Front-Line Librarianship: Life on the Job for Today's Librarians 008102729X, 9780081027295

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Front-Line Librarianship

Chandos Information Professional Series Series Editor: Ruth Rikowski (Email: [email protected]) Chandos’ new series of books is aimed at the busy information professional.They have been specially commissioned to provide the reader with an ­authoritative view of current thinking. They are designed to provide easy-to-read and (most importantly) practical coverage of topics that are of interest to librarians and other information professionals. If you would like a full listing of current and forthcoming titles, please visit www.chandospublishing.com. New authors: We are always pleased to receive ideas for new titles; if you would like to write a book for Chandos, please contact Dr. Glyn Jones on [email protected] or telephone +44 (0) 1865 843000.

Chandos Information Professional Series

Front-Line Librarianship Life on the Job for Today’s Librarians

Guy Robertson

Chandos Publishing is an imprint of Elsevier 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-08-102729-5 For information on all Chandos Publishing Press publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Glyn Jones Acquisition Editor: Glyn Jones Editorial Project Manager: Thomas Van Der Ploeg Production Project Manager: Debasish Ghosh Cover Designer: Mark Rogers Typeset by TNQ Technologies

Contents

Acknowledgmentsxv Introductionxvii

Section A By Popular Demand: Various Genres and Tastes

1

1 Reading in season: how the yearly cycle affects your choice of books 1.1 Cottage and campground 1.2 Dickensian alternatives 1.3 On the road 1.4 Innocent? 1.5 Jack comes back

3 3 4 5 6 6

2 Mystery madness: understanding the demand for crime fiction in libraries 2.1 Death by demand 2.2 What the professor wants 2.3 Selection tools 2.4 Death on order 2.5 Matters of taste

9 9 10 10 11 12

3 Reaching the outer limits: science fiction in the library 3.1 Hugo’s achievement 3.2 Monsters and young men 3.3 Atwood’s handmaid 3.4 Fear of Goths 3.5 Safeway neuromancer 3.6 Rowling power 3.7 Join the club

13 13 13 14 14 15 15 16

4 Life enjoyed: the appeal of biography collections 4.1 Why so popular? 4.2 Imagining the life 4.3 Paris Hilton and Co. 4.4 Living collections

17 17 18 19 20

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Contents

5 Travel collections: off the shelf, on the road 5.1 What guidebooks give 5.2 Atlases 5.3 Early travel literature 5.4 Enter the British 5.5 Not so painful 5.6 Rick does Europe

21 21 22 22 23 23 24

6 Blankets will not protect you! an overview of horror fiction 6.1 Older English horror 6.2 Victorian shivers 6.3 American classic 6.4 King of the genre

25 25 26 27 28

7 Making the Penguins fly: classics collections in public libraries 7.1 Broad interests 7.2 Life without Freud 7.3 Tapestry of wisdom 7.4 Questions and decisions 7.5 The politics of shelving

29 29 30 31 32 32

8 First love, printed and bound 8.1 Going Hobbit 8.2 Magic Kingdom 8.3 You can be a librarian 8.4 Personal passion in the workplace 8.5 Reading for eternity

35 35 36 37 38 39

Section B Social Studies

41

9 Alternative librarianship: voices from the field

43

10 Life at the cellular level: dealing with wireless communications in libraries 10.1 Kids and parents 10.2 A cell-free zone

47 47 48

11 Moonlight sonata: librarians discuss their work after work 11.1 Debt management and fitness 11.2 The rotten nest egg 11.3 Food for thought 11.4 Beethoven for adult amateurs 11.5 Getting sweaty for fun and profit

51 51 52 52 53 53

Contents

vii

12 Manual matters: developing successful guidelines and losing priceless boredom

55

13 Keeping up appearances: looking like a librarian in an age of paranoia 13.1 The customs of the country 13.2 Helpful dandruff 13.3 Librarians, beards, etc. 13.4 Star power

59 59 60 61 61

14 Surviving hard times: how libraries can deal with recessions 63 14.1 Balance required 63 14.2 ERM 64 14.3 More management and why not 64 14.4 If it ain’t broke…65 14.5 Boxes of bargains 65 14.6 What we fear most 66 14.7 Recovery, eventually 66 15 What goes down: library experiences of the urban poor 15.1 Sleeping in the streets 15.2 A couple of users 15.3 A former colleague 15.4 What’s in the bag

67 67 68 69 70

16 Keynoting: an honest overview 16.1 The gang’s all here 16.2 The winning smile 16.3 For the camera 16.4 Fly for cover 16.5 Please drop in 16.6 Moment of truth

71 71 72 72 73 74 74

17 Quote us freely: British librarians speak out about recent cutbacks 17.1 Cooking with new technology 17.2 Grime 17.3 The rebellious spirit 17.4 Caveat: maggie 17.5 Angry students 17.6 Perseverance 17.7 Damn the pigeons

75 75 76 77 77 78 79 79

18 For your eyes only: love and disorder in our domestic libraries 18.1 The lure of the sofa 18.2 Serendipity

81 81 82

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18.3 Swedish equipment 18.4 He came in through the bedroom window 18.5 Neurosis

82 83 84

19 Who’s next door? Living with your library’s neighbors 19.1 Something in the air 19.2 Good woman 19.3 Unhappy hour 19.4 Banking on cooperation 19.5 The pain of divorce, the pleasures of chai

87 87 88 89 90 91

20 Worldwide weeding: when books no longer furnish a room 20.1 Manner of disposal 20.2 More fiction than ever 20.3 Dinosaurs choose Proust 20.4 New uses for space 20.5 Back to 007

93 93 94 95 96 96

21 What care ye for raiment? Dress codes and styles in our libraries 99 21.1 Slob alert 99 21.2 First the shirts, and then …100 21.3 Hair off the spectrum 100 21.4 High-altitude footwear 101 21.5 Footwear, cont 102 21.6 Watch for icicles 102 22 Circulation counter service in public and academic libraries: dealing face-to-face with patrons 22.1 Bronzino 22.2 Put on hold 22.3 In the wet 22.4 A matter of qualifications 22.5 Security 22.6 The case of the missing molars, cont.

105 105 106 107 107 108 109

Section C Visiting the Library: People and Programs

111

23 Gold, Frankincense, and Murder: the wise bookseller’s guide to corporate gifts

113

24 “It’s not just the books!” Wheelchair patrons speak out 24.1 Safe spots 24.2 Library attitudes 24.3 Independence on wheels

117 117 118 119

Contents





24.4 When to ignore the rules 24.5 Individual respect

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119 120

25 What’s cooking at your library: a special event 25.1 Getting started 25.2 Cook it and they will come 25.3 Finding a presenter 25.4 Setting a date 25.5 Getting the word out 25.6 Signing up 25.7 Final preparations 25.8 Signage 25.9 Day of reckoning 25.10 Troubleshooting 25.11 A savory conclusion

121 121 121 122 122 122 123 123 123 124 124 125

26 Abroad in your library: what tourists want, what they get

127

27 Here’s looking at you, kid: what special visitors want when they tour your library 27.1 The vision 27.2 Location, location 27.3 On the outside 27.4 Staff workspace 27.5 For the public 27.6 Shelving 27.7 Your influence

131 131 132 132 132 133 133 134

28 Discover your inner elf: Christmas programs for public libraries 28.1 Deck the hall 28.2 Scrooge, etc. 28.3 Annually, or else 28.4 Facilities management

135 135 136 137 137

29 Boo! Halloween in our libraries 29.1 Plastic bats 29.2 Storytime 29.3 Adult fiction 29.4 Costumes will be worn 29.5 Ghoulish Donald 29.6 Off the wall

139 139 140 141 142 142 143

30 Confessions of a library Santa

145

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31 November memories: librarians and patrons observe Remembrance Day 31.1 Blazers and berets 31.2 Photos and their contexts 31.3 Not on display 31.4 Year-round circulation 31.5 Accommodating veterans 31.6 Snipers

149 149 150 151 151 152 152

32 Gone astray: an exploration of library lost-and-founds 32.1 Contents of the drawer 32.2 The wandering wallet 32.3 Lottery winner 32.4 Emotional response 32.5 For the love of a plastic duck 32.6 Police matters

153 153 154 154 155 155 156

33 Cat care programs in public libraries: providing essential information to owners 33.1 One reason why 33.2 Nutrition 33.3 The unhappy question 33.4 On the prowl 33.5 Q & Q & Q & A 33.6 Fame

157 157 158 159 160 160 161

34 Serving the solitary: librarians demonstrate “in-reach” 34.1 Various reasons 34.2 Excruciating 34.3 In-reach defined 34.4 A common need 34.5 A common service experience 34.6 Shiny brogues

163 163 164 164 165 166 166

Section D Senior Moments

169

35 Seniors: what they want and what they get in Canada’s public libraries

171

36 Leisure reading for seniors: sorting out tastes and topics 36.1 Solve for X 36.2 TV tie-ins 36.3 Club talk 36.4 Romance and children’s treasures 36.5 Other formats

175 175 176 176 177 177

Contents

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37 Finance, felines, and figuring It all out: utilitarian reading for seniors 37.1 Seniors need books and more 37.2 A matter of health 37.3 Ending up without fear 37.4 Life is a garden 37.5 Pet care 37.6 Financial concerns 37.7 Life goes on

179 179 180 180 180 181 181 182

38 Tis the season: christmas programs for seniors 38.1 Aptly nicknamed 38.2 Storytime 38.3 By oneself 38.4 Perfect for table or tree 38.5 Limited seating

183 183 184 185 185 186

39 It’s never too late to Tolstoy: adventures of a seniors’ reading club 39.1 Blithe spirits 39.2 What it takes 39.3 Convoy formation 39.4 Bathtub risk 39.5 Biblical visuals

187 188 188 189 190 190

Section E Library Technicians

193

40 Training techs: preparing library technicians for an evolving job market

195

41 File under tango: lifelong learning for library technicians 41.1 Love and technology 41.2 Cerebral workout 41.3 Do you copy? 41.4 First and last tango in tech services 41.5 Reference greens and browns

199 199 200 200 201 201

Section F For the Record 42 Paper crazy no more: records management for library chaos junkies 42.1 Step one: getting past denial 42.2 Step two: assigning records management responsibilities 42.3 Step three: compiling the records inventory 42.4 Step four: retention scheduling

203 205 205 206 206 207

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42.5 Step five: establishing confidentiality levels and organizing document destruction 42.6 Step six: preventing data loss 42.7 Step seven: developing the library archives 42.8 Step eight: sustaining the records management process 42.9 Sources: the author’s choice

208 208 209 209 210

43 CIA for beginners: records management training for library technicians

211

44 Records management for office managers: a special librarian’s clip ‘N share 44.1 A list of what you have 44.2 What you keep, what you shred 44.3 Archival treasures 44.4 Storage here, storage there 44.5 Available expertise

215 216 216 217 217 217

Section G Rare Books and Other Rubbish

219

45 Gold in the garbage: making the most from the treasure in your trash 45.1 Nobody bought it 45.2 An expert eye 45.3 A win–win scenario

221 221 222 223

46 One for the books: lectures on collecting from coast to coast 46.1 The bard’s Rotarians 46.2 Tribes 46.3 High spots, high prices 46.4 Mississauga romantic 46.5 Restoration costs 46.6 Biblio-survival

225 225 226 226 227 227 228

Section H English Hours

229

47 Librarian’s London: visiting the city of readers

231

48 Under the bridge with Margaret and Charles: browsing in London’s South Bank Book Market

235

49 Spirited business: styles of bookselling in Piccadilly 49.1 Park your steed outside 49.2 Grave matters of privacy

239 239 240

Contents



49.3 Aboveground marketing and sales 49.4 Parenting 49.5 The sound of popping corks

xiii

240 241 241

50 Here be dragons: continuing education in library history 50.1 On the road 50.2 Age is relative 50.3 Calfskin cartography 50.4 Medieval zoology 50.5 Textual meditation 50.6 Special patrons

243 243 244 244 245 245 246

51 Finding Mr. Perfect: WH Smith in Paddington Station 51.1 Impulse 51.2 Oxford men 51.3 Diverting material 51.4 One-stop shopping 51.5 Profit from reading

247 247 248 248 249 249

52 Visiting Oxford: lifelong memories from one day on the move

251

53 Perfect for your wall or shelf: shopping at London’s popular tourist attractions 53.1 Office decoration made easy 53.2 The real thing 53.3 A matter of taste 53.4 Ophelia 53.5 Making the connection 53.6 Rosetta Stone 53.7 The Abbey 53.8 The grave matter of lunch

257 257 258 258 259 259 260 260 261

Section I Corporate concerns

263

54 Confidentiality at risk: how the info-thief threatens your corporate information

265

55 E-pest alert

269

56 Data on the road: keeping portable IT safe while you travel

273

Index277

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Acknowledgments

Memory is imperfect. Undoubtedly here I neglect to mention colleagues, former students, friends, and acquaintances who have assisted me in the past 20 years to produce the material in this book. Among these people are many who provided me with valuable information during interviews, in correspondence, and through informal discussions. Let me begin with an apology to whose names I do not include in what follows. They can rest assured that I value their contributions nonetheless. Happily I can remember—and in many cases, I shall never forget—the efforts on my behalf by those who have edited my magazine writing and saved my reputation, at least temporarily: Liz Morton, Mary J. Moore, Peter Wilson, the indefatigable Judy Green, Rachel Hertz Cobb, Michael Steeler, Sally Praskey, Craig Harris, Barbara Aarsteinsen, Kim Laudrum, Doug Little, and Jim Duggleby. Graphic designer Beverly Bard made valiant efforts to sort out the tangle of my drafts and manuscripts, often at the last minute before deadline. At Langara College, I received support and encouragement from Ann Calla, Jacqueline Bradshaw, Susan Burdak, Carol Elder, Diane Thompson, Ryan Vernon, Serenia Tam, Moira Gookstetter, Linda Holmes, Martin Gerson, Gaylene Wren, and Jim Bowers. At the Justice Institute of British Columbia, Sarah Wareing and Darren Blackburn provided opportunities for me to conduct research and collect valuable data. At TMC IT and Telecom Consulting Inc., Ellen Koskinen-Dodgson and Peter Aggus provided essential advice and answered my questions regarding different technological developments and risks. The Elsevier Chandos team deserves credit for many things, but, above all, their patience. In Oxford, George Knott, Harriet Clayton, and Glyn Jones offered much helpful advice. Thomas Van Der Ploeg, my current editor in Cambridge, deserves an OBE for adjusting deadlines, tolerating numerous revisions, and obtaining the final manuscript despite my unceasing requests for more time, information, and reassurance. I cannot have written, revised, and compiled the contents of this book without the assistance that I have received from friends and colleagues, including but not limited to the following: Ted Baker, Peter Broomhall, Virginia Carpio, Neal Chan, Sarah O. Chan, John Livingstone Clark, Arthur Cohen, Heather Forbes, Bob Gignac, David Goldie, Drew Lane and Diane Guinn, Hilary Hannigan, Amanda and Peter Hazelwood, Allen Higbee, Richard Hopkins, Rhonda Johnson, Shirley Kano, Steve Koerner, Jeanny Louie, Melany Lund, Rob Makinson, Lee and Teri Nicholas, Kelsey Ockert, Maureen Phillips, Stephen Porsche, the late Bud Mills, the late Mahmoud Manzalaoui, David Mitchell, Teresa Murphy, Mike Rinneard,

xvi

Acknowledgments

Judith Saltman, the late Dave Smith, Marguerite Stevenson, David Regher, the late Roy Stokes, Judy Thompson, Cassandra Wang, Michael and Barbara Weston, and the late Anne Yandle. As ever, I am grateful to Deborah Johnson, the late Mary P. Robertson, Christopher and Christine Robertson, Amanda Robertson, and Geoff Sloan for their hospitality, proofreading, and encouragement. I thank all who have contributed to my book. Any errors are my own.

Introduction

This book includes a selection of my articles that first appeared in Feliciter, a publication of the Canadian Library Association, between 1998 and 2014. To enrich the mix, I have added a small number of my contributions to Canadian Bookseller and Canadian Insurance. While I have revised several of the articles, most remain in their original form. One appears in print for the first time. Modern library and information science periodicals often contain a mix of material that covers topics in administration, IT and technical services, publishing, the politics of the information professions, biography, and miscellaneous issues arising from current events. For the past two decades, my role as a feature writer for these periodicals has been to contribute articles that address matters of interest to a wide readership while relying on an informal and occasionally light-hearted approach. I do not claim to have analyzed matters exhaustively. Periodical editors have often been forced to remind me of space limitations and reduced word counts and warned me that they have no room for another sidebar of recommended titles, or a paragraph on the travel writing of Colin Thubron, or a list of the best bookshops in Manchester and York. Hence, the contents of this book remain necessarily incomplete. Had I been given more time and opportunity, I might have added a lot more to the original version of every article. Some of my topics deserve book-length treatments. Space limitations apply to books as well as periodicals. I considered freeing up space by removing the English travel material, but colleagues in American academic libraries urged me not to do so, because research in England remains a kind of front-line work for many academic librarians and related information professionals. (Besides, as one anglophile college librarian assured me, if research in the United Kingdom is not front-line work for people like her, it should be.) The definition of front line will vary from job to job in different libraries. I say little about the essential work done in departments that occupy back rooms or areas removed from interaction with patrons. My bias here is obvious. While I recognize the essential need for back-room activities including those that take place in technical services areas, I have spent much of my career working face-to-face with patrons. I have served them as a reference librarian and the deliverer of various adult programs. As a disaster planner, I have designed library emergency management plans that anticipate the behavior of people in threatening circumstances and trained librarians to ensure patron safety. I have organized evacuation drills and, on a couple of occasions, led actual building evacuations. (I have discussed aspects of my role as a planner and trainer in two previous books—Disaster Planning for Libraries: Process and Guidelines and Robertson on Library Security and Disaster Planning.) My front line has been in the public areas of libraries, but I hope that the contents of this book will appeal to people who work in other departments as well.

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Introduction

Some readers might have misgivings about the relevance of my Canadian focus. Working in Western Canada, I have been inclined to consider topics that interest (or as a former editor used to say, grab) Canadian librarians. But Canada respects and upholds the traditions and main practices of Anglo-American librarianship, and librarians in the United States and throughout the Commonwealth should not find my observations and advice to be inappropriate with regard to their own operations. Outside the English-speaking world, librarians in China have taken an interest in the articles on seniors, on records management, and on different genres. In South America, librarians and archivists have used articles that appear under the heading Social Studies for training purposes. African librarians with whom I correspond have used the articles that describe adult programs to develop programs for their own libraries. What applies to libraries in Vancouver and Toronto can also apply mutatis mutandis to libraries across the globe. Many of the articles have been used for teaching purposes in courses that introduce students in library schools, iSchools, and library and archival technician programs to their professions and have been cited in textbooks, theses, government reports, and online bibliographies. I am delighted to learn that my work has attracted readers beyond its original readership. It is unlikely that every student has taken pleasure in what I have written; I daresay that, like me when I was a student in the 1980s, some have found certain assigned reading dull and unrewarding. I can only hope that the majority of students have enjoyed any of my articles that have appeared on their reading lists. Eventually—I trust not too soon—this book will seem dated. That is the fate of most works of librarianship and information science. However, a colleague in New England has suggested that many of the articles have historical and “ethnographic” value, and that readers, a century from now, might consider the comments of librarians whom I have quoted to be revealing: verbal artifacts from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. As well, there might be an interest in the professional library culture of this era. At present, students often wonder what it felt like to work in libraries where the rule of silence prevailed, and reference and readers advisory services often involved the use of a card catalogue rather than online resources. Students in 2100 might be curious about infocentres—once called libraries—that did not rely on robotic attendants who can communicate in 200 languages and info-drones that provide comprehensive infocentre services to shut-in patrons and remote communities. Those students might enjoy this book as a voice from the past. Sadly, I shall not be around to answer their questions. Guy Robertson Vancouver, Canada

Section A By Popular Demand: Various Genres and Tastes

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Reading in season: how the yearly cycle affects your choice of books 

1

While people have different reading tastes, their choice of books is influenced by seasonal changes. Originally this essay was addressed to a general audience, but librarians and other informational professionals will recognize their patrons’ seasonally shifting reading preferences. Here’s cash. Go to any bookshop and buy whatever you like. Here are borrower cards from every library in your region. Visit any branch and browse until you find an assortment of books that you truly want to read. Choose nothing useful or related to your profession. Choose only those books that you will read for pure pleasure, on the beach or by the fire or in the most comfortable of beds. Don’t concern yourself with the opinions of critics, experts, or family members who claim to know what’s best for you. Be clear about your heart’s desire. Be firm. Be selfish. What books will you take from the shelves? Enter the publishers’ statisticians, who provide an inventory of “factors influencing personal choice”: your age, level of education, income, entertainment preferences, childhood influences, and hat size. Behold an array of formulae, charts, graphs, PowerPoint presentations, and heavily footnoted guesstimates. Conclusion: there is a strong likelihood that the first book that you will select is…an Ambler thriller. Or a biography of Zeppo Marx. Or perhaps The Collected Sonnets of Donald Rumsfeld. The possibilities are infinite. The statisticians, however, are probably incorrect. Their analytical model is flawed, owing to a serious omission. They failed to look out the window. Despite their calculations, they didn’t consider a factor that farmers, sailors, and lovers have depended on for millennia: what the natty person on the Weather Channel calls the Seasonal Effect.

