up, either, but my high school librarian was
named Ms. Dull!!
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Here is the actual title of a recent book: "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Enhancing Self Esteem."
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[Recent preoccupations with having to close down a highly regarded company library - at least as far as its users were concerned - led to following collection of apt quotations]
"When people first close libraries then very soon they will close companies"
"If you think that knowledge is expensive, try ignorance"
"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. (No author identified here either.)
"Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself."
- I, Asimov. New York: Doubleday, 1994.
Isaac Asimov
"A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life."
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.--Barbara W.
Tuchman (The New Yorker, 1986)
Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.--Ray Bradbury
(Mojave Magazine)
And now for a fun but not exactly related quote:
Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky.
My pile of books are a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel
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[This appeared on the Sololib list in reply to a story about the portrayal of a librarian in the latest Star Wars film]
Yes very good. What I resented most about this was the sterotype of the librarian being an elderly women with grey hair. I was expecting glasses as well. However being a Jedi archivist perhaps she could have used the force to have a book hit Obi Won in the back of the head to teach him a lesson.
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[And so is this!]
I know there are debates raging about Star Wars II librarian Jocasta Nu and her negative response to Obi Wan Kenobi's request to locate a planet...
--There ARE librarians who say ..."It does not exist" if it is not in their library or if they can't find it...
--There are people who say if they did not find it on the internet that ..."It does not exist"
Most of us know there are MANY sources of information. If I can't find the answer after an extensive search, I still know...
it could exist (I can't prove it doesn't)
it could be found (Even though I did not find it)
someone may know (Even if I don't)
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Here is a slate of officers for the Ontario Association of Library Technicians.
Note the Secretary's name
Elected Positions:
President - Marina Dranitsaris - TALTA
Vice-President - Jill Anderson - Lohania
Treasurer - Vicky Lyhnam - Halton/Peel
Secretary - Nancy Drew - Halton/Peel
Membership - Diane Baksa - Halton/Peel
Public Relations - Stacy Goddard
Ex-Officio - Pam Casey
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[This is a "better late than never" story!]
Have just come across a very interesting article on a new library in Alexandria, Egypt. It takes the place of the library destroyed in 272 AD. Although the article contains a lot of technical engineering details, it is very interesting, and well worth a read.
The new library has many interesting features:
A hand-carved granite facade depicting all known form of writing
The world's largest reading room
State of the art air conditioning (to preserve the ancient manuscripts) and fire suppression system.
Full acess for the disabled to all public areas areas
Civil Engineering (ICE); ISSN 0965-089X
May 2002; Vol. 150(2) pp 59-65
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Being a native Texan, all of mine do have that certain twang to them. From over 25 years of dealing with patrons in public, academic and corporate libraries, a few of my favorites:
1) In a mid-size public library in west Texas, in the Business & Science Dept. in the basement of the building:
a) People coming down the stairs or the elevator usually walked up to the desk, brushing past our card catalog, to ask if I was the Business & Science Card Catalog. It took much restraint and tact to say, "No, please turn around and walk two paces behind you." Or something similar.
b) For the slightly bawdy take, when we answered the internal phone, we could shake up one of the ladies from the Circulation dept. by answering "BS department". The woman would always give a shocked gasp and hesitate for about 10 seconds before giving us the message.
c) One day a woman called in seeking information on a place in the Phillipine Islands where her grandson was to be stationed. She told me that no-one had been able to tell her anything about it. Using the world atlas at the desk, I told her which island it was on, the population, and whatever else was on the map before me. When I finished, she gushed, "You're just a fountain of information." Some people say I have been spouting ever since.
d) The sweet young (15-16 year old at the most) woman in short shorts and a brief but very full top swung her hips as she sashayed down the stairs and in a sweet Southern drawl asked if we had any books on Anatomy (Ah naa tow me). I took her back into the shelves and showed the books on Anatomy & Physiology. In a few minutes, she sneaked back up
to the desk with a very red face and asked if we had books on Male Anatomy. My female co-worker decided that she should help the young lady at this point.
e) The 20-something young man rushed up to the desk and asked breathlessly, "Under Texas law, if I catch my wife in bed with another man and shoot them both, can I get away with it?" I handed him the 5 volume Texas Penal Code to start reading and then asked how good a lawyer could he afford.
2) In the Research & Development Dept. of an aircraft battery manufacturer where my requests had to do with electrochemical engineering:
I got a breath of fresh air when the twenty year old telephone receptionist called up and asked, "In that poem about the man who killed the seagull, was the seagull a symbol of good luck or bad luck?" At last, my undergraduate degree in English was going to pay off. I explained that in Coleridge's "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" that the sea gull was a symbol of good luck until the mariner shot it and then when the sailors hung it around his neck it became a symbol of bad luck. What a wonderful job of extrapolating literature to this thirsty young mind! Then she burst my bubble as she explained that someone had given her a gold necklace with a seagull on it, and before she put it on, she wanted to be sure it wouldn't bring her bad luck. Oh well, back to the batteries.
[Before anyone else points this out, I have told the author of this piece that Coleridge's bird was an albatross, not a seagull!]
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Some years ago the Australian Library Journal had a small item about a reader request at a closed stack library in the Vatican. The call slip came back annotated that the item has been missing since 1694.
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In the United States, April 15 of each year is the day that tax returns are due in to the Internal Revenue Service. This is a very stressful day for most folks, but one year I had a call at the reference desk from a patron that was stressed way beyond the norm, it went something like this:
Librarian: "Information desk, how may I help you?"
Patron: "I need to know where to mail my taxes from?"
Now, I was perfectly equipped to answer the question of which address she should mail her taxes *to* (each state has a different address for tax returns). I never imagined anyone would want to know *from* where to mail them. The rest of the call went something like this:
Librarian: "Where to mail your taxes from?" "Hhhhmmm, the Post Office would be a good place"
Patron: "If I mail them tonight will they be postmarked today?"
Librarian: "Ma'am, I don't really know, you would have to ask the people at the Post Office"
Patron: "Which one?"
Librarian: "I would call the branch of the Post Office that is closest to you."
Patron: "Which one is that?"
I was trying to be helpful, really I was! I finally asked her where she lived and used a trusty city map to find the Post Office closest to her location and the telephone book to give her their phone number. I had a hard time waiting until the end of the call before indulging in a good laugh. I still entertain folks with this tale, it's one of those that is unforgettable.
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Just a reminder - please send contributions for future episodes to john@jwelford.fsnet.co.uk . Back issues can be found at http://www.oocities.org/edwyuk/