1.1  Cottage and campground Each season inspires us to dress in particular styles, eat different foods, travel or stay home, seek love or remain chaste, exercise vigorously in the sunshine, or hibernate in front of televised hockey. As many booksellers and librarians have observed, seasonal change leads to a shift in our leisure reading patterns. We may study technical texts and computer manuals year-round: such are the demands of our jobs. But what we read for entertainment varies as the leaves clog our drains or the buds sprout in our gardens. When summer gives us long days and more free time—or a greater determination to avoid work—we carry certain kinds of novels and biographies to the cottage and campground and leave behind others more appropriate to the fall or winter. Each reader’s seasonal selection pattern is unique. It’s unlikely that two readers will exhibit exactly the same pattern, although they might read a number of the same books at the same time of year. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00001-3 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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For example, last fall you read the latest horror—or horror novel—by Stephen King. So did everybody else. Perhaps you read the latest surprise bestseller as well: a history of time, or a treatise on better punctuation, or the adventures of a veterinary orthodontist. You might have dipped into the latest fashionable cookbook and devoured the memoirs of various starlets, politicos, and hacks. You might have opened a daunting antique such as Richardson’s Clarissa, and closed it quickly. So far everyone’s with you. But then you allow the season to dominate your reading selection. As you have done every October for decades, you read the ghost stories of M.R. James, Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and the most gruesome true crime title you can find, something with a pathology report in every chapter and lots of black-and-white mortuary photos. Finally, for reasons that only you can describe or confess to, you reread all of Beatrix Potter. When the fall colors start to attract tourists, you can’t resist Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. This is, in fact, your deepest secret, something that you as one of North America’s most powerful bankers or software developers or plasma physicists are loath to admit to your colleagues and friends. As your children start designing their Halloween costumes, you can’t deny yourself another long session with the well-dressed and well-fed animals whose adventures Mrs. Potter described a century ago. It might be nothing more than that hint of fall in the air, that mixture of mustiness and burning leaves, that drives you to open that secret shelf in your study, and there they sit, all 23 slender Potter volumes. For you, fall wouldn’t be complete without them.

1.2  Dickensian alternatives Your winter reading consists of books that you receive for Christmas, or that people pass on to you for holiday consumption. The pile on your bedside table contains a mixture of blessings and embarrassments. Here’s the latest effort by Britain’s brightest novelist, another cookbook by a TV chef, and a coffee table folio on gardening in Nunavut. But what you really want is Victorian fiction. Snowbound and stuffed with rich food, you look for that dog-eared Penguin edition of The Old Curiosity Shop or Little Dorrit. You’re no longer keen on Dickens’s Christmas Books, having read them during numerous Decembers past; but his fatter novels beckon at this time of year. Possibly the darkness of Dickensian settings matches that which prevails during winter nights. Perhaps your family celebrations attract a plethora of odd persons—mostly in-laws—who remind you of Dickens’s more extraordinary characters. You might pick up other 19th-century titles. Hawthorne’s tales, Poe’s short stories, and the works of the young Henry James are obvious choices; anything by the unjustly neglected William Dean Howells might be suitable to the season as well. Such classics deserve your full attention, but school’s out, and no one will chastise you for dozing off while you struggle with a particularly convoluted patch of Jamesian syntax. Books from this era are like heavy blankets, in that they keep out the cold and allow you to

Reading in season: how the yearly cycle affects your choice of books

5

relax. Under these circumstances, it’s no surprise that you drift off every now and then. As long as your dreams are free from Quilp and the Red Death, you can rest easy. Inevitably the weight of those fictional blankets begins to oppress you, and you need something light. In spring, publishers produce books that inspire us to shake off our winter lethargy and become active. Booksellers offer volumes on household improvement, exercise manuals that show you how to shrink all or part of yourself, and overpriced softcovers concerning the best ways to deal with teenagers, pets, elderly parents, and ill-natured colleagues. As soon as you’ve had your fill of such things, you return to what you really want at this time of year: travel literature.

1.3  On the road You’ve spent too much time at home lately, or on the road to places that you know too well. The red-eye flight to Toronto for a conference or to Des Moines for a meeting with your company’s regional vice president hardly qualifies as true travel, or travel as a form of adventure. What you want are the classics of the genre, which you can reread regularly without their going stale: Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Gavin Young’s Slow Boats to China, and Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana. And where is your copy of Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches? You’ve intended to reread it for years, but you cannot find it. That’s because you’ve loaned it to a friend. Actually you’ve lost several copies this way. Maclean’s book is one of the most exciting ever written, and, generous soul that you are, you are willing to share that excitement. Unfortunately your friends are not as scrupulous as you about returning books, and because they agree with you about Maclean, they pass on your copies of Eastern Approaches to other friends. Come to think of it, didn’t you borrow the first copy of Eastern Approaches that you read from your brother-in-law? You didn’t return it to him, did you? Perhaps that’s why he’s so odd and out-of-sorts when you see him at Christmas. Of course you can rely on the public library for a copy, or can you? Maclean’s work seems to go missing more often than other travel books; either that or it circulates so often that it falls to bits, and the librarians can’t replace it quickly enough. In spring, the travel section of most libraries takes a beating through heavy use. If you can’t find Eastern Approaches, you might still be able to borrow something by Paul William Roberts, whose adventures in Egypt, Iraq, and India are as entertaining as they are polemical and informative. Shelved in either the fiction or travel section, they are sure to take you on the road to enchanting places. Of course there are numerous other travel books to brighten your springtime reading, and many are by British authors. Why? Because among other things the British Empire gave rise to social anthropology, of which travel literature is an offspring. (Snobbish anthropologists regard it as a bastard child, possibly owing to jealousy. Newby, Byron, and their kind write good prose, whereas most academic anthropologists…don’t.)

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1.4  Innocent? Spring gives way to summer, and your reading pattern makes another adjustment. Now the publishers provide you with the light, bright, and trite—beach reading at its best, or worst. Here are the latest thrillers and mysteries, books about conspiracies, magical codes, and the Holy Grail, which is buried under the Starbucks near King’s Cross Station in London. Here are scandalous paperback biographies of financiers, crooners, and American presidents, all of whom deny everything and swear that they’re innocent. Who cares? There’s no presumption of innocence at the beach or on the front deck at the cottage. You want to believe that that man or woman was a crook, liar, or fool, and now you can enjoy the dirt in print. Summer is a time for exposés, whether they’re accurate or not. But a balanced reading diet demands more than junk journalism. By mid-July you start to feel guilty about the superficiality of your current tastes, and you look around for something deeper and more demanding. That’s when you delve into a history of opera, or a study of Early Christian art, or the architecture of ancient Memphis. Many people read Plato and Aristotle seriously for the first time during their summer holidays; others try to come to grips with modern thinkers. But hot weather does not conduce to mental clarity, and often readers find themselves daydreaming over Wittgenstein or snoring over Rorty. Still, you’re proud of your attempts to understand them, even though you’ll forget everything they wrote by the time the leaves start changing color and the schools reopen for another academic year.

1.5  Jack comes back And then it’s fall again, and you finish another Stephen King title so that you can return to M.R. James, or Hogg, or the new biography of Jack the Ripper. The cycle repeats itself, whether you realize it or not. You might have divided your books into warm and cold weather reading, or books that you read on the plane versus those that you carry in your briefcase to consume over lunch in the office cafeteria. You might have certain titles that you reserve for bedtime, although you’ll have to admit that you never seem to finish most of them. They can sit by your bed for years. Eventually they disappear beneath layers of half-read magazines and newspapers, a photo of your daughter’s softball team, a digital clock that stopped working in 1987, and an empty Kleenex box left over from your last cold. You might dig out those books in a decade or so and feel delighted to see them again, but unless they’re appropriate to your seasonal cycle, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever finish them. Why do the seasons affect our reading? In part, because we need them to do so. We couldn’t survive without regular patterns in our lives. The signal characteristic of these patterns is repetition. The most basic form is repetition is your heartbeat, which you take for granted until it becomes irregular or threatens to stop altogether. Examples of other essential repetitions include paychecks, meals, certain holidays, and family traditions. Lose these, and your life can be seriously disrupted. A major part

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of your memory—or your ability to remember events—depends on repetition. And as your memory is the foundation of your personal identity, you can assume that your existence as an individual depends on patterns, one of the most important of which is seasonal. Thus it is no surprise that the seasons affect our reading preferences, or that their influence is so strong. The cash and library cards on offer give you a small amount of freedom, although the books that you select are partially predetermined. Fortunately that is unlikely to spoil the pleasure that you derive from an author who is not only a regular visitor from the shelves but also an old friend. (2005)

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Mystery madness: understanding the demand for crime fiction in libraries

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Lurking in the shadows of your fiction section are hundreds of killers, hustlers, and thieves. They sneak across circulation desks and escape in patrons’ bags and briefcases. Recently your Director met one that followed her home and stretched her out on a sofa for an entire weekend. They show no mercy to your acquisitions budget; every year their prices increase. We call them crime novels, detective fiction, mysteries, and police procedurals. Almost always they include a villain, gang, or crooked organization. Traditionally their victim is dead on the floor with a knife in the chest or a bullet in the head. Lately, villains have become more vicious and eccentric than before; they are serial killers, torturers, and lunatics. Their victims suffer horribly, ending up dismembered and decomposing in a storage locker or garage, or the trunk of a luxury sedan; all the more fascinating for the forensic investigator, a young woman who finds herself in the clutches of the murderer in the penultimate chapter. These days the good guy is often less than heroic. He might be a drunk. His marriage has failed, or his girlfriend is impatient with him because he spends too much time chasing hacksaw-wielding monsters all over London or New York or any other large city. Be he a police officer, private detective, or ordinary citizen pursuing an investigation, a 21st-century good guy is often a sympathetic loser. You like him because he hurts, and you cheer him on because like you, he’s imperfect. The same is true for female good guys, although frequently their struggle is not only against the villains but also the misogynistic male bureaucrat, the sexist bully who implies that a woman can’t handle a tough case. No matter how intelligent she is, no matter how experienced and technically qualified she is to hunt down Miami’s latest axe murderer, there’s a pudgy police commissioner who enjoys telling her that little ladies should stay at home with the kids.

2.1  Death by demand There are myriad permutations and combinations of these characters and the plots that ensnare them differ in countless ways. They ensnare us, too. Over the past decade, crime fiction collections in North American public libraries have grown much larger, doubling in size at many branches. “There’s a constant demand for more mysteries,” says Anne, a retired librarian in Toronto. “When I started working in public libraries in the 1960s, we didn’t order nearly as many crime titles. There wasn’t the selection in those days, and we wanted Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00002-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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to keep our fiction collections balanced. That’s a diplomatic way of saying that we preferred literary novels to what some considered trash.” With the success decades ago of high-quality series such as Colombo and Hill Street Blues, Anne believes that television has promoted crime fiction. She notes that readers with highbrow tastes took a break from their usual literary fare and started to look for the entertainment offered by better-known crime novelists. Agatha Christie has been the list-topping favorite for over 60 years. Her novels attract not only hardcore mystery readers but also those patrons who rarely borrow items in the genre.

2.2  What the professor wants “There’s no shame in reading Christie,” says Anne. “You’re not slumming when you pick up a title like Death on the Nile or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In fact many Humanities professors are big fans of Christie and her heirs, and any branch near a university campus would be wise to offer a good selection of her works.” Anne recommends the official Christie website (www.agathachristie.com) for advice on different titles and plots. This is one of the few sites that sorts stories by the means of murder (poison, stabbing, strangling, throat cut) that they contain. But most crime fiction readers are fans of more than one author. You’ll hear patrons referring to “the Englishwomen”: P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Minette Walters, whose novels sell and circulate heavily throughout the English-speaking world. These authors are noted not only for their gripping stories but also for the quality of their writing. “It’s probably not politically correct to say that James and Rendell are technically superior to many literary novelists,” says Margaret, a librarian in Vancouver. “Nevertheless it’s true. James’s prose is beautifully crafted and elegant. It can stand beside anything produced by the people who win Governor General’s Awards and Booker Prizes. Keep in mind that those prizewinners are often big mystery fans. Librarians across the country can tell you about famous literary novelists who borrow a lot of crime fiction. Sometimes highbrow novelists write mysteries themselves. Both Kingsley and Martin Amis have published crime titles; so has John Banville, who won the Booker in 2005.” [Note: In 2006, Banville published his first crime novel Christine Falls under the pen name Benjamin Black.]

2.3  Selection tools With a plethora of titles from which to develop a collection, it is prudent to consult reliable selection tools. Aside from reviewing journals and the websites of individual authors, one of the more helpful tools is the list of Edgar Allan Poe Award winners, available on websites such as www.mysterynet.com and www.mysterywriters.org. The latter is the official site for the Mystery Writers of America, and well worth investigating for basic information on authors and titles, and for collection development purposes.

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Naturally personal taste will influence title selection. Several librarians at an Alberta public library studied Classical literature and history at university. Their crime fiction collection contains everything they can find by “Sword-and-Sandal” crime novelists including Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor, David Wishart, and John Maddox Roberts. “Admittedly there’s bias in our collection,” said one of the librarians who requested anonymity. “But it’s not as if we order nothing but Rome-based mysteries. We stock the prizewinners and works by the better-known writers. In fact we have as broad a selection as most public libraries in this province. But some of the staff really liked Davis and Saylor, and we discovered that a surprisingly large number of our patrons wanted their works. So you’ll find more stories set in ancient Rome than you would in other libraries. Thus far we haven’t had any complaints, except when new titles take a long time to appear on our shelves.”

2.4  Death on order Bestselling novels attract large numbers of borrowers and force acquisitions librarians to buy multiple copies, often in waves. For example, James Lee Burke writes detective novels featuring Louisiana police officer Dave Robicheaux, an alcoholic Vietnam veteran with a profound sense of morality that inspires him to break rules and heads as he moves toward a final confrontation with the villains. New Robicheaux titles appear every year or two, much to the delight of a dedicated readership. Larger public libraries will order between 25 and 30 copies of the first edition. As these disintegrate from heavy use, librarians replace them with fresh copies. Then the paperback appears, and librarians order dozens for the carousels. Burke is not the most popular crime writer. Elmore Leonard and Ian Rankin have even larger readerships, and libraries must try to keep at least one copy of even the earliest and most obscure works by these authors on the shelves, as inevitably there will be demand for them. “Leonard and Rankin are superstars,” says Dave, a publisher’s representative in Montreal. “I think that they’ll still be popular after Harry Potter fades from public memory. Leonard’s early mysteries have real literary quality. He has the most distinct prose style in American crime writing, and nobody can beat him in his descriptions of petty criminals. As for Rankin, while his Detective Rebus is a superb creation, it’s the plotting and pace of his works that attract readers.” Recognizing the inevitable effects of robust borrowing patterns, technical services departments control damage and loss of new titles by doubly reinforcing bindings. Coffee rings on covers, food stains, bumped corners, and torn pages are to be expected on books that circulate heavily, but with increasing prices, book prep staffers will try to get a few more circulations from books before they are too tattered to reshelve. Currently, more librarians are prepared to accept donations of crime novels for inclusion in their collections, rather than tossing them onto the book sale table.

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2.5  Matters of taste Another trend is the purchase of used copies from local book dealers, a practice that some librarians frown on. “I used to think that our users avoided used copies,” says Barb, an adult services specialist in Toronto. “I’ve changed my mind. A fanatical reader of Rankin or Christie doesn’t worry about the source of the item, as long as he can get his hands on it. I realize that many libraries have a policy against buying used books, but with the prices going up and our budget remaining the same, I don’t think that we have a choice. I’ll order new books when I can, but if I can get good used copies at half the price, I’ll become a regular at the local secondhand shops.” There’s no escape. The murderers in your fiction stacks are armed and dangerous and more popular than ever. You must accommodate them with extra binding tape, more shelf space, and larger carousels. Otherwise you’ll have to deal with their fans, who can act like Hannibal Lecter when you don’t have their favorite mystery ready for circulation. Let’s not dwell on Hannibal’s tastes. (2007)

Reaching the outer limits: science fiction in the library  

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You can stroll through the catacombs of Rome and Paris and have lunch in the crypts of British cathedrals. Guided tours of European dungeons are popular, as are visits to the underground site of Jorvik, a Viking settlement that lay buried in northern English mud until archeologists rediscovered it and turned it into one of modern York’s busier—and darker—tourist attractions. Subterranean wanderings allow you to experience the past without the risk of sunstroke, rainstorms, and high-speed traffic. But the general public has yet to discover library basements, which are as entertaining as any dungeon, especially when you’re looking for old or unusual items. These may lack currency or immediate usefulness, but the librarians have elected to stow them away rather than toss them into the dumpster. Perhaps a title sounded fun, or a cover was brilliantly illustrated, or the librarians had a hunch that various items might prove interesting to the next generation. Such hunches can lead to the preservation of treasures.

3.1   Hugo’s achievement For example, what would you do with a magazine from the 1920s? In the basement of a Vancouver branch we find the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, edited by Hugo Gernsback, one of science fiction’s early champions. The Hugo Award, which the World Science Fiction Society hands out annually for achievement in science fiction, was named after him. He also edited Science Wonder Stories, Science Wonder Quarterly, and Air Wonder Stories and included works by standard authors such as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Edgar Allen Poe. There are collectors and readers of science fiction who would be thrilled to obtain any issue of Gernsback’s magazines. A small display of them could attract patrons to the most remote branch. But the popularity of any sort of science fiction has not necessarily turned librarians into fans. Booksellers who specialize in the genre note that while librarians are heavy readers of mysteries and thrillers, they remain unenthusiastic about even classic science fiction. “Apart from the odd exception like Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, librarians don’t seem to enjoy science fiction per se,” says Paola, a Toronto bookseller. “They’ll tell me that they need to fill up their SF shelves, and ask me to send them a selection of any popular titles that I consider good. They won’t read them, of course.”

3.2  Monsters and young men Paola believes that many librarians regard science fiction as a form of young adult literature. Stories that involve high-tech gadgetry, adventures in deep space, malevolent Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00003-7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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robots, and what fans call “BEMs” (bug-eyed monsters) appeal to teenaged males, whereas fantasies featuring unicorns, elves, magic castles, and a Merlin-equivalent or two appeal to teenaged girls, or so librarians believe. “There’s some truth to this distinction in readership,” says Paola. “Nevertheless it’s a very superficial way of looking at the main sub-genres, and the exceptions are obvious. Tolkien’s books are popular with all age groups and both sexes, despite the elf content. Alan Dean Foster’s Alien and anything to do with Star Trek attract equal numbers of males and females, even though they contain lots of BEMs. Making generalizations is risky, especially when you don’t know a lot about the genre.”

3.3  Atwood’s handmaid Owing to the acceptance of science fiction classics into mainstream literature, many librarians have read science fiction without thinking of it as such. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Invisible Man are devoured by people who wouldn’t touch a book by Clifford Simak or Frederik Pohl. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian fantasy, but those who read everything by Atwood will not necessarily think of themselves as readers of science fiction. Atwood would appreciate the irony here, as the plight of her handmaids is entirely appropriate in SF works that involve brutal hierarchies and slavery. “It’s worthwhile to note how a novel such as Atwood’s, or others like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four are available more often on the regular fiction shelves of our libraries, but not in the science fiction section,” says Anne, a cataloguer in Vancouver. “Naturally what libraries put on the most accessible shelves are mainstream items that the general public is most likely to borrow. But there’s a sense—whether we admit it or not—that the greater corpus of SF is something that we should keep in a less conspicuous place. We don’t consider it literary or respectable enough to keep it front and centre.”

3.4  Fear of Goths Librarians might also have stereotypical notions about the kinds of patrons who read substantial amounts of SF. “Don’t quote me, but some science fiction fans look downright strange,” says Lorna, a branch head on the Prairies. “That’s not politically correct, I know. But the young men who read the latest cyberpunk novels always seem to dress in black, and have multiple piercings all over their very pale faces. They dye their hair black, or a dreadful shade of blond. You can’t help noticing them. Their girlfriends show up looking like that as well. Sometimes these people scare me.” Lorna admits, however, that the Goths (as they’re commonly known) are usually well behaved. She doesn’t remember a single incident involving a Gothic problem patron. Trekkies—those who live for Star Trek stories, conferences, and tie-ins such as costumes of their favorite characters in the TV series—also show up occasionally, and are equally polite.

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To be honest, the only real concern I have with SF fans is that they forget that other patrons need computer time. They spend too much time researching their choice of authors and books on our library computers. They love anything to do with Philip K. Dick, who has become a Goth cult figure in my district. And we can’t keep Dick’s titles on our shelves. They’re read to bits. The most popular of his works is The Man in the High Castle, although some patrons prefer Ubik. I haven’t read either.

In reality, science fiction fans have no particular look or style. Goths stand out because their appearance is unusual. Most SF readers look like average citizens. Geoff is a corporate lawyer in Victoria, whose looks would not scare even the most sensitive librarian.

3.5  Safeway neuromancer “As a teenager in the 1950s, I enjoyed SF magazines like Galaxy and Nebula,” he says. “Then I started reading novels by John Wyndham and Ray Bradbury. I found most of these items in my local public library, which didn’t have a big SF collection at the time, but which gave me want I wanted. Nowadays I like anything by Spider Robinson, Greg Bear, and William Gibson. I still rely on the library, although it doesn’t provide the latest titles as quickly as I’d like.” Another Gibson fan is Marcia, a biology instructor at a community college in Vancouver. “Earlier this year I finished rereading Gibson’s Neuromancer, which is still his most influential novel,” she says. “I put the book down and went to the grocery store to pick up dinner fixings. I saw Gibson in the produce section. He lives not far from me, and I see him now and then. I’m too shy to approach him, but I like the idea that he’s in the neighbourhood, that he’s not long dead like so many of the writers I studied in school. Science fiction has an immediacy that so much literature lacks. It’s topical even before people understand the importance of its topics. Gibson wrote about the influence of cyberspace before it became as influential as it is now.” In fact Gibson coined the term “cyberspace,” which has entered common parlance.

3.6  Rowling power Drawing even more attention worldwide are J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter books, which strictly speaking are fantasy novels with strong SF elements. Rowling has increased the market for fantasy titles more than any current author and inspired readers from all backgrounds to browse in the appropriate sections of their libraries. Anecdotal evidence indicates that Rowling has generated a growing interest in all subgenres associated with science fiction, from fantasy and horror to alternative history and “hard science,” i.e. stories that have their foundations in actual astronomy, astrophysics, or cosmology.

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“We run out of Potter titles regularly,” says Linda, a branch supervisor in Toronto. “Rather than leave empty-handed, patrons will choose something else from the fantasy shelves, or an item from SF. I get the idea that people are trying new authors when they can’t have Harry Potter for the weekend. So Rowling is doing a lot of writers a big favour, and our library is justified in acquiring more SF titles.”

3.7  Join the club If science fiction collections continue to grow, should librarians try to promote them more than before? If so, what are the most effective forms of promotion? At present, many librarians aren’t sure, although they’re prepared to use traditional methods to encourage borrowing. Some libraries are considering displays, author readings, and the more prominent placement of science fiction shelves. Others are satisfied with current levels of promotion and point out that science fiction is only one genre of many that deserve better advertising. A certain Californian library is considering a science fiction reading club, which has already caused much internal discussion among administrators and public programmers. The main concerns are as follows: What if the club becomes too popular and puts too great a demand on collections and staff time? What if the events room isn’t big enough? And what if the club splinters into uniformed Trekkies, hard science fans, and cyberpunk Goths? Perhaps it’s best to set up the meetings in the library basement. This will solve any space problem—no pun intended—and allow club members to discover early examples of their genre, which has sat unread for years on the dustiest shelves. Amazing stories, anyone? (2007)

Life enjoyed: the appeal of biography collections  

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Several years ago, an old woman died in a big house in Vancouver’s exclusive Shaughnessy neighborhood. She had no surviving family and nobody whom one could describe as a close friend. Her acquaintances included her gardener, the woman from Meals on Wheels, and her lawyer, who made an inventory of her property for the purpose of dispersing it. There were bits and pieces of shabby furniture from the 1950s, an ancient TV, and an unsigned drawing of John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, in a Victorian oak frame. There was an empty birdcage. A cupboard in the basement contained thousands of clothes hangers, a picnic basket full of cobwebs, and the dried-out carcass of a mouse. What amazed the lawyer were the books. There were thousands of them: biographies, autobiographies, volumes of collected and selected letters, published diaries and journals, and memoirs. In the high-ceilinged space originally designed to serve as a living room, the shelves were crammed with military biographies. Name a general, admiral, or air marshal, and if anyone had described his life and career in print, the book would be there. Politicians—North American, European, and Asian—dominated the front hall and drawing room. The hallways were lined with the lives of painters, sculptors, and writers. Shakespeare’s biographers claimed an alcove of their own; a huge bust of Victor Hugo surmounted a shelf of French authors’ lives. In the master bedroom, one small bedside shelf held a collection of men from different backgrounds and eras: everyone from Lord Nelson to David Niven. The lawyer believed that the old woman found her “bedside boys” attractive and liked to keep their life stories near her while she slept. The lawyer donated the old woman’s books to thrift shops and rummage sales. He assumed that in doing so, he could make lots of people happy. After all, he reasoned, the books had entertained the old woman for decades. Why not share the wealth? Her story will not surprise any librarian who develops and maintains a biography collection. People can become addicted to it. Biography is one of the more popular genres in public libraries, and many other libraries note a demand for them, too. Book dealers like biographical stock because it sells quickly; even the most obscure subject can attract buyers.

4.1  Why so popular? There are a number of reasons for the popularity of biography in its various forms. First, some people are conspicuously different, and we like to find out how they got that way. They may be extremely good or competent or rotten to the core; these qualities make them potentially fun to read about. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00004-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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They may also be famous for being famous, and essentially mediocre or ordinary. We cherish that mediocrity because we suspect that we might share it. We are especially pleased when a nonentity gets into trouble because, well, she had it coming. Or who did he think he was anyway, making all that money when he couldn’t act or sing? People like that deserve every mean joke that Jay Leno’s writers can dream up. And we want to hear about it, talk about it, and read about it, particularly when we sense that the ridiculed celebrity is really no better than we are. They take a bullet for us; we are grateful. Many readers consider biography to be the most enjoyable kind of historical writing. We can read about the parliamentary career of a politician, which— although we must never say so in front of a professor of history—is often dull. Unless we have a taste for descriptions of legislative debate, we’d prefer to read about that politician’s alcohol consumption, extramarital affairs, or eccentric pastimes. In learning about Mackenzie King’s habit of holding lengthy conversations with Pat, his Irish terrier, we might also come across information concerning his career as Canada’s prime minister and wartime leader. Pat could lead the way to all sorts of useful facts, and we would not necessarily have to wade through the usual verbiage of pure political history. It was ever thus. We can ask students to study the history of Imperial Rome, and they’ll yawn. But if we tell them to avoid Suetonius, whose Lives of the Twelve Caesars contains material that is salacious and politically incorrect, they will queue up for any copy in the library. And while appreciating the depravity of Tiberius and Caligula, they might learn something about Roman history. Suetonius is never out of print, for excellent reasons.

4.2  Imagining the life When a good biography stimulates our imagination, it gives us a chance to live in earlier epochs and different historical circumstances. Noted British biographer Christopher Hibbert can transport us to the courts of British monarchs and enable us to form an idea not only of what Elizabeth I and George III were like as people but also how it felt to face the Spanish Armada and the American Revolution. Hibbert can escort us onto dance floors and battlefields with equal finesse and describe even the dullest political matter in an entertaining and informative style. His books are as popular with specialists as with the general public, largely because he is a master of using his research to recreate historical setting and atmosphere. “People like to be wherever a historical personage or celebrity is,” says Jim, a public librarian in Vancouver. “They expect a biographer to furnish them with a ticket and an itinerary to the era of an artist or politician, or anyone else who strikes their fancy. They want to drink with Churchill and Hemingway. The biographer allows them to avoid the hangover while getting a clear sense of those Cabinet War rooms or that bar in Havana.”

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Anne, a Toronto librarian, notes that public libraries can’t keep up with the demand for biographies of all sorts. She mentions that they fly off the shelves not only in popular reading divisions but also in areas that attract patrons with more specialized and scholarly interests. You can shelve a Byron biography in the literature section, and it will circulate just as often as the additional copies in the Popular Reading division. We have problems keeping biographies of various writers and artists in the collection, because they’re often stolen. Any biography of a Beat poet or celebrity from the 1960s is at risk as soon as it’s shelved.

Athletes’ biographies are also hard to keep in readable shape. Anne says that photographs from popular lives of hockey players often disappear. “Vandals have been particularly hard on the photos of players like Wayne Gretzky and Gordie Howe,” says Anne. “I’ve decided that this is largely a Canadian phenomenon. American librarians tell me that their books lose photos of baseball and football stars, but that vandals won’t bother with Wayne. And British public librarians complain about losing images of David Beckham. We don’t lose him in Toronto, even though he’s better-looking than most hockey players.”

4.3  Paris Hilton and Co. In many libraries, biographies of young stars and starlets circulate more than any others. Patrons request popular magazines such as People, Us and Hello!, which contain numerous photos of celebrities in action, on the red carpet and occasionally under arrest. There’s a constant demand for access to the innumerable websites that contain information and gossip on even the most obscure detail of a player’s or clotheshorse’s career. Blogs overflow with comments on Madonna’s hairdo and Kate Moss’s dental work. “Patrons lust for gossip,” says Lisa, a community college reference librarian in Toronto. “It amazes me that intelligent people need to know about such trivial things.” Recently a faculty member asked her to find out how many times Michael Jackson had undergone surgery to his nose. “It galls me that I spent six years in university so that I could research that guy’s nose jobs,” she says. “But it’s unprofessional to question the patron’s intentions, and I did a lot of digging to find the answer. And no, I’m not going to say how many times that weirdo went under the knife. Why can’t we focus on something worthwhile?” Lisa’s right, of course. There are far more significant phenomena than Jackson’s surgery. For example, income tax law. It affects all of us. Our governments could not survive without it. We dare not disobey it. But if we’re honest, the last book we want to read is a thick compendium of tax law. Call us shallow, or misguided, or intellectually irresponsible, but we’ll take Michael’s nose or Britney’s tummy or Paris’s vacuous gaze over even the most brilliant tax law, which is no fun at all. And even Lisa admits that she likes skimming fashion magazines to see who looks anorexic in this season’s fabrics.

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4.4  Living collections Including myriad works on earth-shakers and flashes in countless pans, biography collections require dedicated management. Because they experience levels of circulation higher than other collections, they need more frequent repair and replacement. They should appeal to the broadest section of patrons and include what some might describe as equal portions of the sublime and the ridiculous. Browsing in the biography stacks should offer the sort of serendipity that we experience when we discover Boswell’s Life of Johnson shelved between unauthorized biographies of Jim Carrey and Lindsay Lohan. The subjects of these works may have nothing in common aside from their humanity, which is the foundation of our interest in them. A biography allows another person—famous, worthy, banal, worthless—to keep us company. Hence we don’t believe that the old woman in the house full of biographies was lonely. She lived and died surrounded by old friends and slept beside Nelson and Niven. There are worse fates. Further reading For reliable introductions to the biographical genre, consult any of these brief works:

  

• Robert Gittings. (1978). The Nature of Biography. • Harold Nicolson. (1959). The Development of English Biography. • Alan Shelston. (1977). Biography.

  

Although out of print, these works are available in larger public and academic libraries. Biographies and autobiographies that interest general readers as well as more specialized audiences include the following:

  

• Peter Ackroyd. (2005). T.S. Eliot (1984) and Shakespeare: The Biography. • Quentin Bell. (1972). Virgina Woolf: A Biography. • John Bayley. (2000). Elegy for Iris (1999) and Iris and Her Friends. • Edmund Gosse. (1913). Father and Son. • Christopher Hibbert. (1998). Virgin Queen: A Personal History of Elizabeth I (1990) and George III: A Personal History. • Lytton Strachey. (1918). Eminent Victorians. • A.J.A. Symons. (1934). The Quest for Corvo: An Experiment in Biography.

  

Dates refer to the publication of the first editions; most of these are available in recent paperback editions.

 

(2008)

Travel collections: off the shelf, on the road  

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Order another bottle of champagne and admit that the sand between your toes could only be Tahitian. In comparison, Hawaiian sand is slightly coarse, making the Tahitian variety feel like warm silk. And here’s the waiter with the bubbly. He says Do you have any graphic novels about junkies in New York?

At which point you snap out of your reverie. You are not on a beach in the South Pacific. You are on duty at a reference desk in Ottawa. The silky sand is pure fantasy, and now you are obliged to do your job. Paradise is far, far away. But your shelves abound with descriptions of distant places, some more paradisean than others. In your library’s travel section, there are two main divisions: guidebooks and travel literature. The former include volumes dedicated to specific places all over the world, from cities, states, provinces, and counties to entire nations and continents. Publishers of series such as Rough Guides, Berlitz, Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and Lonely Planet produce dozens of new and revised titles annually, along with detailed maps and phrase books. Rich in data, these items circulate heavily to patrons intent on holidays and an escape from routine. Guidebook users recognize that every trip costs money and requires planning and organization.

5.1  What guidebooks give Guidebooks provide information on countless different topics, from accommodation and sightseeing to tipping, babysitting, and laundry services. Guidebook authors offer security and reliability. They recommend the best options available in hotels, restaurants, transportation, and sights of interest. Anyone compiling a guidebook knows not to champion a roach-infested hostel or a filthy dining room. If users are tempted to spend time in dodgy neighborhoods, guidebooks will often warn them about risks such as crime hotspots and scams. “It’s interesting to note the continuing popularity and high circulation figures for guidebooks,” says Brian, a library technician in Vancouver. “You’d assume that most people would rely on the Internet for current information on tourist destinations. But what we’re seeing is substantial use of both print and online resources. Patrons will search for basic data online, then confirm it with print resources, or add to it. Print resources can give more contextual information - that is, material that provides a more complete picture of their destination and what it includes.” Hence, many public libraries hold as many hard copy guidebooks as they did before the advent of the Internet. Their collections of maps and tourist phrase books can be Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00005-0 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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even larger than before, owing in part to late 20th century political events such as the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Soviet Union. Whereas travel in Eastern Europe was difficult and unattractive during the Cold War, now tourism in Poland and Russia has increased. There is greater demand for Polish and Russian phrase books and more interest in similar items for those traveling to the Czech Republic, Romania, and the Baltic states.

5.2  Atlases Patrons also need access to map collections and reference atlases. “We replaced many of our old atlases and gazetteers when the Iron Curtain fell,” says Lori, a librarian in Toronto. “We were embarrassed about how out-of-date they were. But they weren’t used as often as the newer cartographic resources, which are taking a lot of punishment.” Lori notes that newer atlases have weak bindings that deteriorate quickly with even moderate use. The result can be loose pages. “Atlas spines and photocopiers don’t get along well,” says Lori. “You see people pressing open atlases onto photocopiers, and sometimes you’ll hear a spine crack. It’s a depressing sound, because we know that the atlas will have to be rebound sooner rather than later. Or perhaps we’ll simply replace it, and that’s expensive.” But won’t online resources replace paper atlases soon? Lori believes otherwise. “I don’t want to get into a debate regarding electronic versus paper resources,” she says. “The fact is, however, that our patrons still like bulky atlases. They want to open them up and smooth out the big folio pages and run their fingers along roads and rivers and coastlines. Even tech-savvy kids like atlases, even though they’re more inclined to rely on the computer for geography homework.”

5.3  Early travel literature Unlike guidebooks and other reference materials, travel literature is more personal. The foundation of any work of travel literature is its author’s perception of his or her surroundings, and the ways in which that author experienced—or muddled through— various situations. It frequently includes observations on the people that the author meets: their customs and culture and outstanding characteristics. The first producer of travel literature in Western civilization was Herodotus (c.484 BC–c.485 BC), who included in his Histories descriptions of the peoples that he encountered during his travels in regions around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Scholars have distrusted Herodotus since ancient times and suggest that he fabricated or embroidered his accounts of different cultures. He probably did, but few can deny the entertaining quality of the Histories, which is available in many different editions and translations. In public, school, and academic libraries the most popular English translation is Aubrey de Sélincourt in the Penguin Classics series.

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Every culture has its explorers, those who cross boundaries and strike out for new territories and markets. Marco Polo’s Travels—also available in Penguin—gave rise to numerous other works concerning regions that the authors considered foreign. Marco Polo (1254–1324) was a Venetian who reached China and was one of the first to describe it for a European audience. His travels inspired generations of explorers, one of whom was Christopher Columbus. “Even though history as an academic subject has recently become less popular, students still read Herodotus and Mateo Polo,” says Audrey, a college librarian in Vancouver. “Some of their popularity arises from their availability in Penguin, but there’s still the appeal of the works themselves. The authors were tremendous writers who knew how to wow their readers. I can’t think of a better way to put it.”

5.4  Enter the British With the expansion of the British Empire from the 17th to the 19th centuries, modern travel literature in English was born. The British went everywhere, and their muddling through nightmarish predicaments is the basis for the best of their travel literature. “The Brits love combining stout-hearted persons with terrible environments,” says Derek, a retired history professor in Toronto. “This is the root of many great works in different genres. Shakespeare’s Tempest is about a voyage gone wrong. A century later you have Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe - another shipwreck story. The British explorers of the 18th century were constantly running into trouble with storms, hostile populations and disease. In the 19th century, we have the unfortunate Sir John Franklin, who fascinates Canadians more than any other explorer, including those who were equally or more successful in their exploits.” In the 20th century, the tradition of mixing what the British referred to as “Abroad” or “foreign parts” with human discomfort or outright misery survived in works such as Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana (1937), Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) and Love and War in the Apennines (1971), and Redmond O’Hanlon’s Into the Heart of Borneo (1985). Some critics think that wartime autobiographies such as T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) and Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That (1929) constitute a form of travel literature, and inasmuch as the authors are abroad and in miserable circumstances, this is a reasonable claim.

5.5  Not so painful But not all travel literature needs involve dire conditions. Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals (1956), an account of the Durrell family’s time on a Greek island before the Second World War, is happy and hilarious, with minor inconveniences replacing the usual harsh climates, fierce wildlife, and bandits that appear in other travel literature. Also cheerful is Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts (1977), an account of his trek across Holland, France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia,

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and Hungary as a teenager. He set out in 1933, and on his way he saw evidence of Hitler’s growing influence. War was approaching, and in it Fermor would distinguish himself as a soldier. But during his youthful travels, he could experience Europe at its best, with its magnificent landscapes and architecture and food, and through meetings with remarkable persons from all levels of society. Brilliantly written, insightful, informative, and amusing, this work has been popular since it first appeared. “I’ve had a couple of patrons who have read Fermor’s book and wanted to follow in his footsteps across Europe one day,” says Lisa, a Calgary librarian. “At least that’s what they say, but then they look at a map and remember their budgets and schedules, and decide that it’s best to reread Fermor rather than attempt to repeat his long walk. They’re probably wise.”

5.6  Rick does Europe Much has changed since Fermor’s adventurous youth. Travel collections now include substantial sections of videos and DVDs on the broadest variety of destinations and related topics. Among the most popular are those featuring Rick Steves, who wanders through Europe and has a delightful time wherever he goes. You can watch him doing all of the things that a solid middle-class North American tourist is inclined to do, although his innumerable clichés and monotone delivery might irritate some viewers. Nevertheless he’s full of interesting facts and demonstrates an endearing affection for medieval architecture. In a time of international tension and economic decline, many people are content to postpone their trips indefinitely and to indulge in the riches of their library’s travel collection. They will have no difficulties with airport security or missing luggage or bankrupt airlines. They will have no fears of diarrheal illnesses or extremes of climate. They can enjoy travel in the safety of their armchairs and wander through 14th-century piles with Rick Steves. Back at the reference desk, between questions concerning graphic novels and the location of the washrooms, you can let your mind wander a little. You’ve been reviewing Frommer’s Tahiti & French Polynesia during your break. You can almost feel the sand between your toes, cannot you? Where’s that waiter? (2009)

Blankets will not protect you! an overview of horror fiction  

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Horror is the most intimate form of fear. You experience it long before you read scary stories or take in monster movies. Remember the beast beneath the bed, the ghost in the basement, and the creature in the shadows of your parents’ garage? They were after you. If you didn’t leap into bed, the beast beneath would grab your ankle and drag you down among the dust balls. You raced up the basement stairs to avoid the ghost, who could envelope you in her cold embrace and freeze your soul. You were certain of it. As for the creature in the garage, it was actually your neighbor’s Airedale snoring in a corner. You mistook him for a werewolf and refused to enter the garage unless you were accompanied by a parent. Most young children feared similar monsters and knew the feeling of true horror in their guts. As an adult, you still avoid that dreadful sensation as much as possible, that is, unless you can contain horrible monsters between the pages of a book or limit their activities to a screen. If the boundary between you and Dracula is solid and reliable, then you can enjoy the old boy’s wickedness; and you find yourself howling with the werewolves and cheering as the oozing brute with tentacles drags another victim back to the swamp. Hence, the popularity of the horror genre and the high circulation of library books with dark covers and fake bloodstains on their title pages. And note the gaps on the DVD shelves where the horror shows are stored when they’re not causing panic in front of borrowers’ TVs. Entire families fight for cushions to hide their faces as the Devil rotates his victim’s head and forces her body to levitate. Undeniably you take enormous pleasure in horror, even as you avert your eyes from the screen, or refuse to open that novel until there is at least one rational grown-up in the house with you. “Are you reading Stephen King again, dear?” says that grown-up. “What happened to that Alice Munro paperback I gave you for your birthday?” The truth: the beast beneath the bed has filed Alice with the dust balls, leaving you with King’s Carrie or Cujo. And you don’t mind at all.

6.1  Older English horror The horror genre has its roots in ancient literature. English majors encounter monsters—huge, man-eating Grendel, his mother, and a dragon—in Beowulf, the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon epic. But it was not until the 18th century that a more substantial body of horror fiction—usually referred to as Gothic—developed. Standard titles include Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796). This last remains one of the more readable works of the period, and is frequently reprinted. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00006-2 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“There’s always an audience for the Gothic classics,” says Laurie, a Toronto-based fiction editor. “You’ll notice, however, that college and university libraries circulate more copies of Walpole, Radcliffe and Lewis than public libraries. That’s because the works of those authors appear on various college and university reading lists.” She suggests that all such classics that need to attain greater popularity are high-quality television or movie production. “Lewis’s Monk was produced as a film in the early 1970s,” says Laurie. “The script and acting were pathetic. I look forward to the day when the BBC puts together a series based on Lewis’s book, with top-notch actors and intelligent directing. The reserve lists for the DVD would be lengthy, and libraries would need to order multiple copies.”

6.2  Victorian shivers Hollywood has turned 19th-century horror novels into profitable productions. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) are the best known and most regularly adapted works, which library patrons borrow heavily in any available medium, edition, or format. Also in demand are Edgar Allen Poe’s short ­stories (c.1835–1849) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Currently not as well known but nonetheless influential is the fiction of Sheridan Le Fanu, an Irish journalist and newspaper owner. Many critics believe that he invented the modern ghost story. Among the works that you should avoid when alone at night are “Green Tea” (1869), “Madame Crowl’s Ghost” (1870), and “Carmilla” (1871). Le Fanu influenced most horror writers who followed him, in particular M.R. James, an antiquarian and scholar of King’s College, Cambridge who went on to become Vice Chancellor of the university and eventually Provost of Eton College. During Christmas celebrations at King’s in the decade before the First World War, James would read his ghost stories to friends, a tradition continued by Robertson Davies. As Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, Davies regaled his students with characters and plots that amused rather than horrified. These eventually appeared in High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories, published in 1982. Light-hearted spookiness aside, if you want to experience real horror—that sensation of crawling awfulness in the pit of your stomach—you could probably achieve that end by finding a copy of The Penguin Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James (1984). Even the least frightening of these 31 stories will incline you to wrap the blankets a little more tightly around yourself, not that mere wool or polyester will be enough to protect you from James’s downright nasty ghosts. (Why, incidentally, do you persist in thinking that bedclothes will serve as an adequate barrier against a malevolent ghost, an angry vampire, or a mummy bent on mayhem after millennia in a tomb?) James’s style is simple and readable. His characters and the beings that haunt them are convincing, and his plots are compelling. His most successful imitators include

Blankets will not protect you! an overview of horror fiction

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Edmund Gill Swain, a chaplain at King’s College who published Stoneground Ghost Tales (1912); Frederick Cowles, a librarian at Trinity College, Cambridge, and author of The Horror of Abbot’s Grange (1936); and A.N.L. Munby, a librarian at King’s College who wrote the stories published in The Alabaster Hand (1949) as a prisoner of war in Austria between 1940 and 1945. Critics have yet to refer to “The Cambridge School of Horror,” although it certainly existed and thrived as much as other literary groups. It is notable for the involvement of many of its members in librarianship and manuscript studies.

6.3  American classic “After James, it’s all H.P. Lovecraft,” says Martin, a librarian and former bookseller in Vancouver. “In terms of style Lovecraft takes a lot from Edgar Allan Poe, which is not surprising for an American writing in the early 20th century. The thing to remember is that Lovecraft was adept at combining elements of horror and fantasy. He produced science fiction as well. Most of his writing is dark, more Gothic than Gothic, and the tone of his stories is creepy. You get a sense that Lovecraft was a very strange man, far more so than Poe or M.R. James.” To new readers of the genre, Martin recommends Lovecraft’s more famous stories. These include “The Dunwich Horror” (1929), “At the Mountains of Madness” (1936), and “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1943). Martin’s personal favorite is “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937), which he calls “a classic of madness and evil possession.” “There are numerous different editions of Lovecraft’s works,” he says. “A number of the cheap paperbacks contain corrupt texts, so it’s wise to look for reliable modern editions.” An example is the Penguin Classic entitled The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories (2001), edited by S.T. Joshi. Lovecraft was not the only early 20th-century writer to mix horror and fantasy. There were many others. An outstanding example was William Hope Hodgson, whose The House on the Borderland (1908) tells the story of a man who lives in an old house situated at a remote part of Ireland. He struggles with monstrous beings that … But it would be wrong to say any more. As cigarette packages have labels warning that smoking can cause disease and premature death, so this novel should have printed in bold on the lower third of its front cover the advice that the first half of the book should not be read alone at night, and that the second half should be read only during the day and only when you’re surrounded by normal people, perhaps on the bus, in a crowded pub, or while waiting in a queue at your bank. Following the Second World War, the horror genre competed in popularity with science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction. Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and various ghosts and werewolves still attracted fans, but more modern horror authors had to work harder to get readers’ attention. And then along came Stephen King.

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6.4  King of the genre “I remember when King’s books started to be really popular,” says Janis, a retired public librarian who has worked in Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria. “In the 1970s it was Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand. I think The Stand is outstanding, probably the most skillfully written of his early novels. Like a lot of horror writers, King has an undistinguished prose style. When his prose flattens his characters and gets in the way of his plot, the result is disappointing. This doesn’t happen in The Stand, The Dead Zone, and Cujo, or in a slightly later novel entitled It. As for recent works like Under the Dome and Ur, I haven’t made up my mind. I usually read a King title a couple of times before I decide how good it is. You’ll find a lot of King’s fans do the same.” Aside from King, Janis speaks highly of Clive Barker, whose collections of short stories entitled Books of Blood appeared in six volumes in 1984 and 1985. “Barker’s a classic for the present and the future,” she says. “His stories will be read many years from now, I’m sure. Few current writers in any genre have his breadth of imagination. You’ll see shockers like Blatty’s The Exorcist and horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fade in popularity over time, but I think Barker’s got staying power.” Interestingly, Janis does not consider the teen vampire series such as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight to be true horror fiction. She refers to it as “TLF” (Teen Lust with Fangs) and says that if its readers are lucky, they will eventually discover Barker and earlier classics. “Children and younger adults can stick with the hunky undead,” she says. “That’s fine. But you wouldn’t want them to experience true horror at its blood-curdling best. It’s a good idea to let them grow up a little before giving them something such as Stoker’s Dracula or one of King’s better novels. Otherwise they might have nightmares and develop some sort of complex. Young minds can be fragile.” And leaping high enough to avoid being dragged beneath the bed is nerve-wracking enough. (2010)

Making the Penguins fly: classics collections in public libraries  

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Dennis might become our prime minister in a few decades, or perhaps the chief executive officer of an enormous corporation. Maybe he will find a way to counteract global warming, or win the Nobel Prize for developing a cure for cancer. At present, however, his lot is humble and frustrating. He must contend with a full diaper and a library storyteller who cannot hold his attention. He wanders away from Mum, whom the storyteller has transfixed with a rendition of Green Eggs and Ham. He toddles through the stacks of the local branch until he reaches the Classics carousel, which is stuffed with copies of Shakespeare’s plays and novels by Austen, Dickens, and Melville. There is also a large flock of Penguins: translations of Homer, Flaubert, Goethe, and Cervantes. In the presence of such greatness, Dennis realizes that there is only one thing to do. Grasping a side of the carousel, he swings it with all of his might, flinging literature in all directions. Tremendous fun! Dennis has time for two more swings before a librarian intercepts him. Mum straps him back in his stroller, but he does not complain. In fact he is speechless with exhilaration. For the rest of his life, he will remember watching the Western Canon take flight. Perhaps this experience will inspire Dennis to become a librarian and leave politics, science, and the business world to less literary persons. This would not be the first time that an early encounter with the classics leads to a career in librarianship. Many librarians recall their childhood absorption in a particular great work or works, or their youthful passion for certain authors.

7.1   Broad interests “Once I started reading Jane Austen and the Brontes, that was it,” says Ellen, a college librarian in Vancouver. “I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the classics, with the literature that will probably survive as long as our civilization. I’m not a snob. It’s just that the classics offer so much more than the stuff that publishers pour into the current market. Most of it will be forgotten in a few years. Meanwhile copies of Austen’s novels circulate until they fall apart, and we can’t keep Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights on the shelves.”

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Ellen enjoys more than just literary classics. She has studied standard titles in Greek philosophy and science and has consumed the major works of Darwin, Freud, and Jung. She admits that her knowledge of mathematics is not strong enough to support an in-depth study of Newton and Einstein, but she reads substantial amounts of secondary material on them. “I’m not alone in my ignorance of math,” she says. “In fact many professional scientists—professors of physics and chemistry—haven’t worked their way through Newton and other seminal works that rely on mathematical formulae for their explanations of physical phenomena. Either those academics don’t have the math to understand such works, or they simply have never gotten around to reading them. Like me, they rely on basic, math-free introductions, or various publications for lay people.” Ellen could never read all of the works generally considered to be classics. She regards this as an advantage as she will always have something new to discover. “If I retired now and did nothing but read classics for thirty years, I’d still never make my way through them all,” she says. “That would be impossible for anybody. You can fall out of love, and you can run out of money, but you’ll never lack for a fresh classic novel or poem, or work of science or philosophy.”

7.2  Life without Freud While Ellen celebrates her inability to read every classic, many of her library patrons are discouraged when they consider the enormous number of great works that they have not read. They appear at the reference desk and ask her for recommendations. “Many patrons don’t know where to start,” she says. “They feel guilty for never having read Tolstoy or James Joyce. They tell me that they feel stupid because they’ve heard about Einstein and Freud, but know so little about them.” These patrons are often middle-aged university graduates. Their responses to recommended reading vary from disappointment and dismissal to joyful acceptance and delight. “I can live without Freud,” said a forty-something man to Anne, a Toronto reference librarian. “He’s a fraud, a complete phony. And what he wrote about Oedipus

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was disgusting. Give me Doctor Phil any day.” Regarding poor Emma Bovary, he suggested that “she had it coming.” Having finished Dickens’s Bleak House, he told Anne that “you can’t trust lawyers, or anyone else.” Eventually Anne steered him away from classic authors who soured his outlook. “I felt like a pharmacist,” she says. “I took him off reading that resulted in the equivalent of an allergic reaction, and put him on large doses of genre fiction. Now he sticks to Westerns, which seem to suit his moods. Not everyone can love the classics.” Other patrons are so enthusiastic about certain classic authors that they are unhappy and occasionally angry when they discover that they have read everything by a favorite. For example, an elderly woman in Calgary read Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice for the first time and was hooked. She went on to read all of Jane Austen’s works. One morning she marched up to the reference desk in her local branch and said she wanted “more Austen, right now.” Glen was the librarian on duty. He informed her that she had read everything available by Austen. She was indignant. Was there really nothing more? Glen then employed a tactic that is usually successful in such circumstances. He recommended Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers. “It’s easy enough to read all of the works of classic novelists such as Austen, the Brontes, and other nineteenth century standards in a relatively short time,” says Glen. “And as much as one may love those chunky volumes, one can reread them only so often before one desires something new. Trollope is the answer, for the simple reason that he was so prolific that it takes years to read all of his fiction, biographies, essays, travel literature, and letters. Although there are better writers among his contemporaries, Trollope is still a classic. Once a patron starts reading him, your problem is solved. I have never had a patron tell me that he or she has read all of Trollope.”

7.3  Tapestry of wisdom What is called “wisdom literature”—the classic religious tests including the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, and Buddhist scriptures—can lead patrons to an extended concentration on a particular passage, chapter, or story. Anne recalls a woman who decided to weave a series of tapestries with illustrations from the Book of Genesis. “She didn’t need a copy of the Bible,” says Anne. “She had one that belonged to her grandparents. But she needed to know a lot about the background to Genesis, and how the different stories had been illustrated in the past. We found her dozens of secondary sources on any and all aspects of the first book of the Old Testament.” Anne remembers the day that the patron arrived at the branch and took her aside for a private word. The patron told Anne that she had made an important decision, one that had changed her life. Anne thought that the patron had undergone a religious conversion, but no. The patron announced that in the main tapestry that she was weaving, she would make Adam and Eve redheads rather than brunettes. She said that this gave her a sense of what it was like to be the Creator, and that for the first time she really felt in charge of her life. I simply nodded. You never know how a patron will respond to a classic, nor can you predict what will follow the reading. The classics stimulate all sorts of responses.

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7.4  Questions and decisions Managing even small collections of classics involves a number of questions. First, which titles are most appropriate to different locations and patron groups? Secondly, which are the most suitable bibliographic forms: hard or soft cover, large or small format, or e-book? Thirdly, in what quantities should a central library or branch acquire various titles? Lastly, should classic titles be shelved in the general collection or on dedicated shelves or a carousel such as that which attracted the roving Dennis? To complicate decision-making, there is often disagreement regarding the definition of a classic. Should a well-respected work of science fiction be considered as much a classic as a novel by Virginia Woolf? Should The Pilgrim’s Progress occupy the same carousel as a famous thriller such as John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps? Should classic works of fiction be shelved with classic works of philosophy, history, and science? “You can argue about what a classic is till the proverbial cows come home,” says Beth, a retired public librarian who has worked in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Toronto. “I’d put the usual standards on my classic shelves, but I wouldn’t hesitate to add a few surprises. For example, I’d include modern travel literature such as Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana and anything by Patrick Leigh Fermor. I took the great works of philosophy that never circulated from the philosophy section and placed them in a display of classics. People rarely checked out anything by Hegel, Kant, and Descartes until I put them beside Proust and Edith Wharton. My plan was to show that there were good reasons for the continued printing and circulation of works by all of these authors. I encouraged patrons to give different works a try. I’d tell them not to worry if they didn’t finish a book. And I told patrons that I was always available to talk about why specific works were on the classics shelves.”

7.5  The politics of shelving Patrons liked Beth’s approach. They praised her displays of classics and attended her Great Book talks in droves. They enjoyed the reading groups that she organized in her branch’s activity room, and they appreciated her willingness to listen to their recommendations for additions to the classics shelf. But not all of her colleagues approved. A children’s librarian impugned her inclusion of children’s classics on a shelf intended for adult readers. “Looking back, I suppose that the children’s librarian had a point,” says Beth. “She wanted patrons to find children’s literature in the children’s department. She told me that some patrons would become confused if they found copies of The Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden in our adult area. She also warned me that it was not my business to spend any of the adult fiction budget on material that was rightly covered in her budget.” And then Beth made matters worse by pointing out with the aid of circulation statistics that several children’s titles circulated more frequently from the adult classics shelves than they did from the children’s department.

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“That was the one time in my career that I was politically incorrect,” she says with a chuckle. “It was as if I had committed a felony. That librarian did not speak to me for weeks, not until the director urged us to settle our differences. We’re good friends now, but we never mention that disagreement. And no, I refused to remove the children’s classics from the adult shelves. When I retired, there were copies of Beatrix Potter beside Boswell’s Life of Johnson. From what I hear, there still are.” Thus despite new trends and ever-changing opinions, different tastes and occasional disagreements between staff members, the classics shelf, carousel, and corner survive. Certainly they have their champions in librarians such as Anne and Beth. And perhaps one day a new director named Dennis will support the classics shelf, when he is not fighting city hall, fundraising, and working tirelessly for all that is noble and true. People will wonder what has inspired him to do so much for libraries and for literature. He won’t say much on the topic, but at least he should be honest with himself. It has something to do with an infant menace who made the Penguins fly. (2011)

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First love, printed and bound  

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An eminent American librarian declares that when she was a child, Kay Thompson’s Eloise (1955) changed her life and inspired her to move to New York City when she reached adulthood. The current author secretly believes that Walter R. Brooks’s Freddy Goes Camping is equal to anything by Margaret Atwood or John Updike. Many librarians refuse to discuss the books that captivated them in childhood, and which as adults they still love beyond all reason. But some are willing to reveal their tastes and to describe how a particular title can inspire the deepest affection. You know the book. Your parents read it to you countless times, or you discovered it yourself and read it until it fell apart. You taped it together and reread it until the tape came loose. Then you stored it in a safe place and went to university. You studied hard. You read great literature of all sorts, but that one book occupied a special place in your heart, and you looked forward to your next opportunity to savor it. And what is the title of that book? It is impossible to predict what anyone prefers. Some people favor a particular classic above all others. “Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was and is the one book that means more to me than any other,” says Margie, a technical services librarian in Toronto. “I read it for the first time when I was ten years old, and it changed my life. It made me see that we’re all on some kind of journey that includes joy as well as hardship. And that life changes constantly.” Margie reads the novel every year. She is able to quote lengthy passages. While she has a degree in French and admires Racine and Flaubert, she insists that no author has claimed her affection as much as Mark Twain. “It’s not just an intellectual response to literary quality,” she says. “The first book in our lives affects us profoundly, so that we become permanently attached to it. It becomes part of our emotional make-up.”

8.1   Going Hobbit Rob, a corporate librarian in Vancouver, believes that what he calls the “one big book” can influence us more than it should and steer us in the wrong direction. Stagnation can ensue. “For me, it was Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings,” he says. “It was like a drug. I started with The Hobbit, which led me to the famous trilogy. I was hooked. I went through a period in my teens during which all I wanted to read was Tolkien. Middle Earth maps and posters covered the walls of my bedroom. I grew my hair long and wore clothes that looked elfish. My father suggested that I grow hair on my feet as well.” Rob’s schoolwork suffered. He chose menial jobs that required no mental effort and allowed him to live in his Tolkien-induced fantasy. He did not succeed in escaping his Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00008-6 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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mental addiction to Tolkien until a biology instructor at a community college loaned him H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau. What Rob calls his “path to recovery” involved a gradual switch to different genres. “Wells is a great writer, and it’s not only his science fiction that’s worth reading,” he says. “I whipped through The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, as well as his SF short stories. Then I started reading Kipps, assuming that it was the same sort of thing. It wasn’t, but it grabbed me, and I was free of Tolkien’s fantasy-rich influence. For months I didn’t open my dog-eared copy of Lord of the Rings. I even had a haircut. I completed a science degree, but I took several English courses as electives, and found myself enjoying D.H. Lawrence and more recent novelists such as Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan.” Rob rereads Lord of the Rings occasionally but keeps it in proper perspective. While he appreciates its literary merit, he suggests that one reason he valued it so highly for so long is that he did not want to grow up. Despite Mordor and armies of orcs, Middle Earth was a comfortable place to revisit; it became a second home. His mental and emotional readjustment allows him to enjoy it along with various other works for which he has developed a taste.

8.2  Magic Kingdom For some, the one book is not a classic. It might be in poor taste, or cheaply produced. Encouraging people to discuss such works can be difficult, owing to embarrassment arising from a dedication to anything considered to be inferior. A San Francisco children’s librarian who asked to remain anonymous explains her predicament in hushed tones. “I loved Disney publications,” she says, “especially one entitled Walt Disney’s Surprise Package, which contained versions of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, and Uncle Remus, among other stories. The book first appeared in 1944, with colour illustrations by Disney Studios. I doubt that some children’s librarians would approve of an item like this, since the editors took substantial liberties with the classic texts. That’s frowned upon by kidlit critics, and if I had admitted that I had a deep affection for Surprise Package when I was a library school student, my profs would probably have disapproved. I know for a fact that my children’s lit prof hated everything that Disney ever did. So I kept and still keep my first important book a secret. If anybody asks why I call my cat Walt, I say that he reminds me of Whitman. Hence my reputation as a highbrow is maintained.” A college library director in New England loved a volume in the Little Golden Book series entitled Good Night, Little Bear, with a dull text and insipid illustrations. A Dallas public librarian could not part with her copy of a comic book featuring Archie and Jughead. Most extraordinary of all, a Montreal social media consultant developed a profound attachment to a Sears Catalogue printed in the year he was born. He imagined the models for various clothing lines as characters in stories that he made up for his own amusement.

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“I don’t regard my love for that old catalogue as a bad thing,” he says. “Perhaps you’d like me to say that I discovered Proust and Dante shortly after my ninth birthday, and have never stopped reading them. But that’s not true. Whatever I needed as a kid, I found in that Sears Catalogue. It allowed me to use my imagination; somehow it encouraged me to create my own stories. You can give a kid a fancy toy, and he will get bored with it quickly. But give him a stick from a backyard tree, and he’ll turn it into a rifle, or Gretzky’s hockey stick, or a magic wand. A big empty box can become a little girl’s fort, or a cave, or a haunted house. And the Sears models in winter coats turned into my companions on imaginary trips to the North Pole; those in summer apparel helped me to paddle my canoe down the Amazon. I’ve learned to enjoy Proust—in translation—but I’m not sure that I would have developed a strong imagination if it were not for Sears.”

8.3  You can be a librarian One thing is certain: no matter how unliterary or unsophisticated your first important book might have been, it played a significant role in your personal development and the formation of your adult tastes. It is reasonable to assert that you would probably be a different person had you not encountered that book at an impressionable age. Perhaps a different book would have captivated you and influenced your mental and emotional growth in a different direction; and numerous other factors would have been involved in your development as well. But you can be sure that your book—now yellowed and badly stained—helped to turn you into whatever you have become. An outstanding example of how that book can inspire us is Denise, a Gen-X reference librarian in Calgary. Her book is Carol Greene’s I can be a librarian, a children’s nonfiction work published in 1988 with color photos of librarians and their patrons in action. Denise was enchanted with photos of library staffers, who all appeared so friendly. What interested her most, however, were two photos of catalogue cards. “I was twelve years old, and a typical preteen brat,” she says. “I was flipping through Greene’s book, when the catalogue cards caught my eye. They were the cards for Greene’s book, the very book I was holding, and I thought that was so neat. The book referred to itself. And it was just then that I realized how much I wanted to work in a library. Card catalogues have disappeared; in fact much of Greene’s book is outof-date. But that’s what got me started, and I’d say that if I hadn’t discovered Greene, I would have gone into teaching or law.” Sadly, your children rarely develop a passion for the same book that means so much to you. You might attempt to interest them in your book, giving them copies for birthday or Christmas gifts. You might read your book to them. You might even force them to sit down and have a look at your book, whether they like it or not. In most cases, you will be disappointed. They want something else, something that appeals to them through a process of selection that you can influence with only moderate success. Inevitably they will find something on their own, and the formation of a lifelong attachment will begin all over.

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8.4  Personal passion in the workplace If your child refuses to love your first book, perhaps library patrons will indulge you. You do not want to admit it, but you have been tempted to include that book in your collection just because you love it, and you like the idea of having it around. This is hardly an appropriate acquisitions policy, but you are not alone in adopting it, and after all, it’s only one book. Or is it? “A librarian I know had a thing about a title in the Hardy Boys series,” says Carol, a Seattle library technician. “Shortly after he arrived at our branch, our Hardy Boys collection started to grow. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but he ordered three copies of one Hardy Boys mystery. I thought that was a bit much.”

Carol asked the librarian why he had ordered the three copies. At first he offered a clever justification, claiming that the Hardy Boys series was an excellent introduction to detective mysteries and thrillers, which were very popular at the branch. He was only offering young readers the same sort of thing their parents enjoyed. As for the three copies of While the Clock Ticked, he swore that the story was one of the best in the series, and a good place to start. Then he confessed that he had always loved While the Clock Ticked more than any book in his childhood, that he continued to read it as a young adult, and that as a library school student, he had earned a high grade in a children’s literature class for a classroom presentation on it. Above all, he just wanted copies available at his workplace. If one or two had been borrowed, there would still be one available to him to enjoy during his breaks. Carol let the matter drop. “That librarian sounded so passionate about his first important book,” she says. “I didn’t have the heart to challenge him further. After all, what’s the harm? And to be honest, I had similar feelings for Nancy Drew books. One title—The Whispering Statue—I’ve read dozens of times. I loved it more than any other.” And how many copies of The Whispering Statue are on the shelves of Carol’s branch? Well…

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I refuse to incriminate myself. But the Nancy Drew series is a great introduction to mysteries, and I believe that young people should have a chance to enjoy the same genre that their parents do. It’s only fair. No further questions.

8.5  Reading for eternity Passionate feelings in youth for a particular book are one reason why various titles survive as long as they do. With a single champion and lifelong supporter, even the humblest work can stay in circulation for decades longer than you would expect. And in the end, according to Claude, a funeral director based in Victoria, B.C., book champions might stipulate that they be buried with the books that meant so much to them throughout their lives. “That’s no urban legend,” says Claude. “I’ve had clients who demand interment with Bibles, but also with Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Goodnight Moon, and different Harry Potter books. I had one client who made pre-arrangements—very wise—for his funeral and asked me to place his childhood copy of a Biggles book in his casket. He was surprisingly cheerful about this, and told me that he felt some comfort in knowing that he and his favourite book would always be together.” In such circumstances, Scotch tape won’t be needed. (2013)

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Section B Social Studies

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Alternative librarianship: voices from the field  

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Jim doesn’t want you to read this. “The less in print about alternative librarianship the better,” he says. “A librarian’s place is in a library, period.” Jim doesn’t want you to know that he’s a former college librarian who currently earns over $175,000 (US) per annum as a communications consultant specializing in corporate intranet management. As his client base grows, Jim’s company prospers and diversifies. “I got tired of telling semi-literate adolescents how to look up trivia. My salary did not allow me to plan very far ahead. I was sick of being in debt. So I moved on, and I don’t regret it for a moment. But that doesn’t mean other librarians should follow my example. They should stay put. And there’s no reason to quote me on this topic.” Sorry, Jim. There are good reasons for librarians to know about your work, your rationale for moving on, and alternative librarianship in general. The term itself is imprecise. What is “alternative librarianship”? Definitions vary. Many practitioners who could be described as alternative librarians resist the label. “Why is consulting considered ‘alternative’?” says Ken, a library services consultant in Toronto. “I never wanted to work in a public or academic library, but I still see my work as mainstream. I call myself a librarian, and I have the same credentials as anyone at a library.” Ken is certain that the distinction between a standard library job and an alternative library career is bogus. “The majority of librarians use approximately the same broad knowledge base. I deal with many of the same problems and issues that a public librarian deals with — the lack of availability of materials, the Internet, and the difficulty of finding current information on various subjects. In fact, I find the ‘alternative’ designation to be somewhat patronizing.” In North America, any librarian in an information-based job not traditionally recognized as standard or “normal” could be considered a practitioner of alternative librarianship. Often these practitioners rely on libraries for their revenues. “I’m a fundraiser for charities and non-profit institutions,” says Wendy, who graduated from the University of British Columbia School of Librarianship in the early 1970s. “I started out as a library fundraiser, but market demand for my services forced me to branch out. These days only 40 per cent of my clients are libraries. Raising money for a public library demands a thorough knowledge of library administration and budgeting, systems and other technical services, personnel issues, and library use patterns. And then you have to know how to promote the library, which is very different from a university or opera company or hospital. The corporate sponsorship of a library must be handled gingerly. You can’t have a company’s logo stamped on every Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00009-8 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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title page and terminal screen, but you must find ways to boost the company’s profile. If I were to quit this job, I suppose that I could work as a United Nations negotiator in a war zone. The stress levels are about the same.” Other alternative practitioners have little or no library business. For example, Paula is a corporate records manager and Internet security specialist in Calgary. Although she appreciates the library science training she received at McGill University, she does not depend on library connections for any aspect of her job. “I take my son to the local library for children’s programs, and while I’m there I find my husband mysteries and thrillers. But my professional work is distant from traditional librarianship. I’ve had to learn a lot more about electronic networks and security issues than most librarians will ever have to think about. I attend the occasional library conference to see old friends. For business purposes, however, I go to computer trade shows where I’m probably the only person with a library degree. I’m not complaining. My income increases every year, and I receive perks that most public librarians can only dream about. I believe that higher salaries motivate many traditional librarians to pursue alternative careers.” Roger provides evidence to the contrary. He left a lucrative corporate library position in Toronto to become a book dealer specializing in modern first editions. “I love what I do. I don’t even think of it as work,” he says. “My house is my office. I have around 200 clients, mostly private collectors, to whom I sell top-quality editions of novels and poetry. Signed copies of works by recent American authors bring in my basic income. Occasionally I acquire and sell something very special. Earlier this year I sold a couple of Hemingways with delightful inscriptions — wonderful stuff that flew through my hands in a couple of days. But I don’t earn as much as I did in my corporate library days, and I’ve lost my benefits package. Still, I’d never go back.” Roger exemplifies the practitioner who is obliged to retrain himself midway through his career. “I went from special librarianship to rare book librarianship,” he says. “Now I use the same resources as any rare book curator: dealers’ catalogues, auction records, and bibliographies. I’ve learned standard prices and basic conservation techniques. I’ve gone against the grain of modern librarianship in that I’ve moved from high-tech information management to low-tech bibliomania. It’s a Luddite’s life.” The opportunity to learn something new attracts many librarians to alternative careers. In 1985, Sarah left her children’s services position in Vancouver to develop a practice catering to British Columbia seniors, particularly those living in institutions. “It started as an experiment. I approached several private hospitals with a proposal for adult story-times. One 20-bed facility agreed to let me perform for a seniors’ coffee-time group. I read them a pair of short stories by Somerset Maugham. They loved it, and so did I. One elderly gentleman in a wheelchair wouldn’t let me leave the coffee room until I promised to return. I came back the next day, and in a sense I have never left.” Directors of hospitals, community centers, and seniors’ day programs find funding for Sarah in their entertainment and recreational therapy budgets. Families of bedridden (or “home-based”) seniors pay her to make house calls. She reads Leacock to church groups and Saki to ladies’ auxiliaries.

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“I’ve worked hard to develop my offerings and my market,” says Sarah. “I experimented for a couple of years with storytelling and reading techniques that are appropriate for audiences of seniors. I’ve taken on difficult assignments — for example, in hospices.” “I find seniors to be the most challenging and least forgiving audience. They expect you to be at your best every minute, and they’re unwilling to cut you any slack. But they pay attention to every detail, every nuance. So I ham it up as much as possible, render dialogue in different accents, and use dramatic silence and comic timing whenever I can. My audiences of children were easier to please and much more predictable, but now I’m hooked on service to seniors. And I think that with an aging population there will be an increasing demand for this kind of service. The library profession must recognize the demographic trend and adapt to older users’ needs.” Sarah has developed a series of seniors’ programs that she has recently started to offer in the United States. Especially popular are her workshop on journal writing and personal history, her presentations on memory improvement, and her introductory lectures on genealogy. “I took a couple of courses on manuscripts and archival management when I was a library school student,” explains Sarah. “These courses turned out to be far more useful than I had expected. Seniors are often very concerned about their personal papers and the accounts of family history that they will pass on to their grandchildren. They want to get their facts straight. Some of them want to leave behind stories of a confessional nature that they don’t want to circulate before they die. I’m constantly considering ethical questions as they arise from family history projects. I’ve also had to become proficient at setting up tape recorders and video equipment.” Organizing and leading book discussion groups and film clubs for seniors is one of Sarah’s favorite programs. She compiles reading and viewing lists, finds background materials, photocopies handouts, and makes sure that there are enough chairs and coffee cups. “Reading clubs can be extremely popular in seniors’ centres,” says Sarah. “They can also be exhausting to manage. When a group starts a lively discussion, they may see no good reason to quit. And sometimes people argue. Last year in an extended care home I almost had to stand between two very old women who couldn’t agree about Madame Bovary. One woman thought that Flaubert’s heroine was merely misguided; the other swore that she was hopelessly immoral. I started to worry about the possibility of mayhem, since both of these old dears were armed with a cane. Fortunately they calmed down when their lunch trays arrived.” Most alternative librarians believe that their ranks will grow in regions where library jobs are scarce. Wendy, Paula, and Sarah think that their work could broaden the intellectual base of librarianship and establish new forms of professional activity. “It’s good to see library schools offering courses on alternative librarianship and encouraging students to investigate different forms of employment,” says Wendy. “I think that library school instructors are open minded about non-standard forms of information work. Certainly they’re talking about it a lot more these days.” Jim won’t be happy when he hears about this. (1998)

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Life at the cellular level: dealing with wireless communications in libraries

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Dan told Carmen that the wedding was off. He didn’t feel right about their relationship. He needed space. He didn’t want to cause pain, but he had to tell her the truth. And he told her on his cell phone, near the reference desk of a public library in California. Helen was on reference duty that afternoon. She heard everything. “Actually, Dan is a creep,” she says. “Minutes after he bust up with Carmen, he stood beside the periodical rack and phoned Cindy. They’ve been an item for weeks, and Carmen never knew about it. She’s better off without him.” Helen hears cellular conversations on every shift. As the use of portable IT grows, she also finds herself begging researchers not to leave their laptops unattended in public areas. She has lost track of the number of misplaced cell phones she has returned to flustered owners and is constantly asking kids to turn down their cell-based recorded music. Cell phones elicit her deepest contempt. “I can’t help hearing what cell phone users say,” she explains. “I’m forced to listen to dope deals, charity scams and attempts to sell stolen goods. I hear intimate calls that would embarrass a phone sex operator. I’m tired of it.” If Helen asks a cell phone user to continue a call outside the library, she often receives an incredulous look. “It’s as if I’ve committed a serious breach of conduct. Cell users are astonished that anyone – especially some librarian – would dare to interrupt their calls. They don’t seem to realize that they’ve been letting everyone within 50 feet know about their lovemaking techniques. Apparently portable IT has given rise to a new conception of personal space.” Exactly. Portable IT allows people to create their own little worlds, wherever they are. They can say what they like as long as they’re wireless. Cell phones can also foster the illusion that private communications are somehow privileged and secure. Those who rely on the dwindling number of pay phones still whisper and cover the mouthpiece when they relay sensitive information. But cell phone users often assume that they can wander wherever they like, discussing anything from the trivial to the classified.

10.1  Kids and parents In countless libraries, librarians tell similar stories about cellular intrusiveness. A Children’s Services coordinator in Vancouver notes that cell conversations don’t necessarily stop for Storytime. “I’ve had trouble for years with parents who plant their kids at my feet, then stand at the back of the room to chatter on their cells,” says Debbie, who offers storytelling and Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00010-4 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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puppetry programs. “It’s an ongoing problem for me, especially when several cell users chatter at the same time, and I’m forced to speak louder and louder. But the latest and even more irritating trend is what I call the cell child. While I’m working hard to capture my audience’s imagination with a recent Caldecott winner, the cell child in front of me – perhaps as young as five – is on his or her cell to a friend across town. Sometimes I have a couple of cell children in the audience, and they send text messages to each other. I don’t blame the kids. It’s their parents with whom I have a serious issue.” But when Debbie asks parents to restrict their children’s use of cell phones in the library, she sometimes receives angry replies. “I’ve had parents come at me with free speech arguments,” she says. “They believe that their cell children should be able to chat anywhere. I tell them that if their kids tried it at school, the teachers would shut them down. That’s usually enough for most parents, and the phones disappear, at least temporarily.” Another matter of concern is parents’ dependence on cell phones to stay in touch with unattended children. For example, a mother leaves her young son in the library while she goes shopping at nearby grocery store. The little boy knows how to use the cell but gets upset when Mum takes over an hour to buy groceries. The librarian is forced to allay his fears and try to explain that Mum hasn’t abandoned him altogether. “My administration urges me to be diplomatic in these situations,” says Debbie. “Frankly, I feel like tearing a strip off the parents. I’m a librarian, not a social worker. People shouldn’t treat my branch like a daycare. Besides, the children really do get scared when all they have in the way of loving care is a wedge of portable plastic from the phone company. The last time it happened, I told the father of a six year-old girl that I was on the verge of calling 911 to report a lost child. That got his attention.” Librarians in large urban areas also mention the risk of leaving children unsupervised in areas that a kidnapper or pedophile might frequent. “A parent hands his child a cell phone and tells him to wait in the library, go read a book, whatever,” says Dan, who works in Adult Services at a library in the US Midwest. “The frightening thing is, we’re increasingly aware of certain really awful people who use our resources – who pull up kiddie porn sites on our terminals, for instance. I worry that one day they’ll inveigle a child to join them outside the library, to see the proverbial new puppy in the back of a van. All we’ll find is a cell phone that the child left behind in our washroom. I don’t think that this sort of scenario is improbable, not in our downtown branches.” Dan believes that cell phones contribute to a false sense of security for some parents and suggests that librarians should inform them of the kinds of risks that prevail in public libraries. He notes that parents are often unaware of the need to safeguard their children in all public places.

10.2  A cell-free zone One traditional but nonetheless effective way of discouraging cell phone use is to post signs banning them. Contrary to what some librarians think, a cell ban is not unduly harsh. Nor is it a threat to free speech. A ban stops nobody from saying what he or she

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wishes, as long as the conversation takes place outside the library and out of the hearing of patrons who need a quiet environment. Restaurants, theatres, schools, and hospitals have imposed bans on cell phone use without controversy. Aboard commercial aircraft, your fellow flyers might tell you to stow your cell before the flight attendant has a chance to inform you of the strictly enforced in-flight ban. “Many libraries already post signs that restrict cell phone use,” says Barb, a Canadian library consultant. “You must remember, however, that not all signs are clear and easy to understand. For example, one library bought no-cell signs from an American supplier. You’ve probably seen these signs: a cell phone in a red circle, with a red line running through the centre. Close up, they looked great. But when we tacked them above the circulation desk, the graphics became indistinct. It looked as if we were banning bananas from the stacks.” Barb recommends a phased-in approach to restricting cell phone use in libraries. First, librarians can post large signs near the front entrance. “The initial message should be simple: please turn off your cellular phone in the library. Librarians should back this up by asking cell users to go outside if they need to make calls.” After several weeks, Barb recommends subtler signage at the entrances, plus more signs in reference and stack areas. “I’d avoid telling people that the library has a no-cell policy, mostly because some people don’t like the word ‘policy.’ It can sound authoritarian to some patrons, who will make a point of flouting the rule. The best course of action is to suggest that the cell phone user is distracting other patrons. At which point, the user might look a little embarrassed, and shut off his phone. In most libraries, librarians can eradicate cell phone use in a couple of months. Regular patrons will simply accept the fact that the library is a cell-free zone.” Barb has been resolute in her treatment of cell phone users since her days as a public librarian in New York City. A decade ago, she worked in a branch frequented by a man who liked to phone his friends and regale them with tales of his amorous exploits. His conversations were loud and offensive. One day, after concluding a long and boastful call in the reference area, he heard his cell phone ring. He answered it. “Hello?” “Good afternoon, sir. This is the librarian. We’ve been forced to listen to you for weeks. None of the people who work here believe your stories, although your wife might. How about turning off your phone? A little silence will keep everybody happy.” And he was never heard from – or overheard – again. (2003)

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Moonlight sonata: librarians discuss their work after work

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They get sweaty together on her living room floor. She urges him to work hard, to flex every muscle in his body. Occasionally he gasps or moans. She won’t let him quit until he collapses in exhaustion. He is one of Toronto’s senior insurance executives, with clout in Queen’s Park and Ottawa. She charges him $80 an hour, the going rate for a personal trainer. She specializes in exercise programs for people with bad backs. Three evenings a week, various clients end up on her floor, toning their abdominal muscles and stretching their spines. They don’t ask her about her day job. They’d be surprised to know the truth. We’ll call her Denise. On weekdays you can find her at a branch of a public library, where she serves patrons at the reference desk. She has a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from a reputable Canadian university. Aged 34 and single, she loves librarianship and plans to work in the profession until she retires. She has only one problem that causes her to lose sleep. She’s in debt. She has paid off her student loan, but two years ago she bought a new car. Last year she traveled to France and Italy for the first time, “to see some art and drink some wine.” Now she’s stuck with the Mastercard and American Express bills, and she needs cash to pay them.

11.1  Debt management and fitness “I can’t complain about my salary,” she says. “But I need to earn more so that I can take care of these debts. It would take me a long time to pay them off if I didn’t offer my personal training services. At the rate I’m going, I should be debt-free within six months.” Denise believes that moonlighting as a personal trainer offers her more than financial benefits. “My library job involves desk work and staring at a computer screen for hours every day. Before I started working out as a trainer, I felt out-of-shape and lethargic. Now, however, I feel as energetic as I did when I was a student. And I sleep better.” Still, Denise worries about how her library colleagues would view her other job. There is no regulation prohibiting her extracurricular work on the front room floor, but she suspects that her library’s management might disapprove. “My undergrad degree was in Physical Education, and I took additional training in kinesiology. That’s perfectly respectable, but sometimes I think that my fellow librarians wouldn’t take me seriously if they knew that I was a trainer. We swear that we shun stereotypes, but everybody knows about jocks. They’d rather watch football than read Kant, right? And would you promote a jock to a higher position? I doubt it. So I keep quiet about training, and everybody’s happy.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00011-6 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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11.2  The rotten nest egg It’s not only younger librarians who moonlight. Don, aged 59, has worked in corporate libraries across North America. Currently he runs a library for a pharmaceutical research firm in Vancouver. He is well paid and assumes that he will work for his employer until he retires. On the side, however, he works as a market analyst for an investment firm. “During the daytime I conduct information searches on topics such as cancer treatments and case management,” he says. “It’s a fascinating job, and the people I report to give me all the support I need to produce results.” Unfortunately Don lost much of his retirement savings when the dotcom bubble burst. He had borrowed heavily to buy shares in several high-risk outfits. “The companies in which I invested looked like sure things right up to the last moment. Then they went broke. I’m not blaming the people who ran those companies, and I was fully aware that I was taking chances. But one morning I woke up and realized that I had almost no pension left, and to avoid the poorhouse when I retire, I have to make up my losses.”

11.3  Food for thought Two evenings a week, Don looks for opportunities to make sound investments in food processing and distribution firms. He considers North American food suppliers to be one of the safest bets, “since we’re not inclined to stop eating any time soon.” He finds small new companies with good prospects and solid reputations and compiles reports on their potential. “I hand my reports to an investment manager who then makes a decision either to invest in the company or to wait and see how it performs over the next year or two. The investment firm knows that I work another job, and doesn’t care. But I’m not sure how the management at the pharmaceutical firm would feel if they knew what I was doing on the side. I don’t think they’d like the idea. But they have imposed no official condition of employment regarding moonlighting. So tomorrow night I’m looking into a frozen meat pie producer and a cake factory.” Don notes that an additional job might create tax problems if one isn’t careful. He recommends disclosure—what he calls a “full confession”—to an accountant well before tax filing is required. “The taxation people don’t care how many jobs you work at, as long as you’re honest with them. I let my accountant handle the filing, and she makes sure that I get all the available write-offs and benefits. She also steers my additional income into reliable funds that will eventually turn into long-term retirement income.” Considering his past losses, current day job, and moonlighting income, Don thinks that he’ll have earned enough money to retire comfortably by the age of 70. He warns that many other information specialists might find themselves in the same trouble that he experienced if they engage in risky speculation. Aside from these matters, however, he has developed a profound interest in food-related information.

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“It’s a huge new world to me,” he says. “We take so much of what we eat for granted. When you think about the multiplicity of food-related subjects, you understand how complex the field really is. I learn something exciting every time I search for nutritional data. And I believe that my pharmaceutical employer has actually benefited from my involvement in my other job. I’ve enhanced my research skills across the board, to everybody’s advantage.”

11.4  Beethoven for adult amateurs While many moonlighters are primarily interested in making extra money, Colleen has become a piano teacher owing to her love for music. Trained in Cincinnati and Toronto, she dreamed of becoming a concert pianist. But after completing her Master’s in performance, she realized that she lacked the talent necessary for a career in front of an audience. “I treated library school as a refuge from my failure,” she says. “I avoided anything to do with music for years. I didn’t even attend concerts. Eventually I got a job in the tech services division of a public library on the Prairies, and for years I was happy with that.” One day, however, she heard a children’s librarian playing a song on an ancient upright piano for a group of young patrons. “She played abysmally. I knew right then that I had a solemn duty to rescue the children from that librarian’s lack of musical training. I took her on as a student, and in a couple of months she was much more proficient. And I discovered my talent for teaching.” Colleen specializes in refreshing the piano skills of adult amateurs. She guides them toward the music that fits their temperaments and tastes and attempts to sharpen their performance abilities. She won’t take on budding professionals as students nor does she accept children. “I empathize with adult learners who are looking for ways to reincorporate the piano into their lives,” she says. “I doubt that my library would look favourably on my outside work, at least not officially. But several local librarians have become my students, so I don’t think my employer will tell me to stop teaching.” What music do her librarian students want to learn? “Either Beethoven or jazz. I have one little man who worships Brahms, or so he tells me. But at present he’s working on one of Beethoven’s sonatas, and doing very well. He should have a decent feel for the piece in a year or so.”

11.5  Getting sweaty for fun and profit In an age of increased longevity and ongoing financial need, moonlighting is an attractive option for many information workers. At worst, another job outside the library could lead to exhaustion, poor work habits, and absenteeism. At best, however,

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moonlighting could improve your finances and give you a new perspective on your day job. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many librarians have a little something on the side, and that libraries have yet to clamp down on full-time employees who do so. What would your Director think if she caught you teaching Beethoven? Never fear. After hours she could be stretching the spines of insurance men. It’s a living. (2005)

Manual matters: developing successful guidelines and losing priceless boredom

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Is there a classic treatise on boredom? There must be. Doubtless it first appeared as a weighty Latin codex by an anonymous author, with sections on the physical sensation of boredom, its long-term effects, and its incidence in social settings. The opening passage, a magnificent description of the Great Bores in History, was reprinted in prose anthologies for centuries. Later versions of what came to be known as the Lassitudo contained interminable footnotes in German, mildly obscene woodcuts, and an appendix by a forgotten Renaissance bishop on the use of beeswax for earplugs. But where is the Modern Library edition of the Lassitudo with an introduction by John Ralston Saul? Or the Penguin, glossy and overpriced, with notes and mordant commentary by Auberon Waugh? Where are the interpretations and deconstructions, the theses and dissertations that, in describing the Lassitudo’s influence on Western Thought, exemplify its author’s notion of verbal mud? Evidently the Canon has misplaced a masterpiece. We must take action. As librarians, we owe the world at least one tattered Lassitudo manuscript or incunable, or perhaps Samuel Johnson’s bedside copy, with illegible annotations and the faint brown rings from a thousand teacups. We must scour the shelves of every Special Collections Department and Rare Book Room, every library nook and cranny, in search of that lone survivor. The scholarly world depends on us to find it. And if we fail? If after vigorous searching we come up with nothing but a stack of 8-track recordings of Dean Martin or that Shel Silverstein songbook that somebody considered too spicy for Community Taste? There is a substitute. It lacks the literary quality of the Lassitudo, but it demonstrates every aspect of dullness, as if the Lassitudo’s author had compiled it to prove his points. You can find it in the staff room on the shelf beside the Christmas decorations. There might be a copy in the bottom drawer of the reference desk. In many libraries you will discover it online. It’s your library manual, that compilation of rules and procedures and lists and out-of-date phone numbers that library employees review only at gunpoint, or to relieve insomnia. Was your manual a sop to some head librarian or trustee who wanted you to manage the library more efficiently? Did you cram a pile of bumf into a three-ring binder, add a title page with the latest logo, and deliver the lot to a dark corner of the Administration Office, wishing that nobody would examine it closely? If so, you probably got your wish. But what if you decided to write a manual that your colleagues would find useful? The essential qualities of a successful manual remain what they were in former times. First, it must be brief. Your current manual is probably too long, a hefty chunk of text that could cause lower-back injuries in small- to medium-sized readers. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00012-8 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Nobody wants to spend time reading such stuff, and you know it. Allow your new manual to be no more than 50 pages. To keep the text short, be concise. Try to avoid the style you developed in university to grind out those dreadful term papers. Consider this example from a public library in the Midwestern US: During summer months (including June–August) the front door of the branch is to be left open, unless it is to be kept closed and shut tightly. Keys to locks and other door devices are to be stored in the librarian’s drawer in the staff room, or on the brass hook in the librarian’s office, which is to be locked at all times for the librarian’s security. Thereafter the librarian can decide whether to keep doors open or shut, especially washroom doors, public and staff. The author of this wordy guideline is confused. He or she wants to say something about the branch’s doors and locks but is not sure how to construct the guideline. Unfortunately there is lots of space to say little or nothing, and it is unlikely that any reader could take such nonsense seriously. Nevertheless we fear for the poor branch librarian, who might find herself locked in her office. Demanding concision from manual authors could set her free. Of course clarity is essential for any text. If readers can’t understand a sentence, they might neglect to read the paragraph that contains it. If they neglect a paragraph, they might be tempted to ignore an entire section of procedures. Hence, manual authors should review every sentence for clarity. One way of testing the clarity of a sentence or paragraph is to read it out loud. If a sentence or phrase doesn’t sound clear, revise it. Allow no confusion to creep into your manual. A clear text is one that people will make an effort to read. Manuals become out-of-date. In Toronto, an engineering firm’s library manual contains an orientation section on Hollerith cards. There is no mention of servers or the Internet. The library keeps a separate binder concerning the use of audiovisual equipment that was obsolescent three decades ago. One has the impression that the firm’s engineers wear flared trousers and platform shoes, whereas the librarian sports granny glasses and love beads. The manual has archival charm, but otherwise it’s useless. Why bother keeping it on the shelf? Most manuals require general updating annually; sections on information technology often need more frequent revision. With employee turnover and transfers, personnel directories are inaccurate almost from the time that they’re printed. The solution, according to librarians who rely on electronic guidelines, is an online manual that one can update whenever changes occur. In theory, the online manual sounds good. In practice, however, online manuals go stale as quickly as those in hard copy. Unless the librarian is determined to keep the manual current, it will soon show its age. Old manuals lose their relevance to library operations and can make a library appear out of step with its sponsoring institution and patrons. Some might argue that swimming against the tide is not necessarily bad, but what are engineers working on developments in nanotechnology to make of a manual that contains instructions on how to operate a Bell & Howell slide projector? It might cross the senior partner’s mind that the library is no longer a part of the firm’s corporate culture, and that the

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librarian should make space for an information specialist familiar with multimedia presentations and advanced online research techniques. Perhaps the old librarian is already as technically competent and up-to-date as the hot new information specialist, but the manual doesn’t indicate this to the senior partner. He becomes suspicious and starts dropping hints about “new blood” and “changing with the times.” And perhaps he’ll drop in on the HR manager for a chat about the need for information workers who understand the firm’s high-tech direction. A tired manual can cause a lot of trouble for librarians who are unaware of the negative impression that its old guidelines can make. Often patrons are frustrated in trying to find information in a manual. Without a detailed table of contents, an index, pagination, and clear titles for all sections, a manual is difficult for anyone to use. Why do such impenetrable manuals exist? Because their authors have delayed the development of the standard printed tools, or assumed that their manuals are complete and useful without them. And so they are, if those manuals are heavy enough to serve as doorstoppers. Without a table of contents and index, how can anyone find out if the manual covers all library operations, or only specific aspects such as collections development and systems management? Many manuals demonstrate not only the knowledge of their authors but also the blind spots. The reference librarian at a public library should not be forced to write or edit that part of the manual concerned with technical services, especially when that librarian has forgotten everything she learned about cataloguing. Nor should the systems librarian be obliged to draft instructions on the conservation of medieval manuscripts. In fact the production of manuals for large libraries is usually a team effort, as librarians with different specialties work together to produce a comprehensive set of guidelines. As long as the authors acknowledge the need for brevity, concision, clarity, currency, and printed tools, the manual can be successful. But in a world of successful library manuals, we’d lack any substitute for our missing treatise on boredom. To the scholars we’d have to admit defeat. Perhaps we’ve underestimated the worth of those wretched three-ring binders. They might be better than nothing. In the end, however, no substitute can compensate for the loss of that treatise. As the only species that yawns from boredom, humanity is much the less without its missing classic. Lassitudo come home! (2005)

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Keeping up appearances: looking like a librarian in an age of paranoia

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Hurricane Katrina inspired numerous organizations in the southern US to compile disaster plans. Determined to protect its employees, offices, and information systems, a firm of architects in Jacksonville, Florida, retained me to prepare them for their next big storm. In the summer of 2006, I flew to Jacksonville and conducted a risk assessment of their building and information technology systems. To a British Columbian like me, Florida’s humidity can be oppressive. One can’t help moving in slow motion, and the air feels almost too heavy to breathe. But there are always memorable things to see and experience in a southern city: fried grouper and grits, a first-rate football team, and an elderly African–American who sat on a park bench and played blues on a battered guitar. “Ah do requests,” he said in a gravelly voice, “but Ah don’t do no opera.” In the evenings, I cooled off in the Jacksonville Public Library’s new main branch, which featured one of North America’s more attractive library interiors. My eye wandered from a volume of Faulkner to the high ceilings and tall, dignified doorways that recalled Renaissance designs. Back at my client’s building, I made long lists of the risks that Floridian architects face: power outages that cause data loss, high winds that knock out communications systems, and fires and flooding that destroy vital documents. I made copious notes and flew home to Vancouver with the basic ingredients of a disaster plan. I promised to come back to Jacksonville for further planning consultations that November.

13.1  The customs of the country Shortly after Remembrance Day, I arrived at Vancouver’s bustling airport 3 h before my flight to Jacksonville. I checked in at the airline counter and confirmed my seat. Then I strolled through the doors of the US Customs to apply for my work visa. Having spoken at length with the US Consulate in Vancouver, I did not anticipate problems in getting a visa, boarding my flight, and delving into Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi as the aircraft took off. I carried with me what I believed to be adequate paperwork, including my old work visa, a new passport, and a fat file of documents pertaining to my Jacksonville project. The Customs officer who examined my paperwork seemed to distrust me immediately. He asked me a number of questions about my activities in the United States and scoffed at my answers. I couldn’t say anything to satisfy him. Then he said, “You tell me you’re a librarian. You don’t look like a librarian. No, you don’t. I’m refusing you Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00013-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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entry to the United States.” He sent me back to the airline counter, where a frazzled attendant told me that these days many people are turned back at the border. “It’s all about 9/11, you know. If the Customs boys don’t like you, they won’t let you through. I’m sorry, sir.” She sounded as though she often said the same thing to flustered, middle-aged men whose crime it was to look like something other than a librarian. And now I must be honest. I didn’t know what a librarian should look like, particularly a male librarian in the first decade of our new millennium. What did the Customs officer expect me to resemble? Was there a stereotype that would make him assume that I was what I was? I asked a number of my associates for their views, which were enlightening as well as disappointing. The fact is, while the women in this profession can rely on a well-developed stereotype to get them across borders, the men lack one. Gentlemen, something must be done.

13.2  Helpful dandruff Of course my students in the Library and Information Technician Program at Vancouver’s Langara College held strong opinions on the matter. What should a male librarian look like? “You’ve got to wear glasses,” said Jessica. “Get a pair with a broken bridge between the lenses, and wrap the break with masking tape. Look dorky, but not dumb. And get some dandruff. It helps.” My vision is good. I can still read the small print in my cheap editions of Mark Twain without difficulty, and I can detect dandruff on a shoulder from up to 100 m. But if travel requires goggles that reassure US Customs officers that I am dorky but not dumb, I’ll visit my neighborhood optometrist forthwith. I’m not sure how well she will take my request for a broken pair; she might tell me to break them myself. How should I accomplish this? “The men in the library where I work sit on their glasses by accident,” said Brent, who is one of the program’s more practical thinkers. “They’re cogitating deeply on circulation trends, and they don’t look where they’re about to sit. They get the masking tape from the janitor. And if you don’t have dandruff, use chalk dust. It works.” Brent will go far, but then so will Linda. “Always look unprepared for your destination,” she said. “A male librarian would wear a tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers to Florida. Oh, and an ugly tie with soup stains… For that trendy tropical touch, wear white gym socks and sandals. If you must wear other footwear, prefer brogues and make sure that at least one shoelace is undone when you approach the Customs counter.” Not surprisingly, Linda is one of the program’s top students. She offered further invaluable observations. “Male librarians are indecisive about everything. They can’t decide which book to take on trips abroad, so they take a whole bag of items – philosophy, history, poetry and textbooks on library administration. They don’t actually read any of these, of course, because they pick up a thriller or mystery at the airport bookshop, and tuck it in a pocket along with their breath mints and well-used cotton handkerchiefs.”

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13.3  Librarians, beards, etc. Librarians from across Canada offered additional details. Interestingly enough, the males I interviewed did not look anything like the stereotypes they described. “Grow a beard, but not one long enough to chew,” said Larry, a beardless public librarian in Toronto. “Wear worn-out loafers, and always carry a stapler. When you search your pockets for your passport, take out the stapler and put it on the counter. The Customs guy will automatically consider you dorky and suspect that you’re a librarian. He’ll probably confiscate the stapler. After all, it could be used as a weapon, especially if it’s loaded. But you’ll get your work visa. And hey! You can always buy a used stapler in Florida, from a retired male librarian.” Does Larry carry a stapler? “Only in my briefcase, along with my laptop. But I’m young. By the time I’m middle-aged, I’ll carry all sorts of stuff in my pockets: aside from a stapler, there’ll be keys from apartments that I vacated decades before, old bus tickets, a wallet held together by a rubber band, a tire pressure gauge that a patron dropped in the reference room … the list is endless.” Paul, a corporate librarian in Vancouver and a former member of his university’s rugby team, suggested that one’s demeanor contributes to personal appearance and supports a Customs officer’s assumption that the character before him is a librarian. “Speak softly and hunch your shoulders,” he said in his booming voice. “Look scared of everything. Allow the Customs officer to bully you. You’re too shy to establish eye contact, so stare at your sandals. Speak only when spoken to. The officer will get bored with you and probably give you a visa. Don’t underestimate the importance of non-verbal communication.”

13.4  Star power There remains the question of beauty. Should a stereotypical librarian be drop-dead gorgeous? Fact: Marian the Librarian, that character in The Music Man whom you’ve derided for so long, was played by Shirley Jones, one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood history. Take another look. On screen with Robert Preston, Jones is radiant, a mixture of high intelligence, integrity, and downright sexiness. Very few human beings are blessed with such appeal. Can we expect a screen version of a male librarian to be as attractive? If so, whom would Hollywood cast as a male librarian for today’s audiences? “Sean Connery would be perfect as an aging head of reference,” said Jim, a public librarian in Winnipeg. “The movie would concern a terrorist plot to destroy an American city. The terrorists would kidnap the librarian and demand that he provide them with information on how to build a weapon of mass destruction.” Jim was only warming up. “The librarian gives them the instructions, but leaves out an essential detail. The terrorists create a weapon that backfires on them. The city is saved. The chief of police shakes the Connery character’s hand and asks him where he learned his

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counterterrorism tactics. Connery looks the chief in the eye and says, “In my library school’s core program, just like everybody else.” In the final scene, the head librarian, played by Sigourney Weaver, asks Connery what he’s doing after work. He replies, ‘Is that a reference question, or are you just glad to see me?’” This movie concept is worth stealing and could go a long way to developing a positive stereotype for male librarians. Connery is Connery, no matter how much fake dandruff the makeup people sprinkle on his tweed, no matter how much soup has stained his necktie. As for me, I intend to return to Jacksonville via the Vancouver airport and will not hesitate to appear at the US Customs counter. This time my performance will be stellar. I’ll speak softly and carry a big stapler. White socks and sandals, indeed! (2007)

Surviving hard times: how libraries can deal with recessions

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This just in: stock markets have crashed. No, wait! They’ve soared to amazing highs. The best bald heads in New York and London have rescued our dreams and our pensions, and the future is sunny. The banks are flush with cash. We can all start spending again, and the children’s librarians at our local libraries can invest in new puppets. But maybe they should postpone that purchase. What astonishes us about recent economic news is not its pessimism, but the speed at which it changes. Reading a newspaper’s financial pages has become exhausting. The stories are out of date before the ink dries. It’s almost impossible to stay current. And what has happened to the usual disasters? Has avian flu died out? Are there no more floods in China and earthquakes in southern Europe? It seems that bank failures have eclipsed all other issues. Global warming has become tepid. Now we’re compelled to concentrate on unemployment and poverty resulting from the huge losses of financial institutions.

14.1  Balance required Nevertheless, we need a balanced perspective. The losses are bad, but they might not be as deep as the doomsayers predict, and economic recovery might occur soon. It’s possible that in a year global markets could stabilize. In fact, we require plans to manage all contingencies, good and bad. Good contingencies, such as renewed economic growth and the end of a recession, would allow us to continue whatever projects and initiatives we scheduled before the economy weakened. Bad contingencies would force us to control costs through measures such as budgets cuts, layoffs, and postponement of services. “It’s likely that public spending in North America and Europe is going to freeze up for a while,” says Roger McIntyre, a UK-based accountant who advises banks on credit and taxation. “That means that any institution that relies on public funding will receive less. That drop in funding could be especially hard on libraries if they’re not ready for it.” McIntyre graduated from the University of Western Ontario in the early 1980s and fondly remembers Canadian public libraries. He notes that a branch library in Ontario can have more plentiful resources than a much larger branch in a British city. “Canadian libraries have public washrooms, photocopiers that work, even coffee machines,” he says. “The book collections are often larger and in better condition than those in British libraries. There are more staffers behind the counters in Canada. And the public access terminals are much newer. Canadian libraries have a lot farther to fall than many libraries in the U.K. and Europe.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00014-1 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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14.2  ERM According to McIntyre and numerous other financial analysts, there exists the possibility of “something like the Great Depression,” although the attempts by governments to prevent such an event could be successful. What risk managers recommend to deal with the range of economic possibilities is enterprise risk management, or ERM. Many organizations have plans to deal with fires, floods, and other natural disasters. They might develop measures to control losses from theft, fraud, and vandalism. But ERM covers all of the other contingencies that could cause grief. Public and academic library ERM plans address circumstances arising from economic and political turmoil, the “orphaning” of IT systems, and budget cuts and shortfalls. ERM planning for libraries begins with a reexamination of broad priorities. Most librarians will claim that the top priority is service to the public or a particular user group, such as students at a school or on a university campus. The “Vision Statement” and “Statement of Library Goals”—often posted on walls and bulletin boards, and easily ignored—can become important documents for ERM planning purposes. Those collections of platitudes indicate a starting point that might not be obvious as the effects of a panic take hold. “Once you know your priorities, you’re well on your way to managing risks that prevail when the economy sours,” says Carrie Hall, a risk management consultant in Vancouver. “If libraries want to serve their patrons during hard times, and they’re faced with cutbacks, their ERM plan should cover what they’ll cut, and how, and when. There are ways to make cuts that are not nearly as painful as you’d think.”

14.3  More management and why not For example, Hall mentions bigger management models. She suggests that public institutions such as libraries can often postpone their implementation for years without serious consequences. “In many cases, institutions can save money by keeping management lean,” she says. “More management positions will inevitably cost more money, which libraries might not want to allocate during a recession. Perhaps in future it would be feasible to hire new managers, but not for the time being.” Libraries should also consider postponing the purchase and implementation of new technology. But there are circumstances in which it would be prudent to make such a purchase. For example, a recession might force IT suppliers to lower their prices to reduce inventories and retain market share. Libraries can take advantage of a supplier’s need to sell products quickly. There might also be opportunities for payment plans especially advantageous to public institutions with smaller budgets. A supplier might allow a library to pay for a new computer system over a number of years and include in the deal a maintenance package for a minimal fee. Such deals are less common during boom times.

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“High-tech suppliers don’t like to admit it, but in difficult economic times they can be desperate to offload their inventories,” says Larry Collins, a Calgary-based IT consultant who has implemented software at a number of American college libraries. “Librarians shouldn’t feel bad about insisting on better deals. Actually, suppliers expect customers to be more demanding during recessions.” Hence it might be less expensive in the long term to purchase new IT during a recession than to do so after it, when prices start to rise. The decision to make the purchase will depend on a library’s current and projected budgets, the level of need for the IT, and the condition of the IT already in place.

14.4  If it ain’t broke… “If the old system still keeps people happy, you might make do with it for some time,” says Collins. “And you might be able to make an even sweeter deal with a supplier if the recession is protracted. Remember that economic downturns can last for years. The right timing of a purchase can save your library a substantial amount of money.” What can perturb librarians even more than obsolete IT are the negative effects on collections. When budgets are cut, orders for new materials decrease. Instead of 30 copies of the latest Margaret Atwood, a public library must be content with 10. Lost DVDs and CDs are not replaced. Periodical subscriptions are not renewed. Meanwhile, gaps on the shelves grow wider, and heavily used volumes start to fall apart. Some libraries rely on remainders and secondhand copies of books; and some librarians are gifted at finding deals on different materials. While collection managers might have misgivings about bargain acquisitions, during a recession they might depend on them to keep collections at acceptable levels of variety and depth.

14.5  Boxes of bargains “I’m not the least bit ashamed of my dealings with used booksellers,” says Andrea, a retired librarian who worked in San Francisco, Seattle, and Toronto. “During rough economic times, I’d go to the grocery store and grab some cardboard boxes. Then I’d drop by used bookshops and tell the proprietors to fill those boxes with good used copies of bestsellers. When my budget got hit, I didn’t want to pay for new copies of Tolkien and John Steinbeck and works by romance writers. I used to get lots of almost new books for $3 a box. The booksellers liked giving me bargains because they liked selling to a library, and they’d have difficulty unloading that stock to their usual customers.” During recessions, librarians can also become adept at repairing worn and damaged books and periodicals. There are effective ways to reglue spines and tape loose bindings so that items are serviceable for a few months longer. Unfortunately, fragile digital media cannot be easily repaired, and to replace them librarians must either rely on diminished acquisitions budgets or donations.

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Some libraries have ongoing programs to attract donors of everything from money and books to miscellaneous raffle prizes and labor to repair equipment and facilities. Fundraising is an art that administrators should develop, keeping in mind that libraries are often attractive to certain kinds of donors, both corporate and individual. Ideally, donors will give large sums of money with no restrictions on how it is spent. Such donations can allow libraries to avoid collection depletion, layoffs, and postponements of projects.

14.6  What we fear most Library employees fear layoffs more than any other result of reduced budgets. Layoffs lead to loss of income, increasing debts, inactivity, emotional problems, loss of personal assets, and other humiliating circumstances. Even a vague rumor of layoffs can have a deleterious effect on morale, productivity, and service levels. Library administrators must be quick to dispel such rumors, although they must also warn employees if actual layoffs are in the offing. Managing layoffs is one of the more unpopular jobs in a library. It can be made less unpleasant, however, if the layoff process is gradual and does not entail the loss of numerous positions. Before layoffs, human resources departments traditionally investigate opportunities for retirement, either early or “age appropriate.” Employees of retirement age might be delighted to leave their jobs and make room for younger colleagues. After all, claiming one’s pension after decades of contributions can be a pleasing experience, especially when that pension meets one’s needs. The next stage of the process involves encouraging employees to accept fewer hours. A part-time job is better than complete unemployment, and libraries can offer part-time employees temporary positions and on-call work. These adjustments are no cause for joy, but they’re preferable to outright job loss. Those who must lose their jobs should be given adequate warning, and ideally they will have time to find employment elsewhere. What administrators should avoid are abrupt announcements of layoffs and severe staffing cuts that do not allow managers and branch heads time to adjust the workloads and schedules for which they are responsible. Layoffs are disturbing enough without nasty surprises that discourage and in some instances anger employees and patrons.

14.7  Recovery, eventually No matter how deep a recession becomes, recovery is probable in time. We must be patient, as were people in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, who struggled through the Depression of the 1930s. With luck, we won’t have to face the worst, and our libraries will be able to continue to provide good service to patrons. But no matter what happens, our libraries will probably survive, and Punch and Judy shows can once again amuse audiences of children in our public libraries. Having faced each other for centuries, those characters have suffered much worse than a recession. No wonder the puppets need replacement. (2008)

What goes down: library experiences of the urban poor

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Follow Steve through Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DES), one of North America’s poorest neighborhoods. Watch him greet his friends and fellow addicts; see him give a cigarette to a prostitute in a pink body stocking and spiked heels. What’s in the bag that he hands to the longhaired wino in the badly stained overcoat? Stolen goods? Injection paraphernalia? Drugs? Join Steve on his way to the Vancouver Public’s Central Library, where he checks his e-mail. There’s a message from his aunt in Montreal: Come home. Your family loves you. We’ll find you a doctor. But come home. “I’ll go back to Montreal when I get my head straight,” says Steve. “I have friends in Vancouver, and I’m already in a treatment program to get me off the needle. I might get a job in a restaurant next year. We’ll see.” Steve is skinny, dark, and rough-looking in a navy surplus pea coat, frayed jeans, and worn-out jogging shoes. He’s 30 years old and looks 50, with deep lines in his forehead and streaks of gray in his hair. “I’m a mongrel,” he says, having mentioned his Irish grandmother and Portuguese father. “I’ve got French blood in me too, from my mother’s side. I can read those books over there,” he says, pointing to a shelf of French language titles. “Not every loser is illiterate, you know. I get along with librarians really well.”

15.1  Sleeping in the streets Sociologists would classify Steve as a member of the urban poor, which includes persons with little or no employment income, minimal education, and few opportunities to improve their circumstances. He has slept in the streets of several Canadian cities but takes advantage of emergency shelters, squats, and friends’ residences when space is available. He became addicted to heroin years ago, but he has used every drug that he can acquire cheaply, including cocaine, ecstasy, and crystal meth—“anything that makes me happy.” While his manner is coarse and at times menacing, Steve’s tone softens when he talks about the Central Library. He has spent hours browsing in different departments and enjoys reading graphic novels and science fiction in public areas with comfortable chairs. His first stop at Central is usually the washroom; after that he signs onto a terminal with e-mail access. After replying to his messages, he browses in the stacks and gathers a small pile of items that he will delve into. Recently he has discovered Fine Art and loves looking at coffee table books containing reproductions of famous paintings. Sometimes he is exhausted from a way of life that includes drug use, irregular meals, dirt, sickness, and despair, and he fears that he will fall asleep. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00015-3 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“You can get chucked out if you sleep in the library, you know,” he says. “I like to grab a coffee before I come here, but that’s not always enough to keep me awake. So if I’m going to doze off, I walk around a bit, go up and down the escalator, maybe jog around the block, and that wakes me up for a while.” He puts on a pompous accent: “Then I can return to Rembrandt, the famous Dutchman who revealed the souls of his sitters!” He pauses to see if his comment has impressed his audience. Then with his usual gruffness: “Damn it, Rembrandt is hot. You should see some of his stuff. He’s the Man, you know?” Art critics use a different vocabulary, but rarely impart as much honest excitement as does Steve as he pores over a volume containing images of popular 17th-century paintings. It was a librarian who introduced Steve to Rembrandt. He doesn’t know her name but is grateful to her for encouraging him to look at good printed reproductions rather than smaller images on the Internet. She also told him to investigate other painters and gave him a handwritten list of names. Again, pompously: “First Leonardo, then Renoir. After that, I don’t know. Perhaps something Spanish. There’s such a large selection, and so little time!” Steve doesn’t have a regular address, and thus he has no library card and is not entitled to borrow items. He doesn’t mind, since he likes to spend time in the Central, which, among other things, allows him to escape his routine on the street.

15.2  A couple of users Libraries also provide the urban poor with safety and temporary shelter. Irma and Doug, both in their late fifties, negotiate DES streets with a shopping cart full of items they’ve found in dumpsters. Irma has been assaulted and robbed twice in the past year. She doesn’t speak, and might be emotionally disturbed. Doug has adopted her. They appear devoted to each other. Their notion of entertainment includes a visit to a library, sometimes the Central, sometimes the DES’s Carnegie branch, which caters to the needs of the poor, and occasionally a branch in the suburbs. Doug wears a dark tracksuit and ancient loafers. He limps. Irma leans against him as they push their cart along the street. She appears to be an elderly hippie, with a long ponytail and a blouse with a psychedelic motif. While Doug looks you in the eye, Irma avoids everyone’s gaze. “We both have reading glasses,” says Doug with pride. “I found both pairs in a dumpster in a local park. They’re perfectly good. I don’t know why anyone would throw them out.” Doug and Irma camp in parks during the warmer months and look for emergency shelter space when the weather turns wet and cold. On weekdays they might spend a couple of hours in a library, which provides light and warmth, a place to sit down, computers, washrooms, and magazines. Doug and Irma love magazines. He prefers news and political coverage, whereas she concentrates on the latest fashions and Hollywood gossip. Recently, on her way to the washroom in a branch library, Irma stopped to browse in the Children’s section. She came across E. Nesbit. She won’t—or can’t—say why she enjoys The Railway Children and The Story of the Amulet so much, but she does.

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Doug guesses that Irma might have read them when she was young. He hasn’t asked her. “People like us don’t like too many questions,” he says. “We don’t like to give much away about ourselves. It’s about protection. We say too much about ourselves, and there could be trouble. We just get out of the habit of giving personal information, even to people we know really well. So I don’t know why Irma likes that Nesbit. She won’t tell me. She won’t tell that library lady in the branch we go to, either, but the lady showed Irma another Nesbit book, and that was it. We spent the whole afternoon there. Irma had to read the entire book, cover to cover. She didn’t even get up to use the washroom. I didn’t mind, since I was investigating Afghanistan, which is a big topic these days. A library can eat up a lot of time, you know, but that’s not a bad thing. We are safe there, and we’re not hurting anybody.”

15.3  A former colleague People such as Doug and Irma don’t often recognize the difference between a librarian, a library technician, and a clerical worker. Mike is an exception. He says that he can spot a librarian at 50 yards in poor light and knows a technician from the way she adjusts her glasses or folds her arms. Mike even knows about cataloguing and subject classification. He should, having worked for years in public and academic libraries in Toronto and Edmonton. Why does Mike live in a squalid hotel in the DES and drink himself into a regular stupor? “It just worked out that way,” he says. “My marriage fell apart and I started drinking, and it was downhill from there. I lost my last library job for telling my supervisor to drop dead. That wasn’t too smart, was it? So here I am.” Mike likes Greater Vancouver’s libraries and carries a couple of borrower cards. Drunk or sober, he reads for a couple of hours a day, and frequently longer. He has the time. He has survived for the past decade on welfare checks and panhandling and assumes that he will never find another job. “Nobody would hire a wino of my age,” he says. “I’m too old, too sick, and completely out-of-date on computers. The only job I might do well is reading for a publisher. I’d like that. I could read novels in draft and write reports about them. I’d be brilliant at judging science fiction, which I know a lot about.” Mike has read hundreds of SF novels and stories and keeps current on new publications by the major authors. He is proud to mention that librarians have acquired titles on his recommendation. When he speaks of William Gibson or Spider Robinson, his demeanor changes. He looks alert and remembers characters and plots clearly. He also recalls which library is most likely to have particular titles. “There are two branches in East Vancouver that have most of John Wyndham’s and Frank Herbert’s works,” he says. “It’s refreshing to come across a good collection of Wyndham. But there are several branches that don’t contain much science fiction, not even the standard Arthur C. Clarke books. That’s not good enough, really, and I’m going to have a word with the librarians.” He takes a sip from a bottle wrapped in his scarf.

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15.4  What’s in the bag Many of the urban poor do not use libraries. They’re not sure that they’d be welcome. Some are illiterate or semiliterate and feel nervous or ashamed around printed materials. Emotionally disturbed street people can be paranoid. They worry that librarians will have them apprehended by the police. This can occur when a street person acts irrationally and threatens patrons and library employees. But there are numerous poor people who love libraries and wouldn’t want to live in a place without them. Mike likes his booze, but he needs his books. That’s why he’s pleased to see Steve approach him at the notorious corner of Hastings and Main, just outside the Carnegie Centre. Steve hands him a bag. “You’ll love it,” says Steve. “Thanks, man,” says Mike. He opens the bag and takes out a tattered paperback copy of Douglas Adams’s The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “It’s a discard from a branch,” he says. “A classic. I’ve probably read this very copy a couple of times. I’ll give it a good home.” You can throw Mike out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of Mike. Why the urban poor visit your library Across North America, people who live in poverty depend on public libraries for amenities including the following:

  

• Washrooms • Warmth in winter; air conditioning in summer • A place to sit and rest • A quiet place “with no hassle” • Internet access • Newspapers and magazines • Community information regarding emergency shelter, social and educational programs, and job opportunities • A place to bring children, for storytimes and browsing • Popular fiction, including graphic novels, crime, SF, romance, and westerns • Opportunities to listen to music and view videos and DVDs

 

(2010)

Keynoting: an honest overview

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Nobody can deny your brilliance, beauty, and wit. Inevitably a library association will invite you to give a keynote speech at its annual conference. You’re not a librarian, but have no fear. You’re just what conference attendees want. You’re a leader in your field, whatever that may be. Communications? Software development? Veterinary dentistry? No matter. You’re a scholar and a prizewinner, quoted often and highly respected. You also look good on a podium and speak clearly, at least on the phone during your chats with the conference organizers. They give you a big fluffy topic such as “The Future of Information,” about which you can say anything you please, as long as you avoid bad jokes and any mention of metadata. “What is metadata?” “Just don’t talk about it.” “Why not?” “Because half of your audience won’t know what you’re talking about, and the other half will be so sick of hearing about it that they will hang you from the rafters.” “Oh.”

16.1  The gang’s all here Your audience will comprise hundreds of people from the information sector: librarians, library technicians, publishers and book distributors, IT vendors, a copyright lawyer or two, and a financial planner from Winnipeg who steps off the elevator on the wrong floor of the convention center and decides that “The Future of Information” sounds more interesting than yet another presentation on hedge funds. There are storytellers, cataloguers, website designers, bibliographers, adult programmers, proofreaders, administrators, manuscript curators, and a bevy of recent LIS graduates looking for employers. They may concentrate on different fields, but they share various expectations. First, they want what modern rhetoricians call “uplift.” They do not want to hear about global gloom and macroeconomic despair, the coming catastrophic debt crunch and the inevitable outbreak of pandemics and war. They read about these things every morning over breakfast. So when you mount that podium, they’re eager for good news and optimism. They want you to tell them that the future of information looks splendid, that soon employers will be begging universities to graduate more librarians, who even in starting positions will earn as much as veterinary dentists. Secondly, your audience wants amazing facts. These are mental souvenirs with which attendees can entertain coworkers back home in Moncton and Moose Jaw. You can imagine the staff room conversations inspired by the amazing facts that lard your speech: “The keynote speaker mentioned that only two per cent of Canada’s public librarians prefer AACR2 to Leonard Cohen.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00016-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“Big surprise. What else?” “The speaker said that RDA causes gum disease in poodles. At least that’s what I scribbled in my notes.” “Amazing. More coffee?” Thirdly, everyone wants to hear a Big Prediction. This is startling news that often isn’t news at all. For example, you predict that next year, more people will have used electronic books than ever before. Announce this solemnly, and your audience will consider you profound. Later they will realize that what you’ve said is common sense, but by that time the wine will flow in the social suites, and nobody will care. In fact the e-book vendors will be on your side forever, and you will receive invitations to speak at their conferences. An obvious Big Prediction can take you a long way.

16.2  The winning smile Another form of Big Prediction is the Future Fantasy. Logically the future hasn’t occurred yet and doesn’t exist outside our imaginings. Thus you can say what you like about matters many years hence, and nobody can refute your claim. The trick is to come up with something so outrageous that your audience is wowed into submission. Everyone is stunned by your prediction that by 2050, human beings will carry all of their essential records—including financial data—in barcodes etched by laser onto their front teeth. Experiments with this technology will commence on dogs by 2020. Eventually, to pay for a new wardrobe or to give a doctor our medical histories, to open the locked doors to our offices or reveal to a prospective employer our academic records, all we must do is to smile at a sensor, which detects and records the barcodes on our incisors. Bingo! Dental associations will demand your presence at conferences all over the world. You will receive enormous fees for workshops on Smile Security. And unless you’re careful, the Canadian Association of Veterinary Dentists will induct you into their Howl of Fame. Your preparations for giving the speech (“keynoting,” in conference parlance) include writing it in point form with big, bold letters. Underline or highlight significant phrases. Do not compose something that you will simply read into a microphone. Try to sound relaxed and spontaneous. Practice in the shower or in front of a mirror. Excise all puns, which make you appear to be trying too hard to get cozy with your audience; and remember that unless you have a professional comedian’s sense of timing, it is dangerous to tell jokes. Anything that sounds terribly clever on the podium is probably inappropriate or de trop. And remember that keynote speeches are often recorded for posterity, so that your giggly description of a kangaroo and a priest in a bar could embarrass you for decades.

16.3  For the camera As travel agents will tell you, don’t overpack. Carry one respectable outfit in which to deliver your speech, and wear something comfortable and informal for airport frisking, flying, and transportation to and from airports. Since you might be photographed

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at any time during the conference, it’s wise to wear solid colors instead of stripes. Keep your hairstyle simple to ensure that it doesn’t droop or otherwise collapse while you’re on the podium. Don’t forget your eyeglasses, and carry a hard copy of your speech at all times. If your laptop disappears or crashes, you will still have your speech handy. Do not practice it while airport security pat you down. Otherwise you could end up in a back room, answering questions about barcode security. Airport interrogators can be harsh. “What happens if somebody doesn’t have any teeth? How are they going to get by when all of their personal information is supposed to be in their mouth?” “Perhaps they could carry a backup set of encoded dentures.” “Wise guy! You think that’s funny?” “No.” “Maybe they could put barcodes on their dog’s teeth, and have something like a data guide dog. You think that’s funny?” “No.” “Then what’s this you say in your keynote speech? I have the notes right here.” “Oh no.”

16.4  Fly for cover On your arrival at the conference center, assess the venue and its surroundings. A good place to start is the space where you will deliver your speech. Accommodating plenary events as well as your keynote session, that space is no larger than the average aircraft hanger. It contains numerous rows of foldable metal chairs, and at the far end there will be the podium. On the podium is the lectern, a solid piece of furniture behind which speakers can hide runs in stockings, soup stains on trousers, and the occasional undone fly. Behind the podium will be a large screen for PowerPoint presentations. You might want to support your claims with PowerPoint. You may spend much time and money developing slides with colorful graphs and charts. But at many conferences, your audience doesn’t care about slides. They want to look at and listen to you and you alone. You might as well project on that screen a photo of the Northern Lights, or your elderly aunt, or your pet schnauzer. That’s a pleasant touch, but you will be the cynosure when you mount that podium. At some point a conference organizer will appear and welcome you. She will ask you have everything you need, then invite you to visit the trade show. This is a treat. You find yourself in a space even larger than an aircraft hanger. It contains rows of booths. In each booth is a display of some sort. Beside each display stands a vendor representative or two. They’d love to talk to you, especially if your speech concerns the future of information. After all, they intend to be a part of that future. Thus it’s reasonable to mine these people for ideas. Feel free to interrogate them. Graciously accept gifts of pens, tee shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, and book bags, and grab any product catalogues that look interesting. Then tell them that you want their thoughts on information trends over the next few decades. It’s acceptable to quote them in your speech and to tell your audience that you have insider information.

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16.5  Please drop in Vendors might invite you their social suite. Go. Avoid drinking too much wine—at least until after you’ve made your speech. Mingle and schmooze. You can get a better sense of what conference attendees are thinking about, and what they want to hear. Mingling also gives you an opportunity to acquire allies. To see their faces in your audience is reassuring and will give you confidence. Allies are also more inclined to ask questions during that period after your speech when you are expected to come up with sparkling replies. Question periods can be unnerving, and especially so when nobody has any questions. Silence reigns, and uneasiness sets in. Did your speech contain nothing worthy of follow-up or further comment? Thankfully a vendor pops up to ask you something intelligent. She represents a software distributor. You and she chatted in a social suite, and she’s on your side. Mingle also with the librarians who have traveled so far to hear you speak. Make as many allies among them as possible. Don’t expect to understand everything they tell you, or to comprehend how a puppeteer, a photo curator, and an expert in Spanish incunabula could have anything in common. Don’t assume that every librarian knows about things such as encryption, MARC, and RFID. Many have taken great pains to avoid them altogether (see also metadata). Those who specialize in these things— who consider them essential to library operations—will not necessarily care about the publishing history of Goodnight Moon or the illustrations in early editions of The Water Babies. In fact librarianship has always been a vast mishmash of subject areas, technologies, and competences, and librarians have developed their own combinations of skills and specialties. In the end, like any other professional, every librarian has strengths and gaps in his or her knowledge.

16.6  Moment of truth At last the moment comes when you hear the conference convener introducing you before your speech. He will make you feel old. Yes, you have been a leader in your field for over 30 years. Yes, you’ve mentored generations, and people whom you’ve mentored have gone on to mentor others. (And yes, you’ve grown sick and tired of hearing about mentoring, but over the decades you’ve become numb to such clichés.) Your book has become a standard text; you have contributed dozens of articles to scholarly journals; you have taught at several outstanding universities; and you have run three large corporations. (At this point you notice an enormous soup stain on your lapel.) You’re here today to discuss the future of information, and doubtless you will reveal what could be in store for every librarian. We are pleased to welcome Old So-and-So. Polite applause. You open you notes and clear your throat. You gaze at your audience and begin. You will triumph with your opening, which occurred to you in the taxi from the airport: “Nobody can deny your brilliance, beauty and wit. As you control information, the future is yours to revel in …” (2010)

Quote us freely: British librarians speak out about recent cutbacks  

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City squares attract millions of pigeons. London’s Trafalgar Square can be difficult to walk across when its huge flocks take flight, and there is always the risk of being spattered with droppings as one looks up at Lord Nelson’s monument or stands beside the famous lions to have one’s picture taken. Inevitably the British tell their children stories about the pigeons of Trafalgar Square, about how the flocks arrive every morning as Big Ben tolls and the double-decker buses roll down Whitehall, about how pigeons meet their mates (friends and spouses) beside the fountains and spend the day scrounging for bread crumbs from generous strangers. At night, the pigeons fly home. And where is that? Children insist on knowing, and parents tell them that some fly to the treetops in Hampstead Heath, and others to the chimneys of Notting Hill and Holland Park, and others to Kensington Palace, where they roost in the eaves and coo contentedly till dawn.

“At our reference desk I used to get asked about where London’s pigeons went at night,” says Connie, a public librarian. “Now things have changed. Many questions concern technical matters that I find difficult to deal with. I’m from a generation of librarians that dealt with pigeons and other wildlife, not mobile telephonics and apps.”

17.1  Cooking with new technology With obvious embarrassment, Connie recalls a patron’s request for information regarding recently available apps. She assumed that the patron was interested in new recipes for appetizers and directed her to the cookery books. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00017-7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“It takes so much time to keep up to new technology, and the terminology drives me mad,” she says. “And it’s not because I’m older than most of my colleagues. Even the younger librarians complain that they must struggle with all the technical material that comes their way.” Not only must British librarians contend with recent technological developments, but they are also faced with increasing demands for services and the resultant strain on resources. “You notice a lot more wear and tear in libraries these days,” says Stanley, a London-based consultant to public and academic libraries. He notes that facilities are not as well maintained, and that collections are deteriorating. “With larger numbers of patrons using our libraries, you see more damage to furniture and equipment,” he says. “What appals me is the state of keyboards. Generally they’re filthy, but they often wear out before libraries see fit to have them cleaned. And sometimes it takes weeks to have them replaced because of budget cutbacks. In thirty-five years of professional practice, I’ve never seen more problems arise owing to cutbacks, not even during the Thatcher years.”

17.2  Grime Stanley worries that declining facility maintenance standards will discourage people from using libraries. In particular, he suggests that the grimy exteriors of many central libraries and branches will give the public the wrong idea about the quality of collections and services. “People are less inclined to enter a building that looks run down,” he says. “It’s a natural tendency, and librarians should be more willing to acknowledge it. You see museum curators and art gallery managers demanding funds for the cleaning and restoration of building exteriors, and their boards will usually support them. We librarians should be more assertive about keeping our libraries attractive. Nobody wants to visit a dirty-looking building.” For British librarians and others involved in library services, the issue of maintenance can lead to discussions concerning the closure of libraries across the country. The British government has determined that deep budget cuts are necessary to control deficits and the national debt, and believes that it must reduce the size of the public sector. No ministry or department is untouchable. Even the revered Royal Air Force will lose personnel and other resources over the next few years, and the National Health Service (NHS) is undergoing constant scrutiny to find opportunities for cost savings. Although acclaimed authors such as Alan Bennett and Philip Pullman have condemned recent cuts to library budgets, loss of funding appears to be inevitable. “Whether we want to admit it or not, some of our public libraries are substandard in many ways, and have been so for decades,” says Stanley. “Their facilities are poor, and frankly some collections are dreadful. Staffing levels are inadequate in such libraries, and patrons are dissatisfied. But according to those who are dead set against any cuts, there is still a chance that patrons will find what they need, even in the worst library. And therefore it is worthwhile to keep that library open.”

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17.3  The rebellious spirit The discussion concerning these matters can become passionate. The justification for a library’s survival might run as follows. A certain library is in serious decline. Its collections are out-of-date and battered. The reference department is understaffed, and the librarians receive numerous complaints about inadequate services. But one day in the dingy children’s section, a little girl discovers an old book that covers the history of Britain from days of the Beaker People to the years after the Second World War. There is a chapter on Boadicea, the tribal queen who led a rebellion against the Romans in 61 AD. The little girl is inspired by Boadicea’s example and takes an interest in history. Eventually she studies it at Oxford. Later she goes into politics and becomes Prime Minister. Such success is due in part to the library that, for all of its weaknesses, was nonetheless able to provide one young patron with the material that inspired her to get an education and go into politics.

“Sentimental twaddle,” says Stanley. “Chances are that the little girl will not find anything in the library that catches her interest. The battered books are not nearly as much fun as the computer games that entertain her at home. The generally poor quality of the library will be a big turn-off, and she won’t want to return. That library actually works against patrons’ curiosity, and shutting it down, while an unpopular move, is probably a good one, especially if the funding that allowed it to stumble along can be applied to other branches, and keep their services at an acceptable level. We must face the fact, whether we like it or not, that not all libraries are worth saving.”

17.4  Caveat: maggie Stanley finishes by noting that Boadicea’s rebellion eventually failed, and that the Romans managed to control Britain for centuries thereafter. “And what if that little girl grew up to be Margaret Thatcher?” he says with perverse glee. “Many British librarians would not be delighted with such a result.

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The point is that we should accept the loss of our weakest links and try to shore up those libraries that are doing a better job. Every other area of public services in Britain is getting hit with cuts. We must learn to deal with ours realistically, without resorting to dreary rubbish about imaginary patrons. In the end that won’t save us.” Of course many librarians disagree with this view. Winifred has worked in public and school libraries in England and Scotland and is currently an information manager for a London architectural firm. In her opinion, British library cutbacks are deeper than necessary and occurring too quickly. “Most British librarians admit that the Great Recession hurt our economy,” she says. “We were prepared to accept cutbacks, but were surprised when the government imposed them so quickly. A gradual approach would be more prudent, and not cause so much pain. As for chopping inadequate libraries and branches altogether, I consider that to be shortsighted. Neighbouring libraries cannot always take on patrons who have lost their old facilities. In short order, the added strain on operations can reduce a solid and well-resourced library to something much less attractive and efficient, and then nobody will be satisfied.”

17.5  Angry students Winifred notes that cutbacks in academic libraries are equally hard to justify, especially when students must pay substantially higher tuition fees. With the increasing cost of textbooks and various living expenses, students are assuming more debt during their post-secondary education than ever before. “Students at our universities will expect campus libraries to cater to them,” she says. “Unsatisfactory services could lead to more than grumbling. If students suspect that they’re being short-changed in any way, at the very least they will complain loudly. We have already seen mass protests by angry students in our major cities. We could see more. I’m not suggesting that students would engage in protests about bad collections or long queues at reference desks, but these factors could contribute to student fractiousness. This is something that our university administrators must recognize.” Betty, a public librarian in Birmingham, agrees. She fears that long-term economic factors will not allow library services to recover once they have been cut. According to her, once a facility is shut down, the loss is permanent. Hoping for renewed services when the economy improves is unrealistic. “As for the little girl who is captivated by Boadicea, I can understand why people might dismiss her story. But in a competitive society, children must be given every possible opportunity to learn and be inspired. That child might not grow up to be a politician, but she might become a medical researcher who discovers a new treatment for cancer. She might become an aviation engineer who designs a safer aircraft. Or she might simply grow up to be a decent human being who will fight against oppression. All this could spring from a visit to a run-down old library with a wretched collection. I’d say not only that it’s worth the cost of keeping that library open, but also that it’s a wise investment to improve that library in any possible way. Such an institution is hardly a frill.”

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17.6  Perseverance Not surprisingly, British librarians will frequently mention their ability to “muddle through,” despite negative circumstances. Some older librarians might refer to the Blitz and Mr. Churchill’s resolve, and swear that they will persevere in the same spirit. “After all, what else can we do?” says Colin, a recently unemployed librarian in his mid-sixties from Leeds. “I refuse to give up altogether, and I don’t want to relocate to America or anywhere else. Besides, North American libraries face the same problems; it’s not as if libraries in New York and Los Angeles are enjoying big budgetary surpluses. The situation is worse in Europe, and I’ve heard that Asian job market is tightening up for librarians. Japan was once an economic powerhouse, but it’s definitely in decline, and the last earthquake and tsunami have made things worse. I can’t see libraries flourishing in Tokyo and Osaka. So I might as well stay in Yorkshire, where I speak the language and know where to look for work whenever it’s available.”

17.7  Damn the pigeons Muddling through will also include measures such as media campaigns against cuts and closures, fund-raising projects, consideration of resource- and job-sharing, and more part-time positions. “It’s better to have any sort of library job than no job at all,” says Colin, who retains his sense of humor despite hardship. “In fact old librarians don’t die, they simply work increasingly part-time.” Talking to librarians in British towns and villages as well as in the major cities, one understands that although they are discontented and worried about how cutbacks might affect them, they have lost neither their gumption nor their idealism; nor are they without hope, no matter how low the pound sinks or how high the percentage of unemployment rises. One assumes that they will continue to speak out in support of their libraries, no matter how many pigeons come home to roost. (2011)

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For your eyes only: love and disorder in our domestic libraries

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Lisa moves at the speed of light, or so it seems. She is everywhere at once in the corporate library she manages in downtown Vancouver. Her fingers flash across keyboards as she fields conference calls on her headset. Her staff marvels at her ability to meet the information demands of hedge fund managers in London and financial analysts in Hong Kong. Every morning her research reports and updates on weather trends, oil prices, and gold mines zip across time zones to four continents. She is unstoppable. Lisa is 40-ish, a graduate of the University of Toronto, and generally considered one of the Canadian library profession’s outstanding practitioners. She is a brilliant public speaker, the author of a dozen fine articles in investment magazines, and the owner of a new BMW. And she has a secret, something that she has not revealed about herself until now, and only under the condition of strict anonymity. Simply stated, she owns large quantities of hard copy books and other printed matter. Her upscale condo (“2 bdrms + den/11⁄2 bthrms/view”) is crammed with thousands of volumes loaded onto creaking shelves. There are books stacked in corners on windowsills, books in closets and behind sofas, books from floor to ceiling. “I haven’t catalogued a single title,” says Lisa. “I don’t intend to. I love coming home to this great big comfortable mess. It’s like the penthouse in the Tower of Babel.”

18.1  The lure of the sofa Lisa believes that her fellow information professionals would not approve of her book accumulation habits and haphazard domestic librarianship. In an age of e-books she is aware of the risks involved in adhering to old-fashioned ways. “Younger librarians can be very judgmental about these things,” she says. “Many of them wouldn’t understand my desire to hang out in bookshops and buy the hardcopy items that really appeal to me. I have nothing—absolutely nothing—against e-books. In fact, I use an e-book reader at my office, and take it with me when I travel. It’s one of my sources of work-related information. I couldn’t do without it. But when I’m in the home library that occupies every room, I want my old hardcovers and paperbacks. I want to stretch out on a sofa and read something that doesn’t appear on a screen. I’m not setting a bad example and I’m not breaking any laws. I’m doing nothing more than people have been doing with pleasure for centuries. And if my condo shelves are chaotic, so what? My office shelves are in perfect order.” Lisa’s boyfriend Derek has come to accept her hard copy habit. A corporate lawyer and heavy reader of history and biography, he not only condones but also feeds Lisa’s habit. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00018-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“We’re co-dependent in the best sense,” he says. “Librarians are supposed to devote themselves to tidiness and control, and you won’t find any of that at Lisa’s. I can relax here. I really like her place. I’ve told her that once she runs out of space for books, we can start using my house for overflow. We will never be bored.”

18.2  Serendipity Lisa is not alone in her preference for hard copy books. Other librarians share her affection for shelves that rise to the ceiling and groan with heavy loads. Many of these librarians are near the end of their working lives, or retired. For example, Rhonda has worked for almost 30 years at special, school and college libraries in Metro Toronto. A widow, she lives alone in a little house that reminds her friends of a secondhand bookshop. There are shelves in every room; a shelf in the pantry contains what Rhonda calls “extras”: dozens of paperbacks that she has found in yard sales and thought she might like to read in future. “I’m a dedicated reader, but I doubt that I could ever get through all of the books in my house,” she says. “But I enjoy the serendipity of coming across a book that I forgot I had, or a book that I read years ago and want to re-read. I like being surrounded by books. That’s why I became a librarian. I suppose that by current standards I’m out of date, but once you reach my age you don’t care so much about what other people think.” Rhonda does not believe that age necessarily determines whether a librarian will be a hard copy fan. She speaks of “the young info-science crowd” who visit her occasionally. These are recent iSchool graduates who spend their workdays online and carry laptops everywhere. At Rhonda’s, however, they relinquish their technology and browse through her collection. “It’s not true that younger, tech-savvy librarians despise hardcopy titles,” she says. “I think what we’re seeing is the formation of a new and misleading stereotype here.” She denies that frequent use of technology will prevent anyone from enjoying hard copy. As an example, she mentions one of her 20-something friends—a school librarian—who accesses daily news and technical reports online, but who in her spare time devours Westerns. “Why anyone reads one Max Brand title after another, I do not know,” says Rhonda. “She won’t read them on a Kindle, either. They have to be second-hand paperbacks with cracked spines and maybe a coffee ring on the cover, the sort of thing you pick up for a dime at a church bazaar.”

18.3  Swedish equipment Rhonda suspects that her friend could become a hard copy accumulator if she’s not careful. Recently they went shopping together for shelves at IKEA. They walked past the attractive, dark wood bookshelves that would suit a front room, and selected heavy-duty shelving that holds tools and cleaning supplies in a basement or garage.

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“A big collection demands sturdier shelves, preferably with extra bracing,” says Rhonda. “You can paint them if you want, but I don’t bother with mine. When they’re loaded with books, you don’t see the shelving so much. My Western-reading friend agrees. She bought a big shelf for her apartment, and now she has room for all of those Max Brand titles. I guarantee that she’ll return to IKEA next year to buy another shelf. Gradually her apartment will fill up.” To a hard copy addict, there will always be more books to acquire. One does not have to be a collector. In fact, among those librarians who assemble large libraries in their homes, true collectors are rare. Accumulators are less inclined to study dealers’ catalogues and to pursue elusive first editions and signed copies. While collectors prefer their purchases to be in the best possible condition, accumulators are less fussy. As long as the book is complete and legible, it will find a place on the accumulator’s shelf. Space and shelving are constant concerns for keepers of large domestic collections. Usually shelves spread through domestic space like kudzu. A shelving unit fills up in the front room, forcing the owner to find another unit, and another. “The growth of a personal collection can be insidious,” says Don, a 60-year-old Calgary academic librarian whose house has shelves in every room. He left library school in 1984 with a copy of The Sears List of Subject Headings, a Gage Canadian Dictionary and “a few feet of science fiction.” He still has most of these books, in the brick-and-board shelf unit that he assembled during his student days. “The problems started when I had a few extra dollars and time off from my job,” he says. “I started to browse in bookshops. I found treasures for next to nothing in thrift sales. And people gave me books, assuming that because I was a librarian I would automatically enjoy them, or find a use for them.”

18.4  He came in through the bedroom window Don was slow in initiating a home weeding program. He is embarrassed to admit that five years ago, he could no longer open the door to his spare bedroom because a collapsed shelving unit was blocking the door. He crawled into the room through a window. He discovered that a 60-year-old set of Collier’s Encyclopedia had been too heavy for the unit, which had buckled at the base and caused a biblio-avalanche across the doorway. “I realized at that point that much of my personal library was an impediment, not an asset,” says Don. “I started weeding. I donated around 3,000 volumes, including Collier’s, to a local charity. I gave another 500 volumes to a hospital— mostly paperback fiction, the kind that volunteers distribute on little carts to patients.” For a brief period, Don’s home library contained little more than the books with which he left library school, but soon he returned to his habit of browsing and bringing lots of books home. He worried that he would find himself crawling through another window to dig out another avalanche, when he met his current partner, a public librarian named Louise who helps him to control his acquisitions. She set a limit on the shelf space that Don can maintain. When there is no more room on the three large units in Don’s study, Louise donates any unshelved volumes to a local church.

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“That woman is merciless, which is probably a good thing,” says Don. “I need the discipline. But I still miss some of the items that I’ve given away. For example, Collier’s. Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

18.5  Neurosis Inevitably any discussion of domestic book accumulation turns to the psychology of those who indulge in it. Are they hoarders, depressed, lonely, and unfulfilled? Are they insulating themselves from the outside world, with its new technologies and different ways of processing information? Could domestic accumulators be in denial? Are they hopeless dreamers? It is possible that they could be all or some or none of these things. People who hoard possessions in their homes—vast piles of newspapers, books, crockery and kitchen utensils, old clothes—might be depressed and need professional counseling. Or they might be harmlessly eccentric and happier than most of us. Librarians who hoard hard copy could be neurotic, or they might simply enjoy being surrounded by large quantities of books. Pathologizing all accumulation habits is unnecessary and in many cases inappropriate, especially in the case of a librarian. “I’d like to know how many books are too many,” says Rhonda. “I’ve known a couple of librarians who have fairly serious personal issues, and who indulge in impulsive buying for their personal libraries. But I don’t consider myself particularly neurotic because I have a big personal library. There is no absolute correlation between emotional trouble and accumulating books. I’ve also known art collectors whose oil paintings and watercolours fill every inch of their residential wall space. There was an entomologist at a local university who used to cram his home fridges with bottles full of insects. Are these people disturbed, or simply enthusiastic about their hobbies and professional activities?” Accumulators bristle at the suggestion that the texts of their hard copies will soon be available online, and that shelving will eventually be obsolete. They point out that there are differences in the ways that one perceives online texts and texts in hard copy. “The topic of how we physically relate to books in different media deserves a lot more attention,” says Lisa. “Information science might provide a partial answer, but I believe that neuroscientists who have a deeper understanding of brain activity need to get involved in the discussion. Readers have different ways of perceiving a text online and in hard copy. Perhaps they remember one more than the other. Perhaps they notice different things about a text when it is presented in a different medium. Anyway, as strong as the claims are for the benefits of e-books, I can’t see hardcopy dying out. In my case, both are welcome and useful in different ways.” As long as hard copy survives, there will be librarians who fill their residences with countless volumes. Their colleagues may demur, and possibly question their emotional health. But IKEA will continue to sell them industrial-quality shelving, and patient partners might weed the overflow as required. While our workplaces move at the speed of light, some of our home libraries will grow at no more than a few—or few dozen—volumes a week. A change of pace is always welcome.

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Recommended reading For further discussion of domestic libraries, reading and the future of the book, the following recently published items are highly recommended:

  

• Jacques Bonnet. (2012). Phantoms on the bookshelves, translated from the French by Sian Reynolds. New York. • Jean-Claude Carriere & Umberto Eco. (2012). This is not the end of the book, a conversation curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac, translated from the French by Polly McLean. London. • Alan Jacobs. (2011). The pleasures of reading in an age of distraction. New York.

 

(2012)

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Who’s next door? Living with your library’s neighbors

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Bearded, turbaned, and magnificent in a three-piece suit and running shoes, Jaskaranjit Singh Sandhu has managed his small Indian restaurant in a suburb of Vancouver for a decade. Down the block is a public library branch that he loves, he says, as much as one of his 17 grandchildren. During the restaurant’s quiet times, he visits the branch to read. “Mr. Sandhu has real charisma,” says Connie, the branch manager. “He sweeps in like some royal personage and gives a dignified nod to the staff at the circulation counter. He bows to the person on the reference desk, and then proceeds in a stately manner to the periodical section. He sits in his favourite chair and reads National Geographic.” Occasionally Mr. Sandhu looks up from an article on the giant moths of Borneo and smiles. He has mentioned to Connie that the branch is the happiest place on earth. He can sit for hours, reading a single issue of National Geographic and smiling with pure pleasure. He is probably the most contented library patron in Canada, and the branch staffers adore him. They also adore his restaurant’s butter chicken and lamb rogan josh, mushroom mutter makhani, and plates piled high with steaming rice pilaf. During lunch hour, library employees dash up to Mr. Sandhu’s. As they order the daily special and cups of sweet chai, they are as happy as Mr. Sandhu when he sits in the periodical section. This is a clear case of neighborhood symbiosis. Everyone benefits. Everyone smiles. In that suburban block there is a feeling of order and mutual respect that lead to good community relations. Unfortunately, these circumstances do not always prevail.

19.1  Something in the air For example, employees at the library of a nonprofit organization in Toronto complain bitterly about the fast food odors that pervade their offices and stack areas. “On our block there are two pizzerias and a burger joint,” says Max. “Most of our staff enjoys fast food. We’re not puritans. But the smells from three kitchens waft into our workspace, and we’re sick of it.” Max says that he and his employees must launder their clothes more frequently owing to odors that cling to them. “We also have to wash our hair more often,” says Julie, Max’s library technician. “I arrive home smelling of anchovies, and my husband doesn’t like it at all. And there’s nothing we can do to prevent the neighbouring kitchens from emitting food odours. We called the municipal authorities and explained the situation, and they told us that unless the smells were truly horrible—like sewage or other animal waste—there was Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00019-0 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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not much they could do. Besides, they have other things to keep them busy. A bunch of librarians reeking of pepperoni is not a high priority in our jurisdiction.” Meanwhile, in Calgary, a pizzeria tried to make peace with the staff at the library of a law firm by offering them lunchtime deals. When heavy pizza odors seeped into the library through ventilation ducts, Rhonda, the head librarian, visited the nearby pizzeria and made it clear to the proprietor that the library staff could no longer tolerate what she called “the garlic atmosphere.” In an attempt to appease Rhonda and her staff, the proprietor offered to improve his air filtration and to sell the library staff any pizza or portion thereof at half price. “At first we thought things might work out,” says Jennifer, who works at the library as a clerk. “The price was right. But we all got tired of pizza, and the smell wouldn’t go away. And then Rhonda came up with a solution that satisfied everyone.”

19.2  Good woman Rhonda demonstrated that compromise is not only the best way to deal with certain kinds of disagreements but also it can be a way for all parties to benefit. She talked to Tony, the pizzeria’s proprietor and chief cook and let him know that he could make more money by enhancing his menu. She recommended paninis and salads. She pointed out the pizzeria’s lack of desserts. And she noted that with a better menu, Tony would be able to sell more liquor and nonalcoholic drinks. He would attract a larger and more discerning clientele. His kitchen would emit fewer odors, and he would regain his popularity with the library staff. But Rhonda offered Tony more than advice. She handed him a selection of recipes that would suit his kitchen equipment and not overburden his storage and refrigeration spaces. And she gave him the names of local suppliers of the foodstuffs listed in the recipes. Tony was astonished. He said: “You are a good woman. You are better than the Chamber of Commerce. You help me. I love you forever!” Rhonda remained calm. She said: “What are librarians for? More paninis, less pizza, and we’ll all be friends.” A few days later, Tony and his assistant started offering paninis and a selection of Italian fruit juices. Sales improved. Tony arrived at the law firm’s reception area on a couple of occasions, swore undying love for Rhonda, and left trays of paninis and tiramisu in gratitude. The odor of pizza decreased to the point that the library staff barely noticed it. Some months later, Tony had his kitchen exhaust ducts lengthened so that they emitted odors in a different direction. He also installed a more sophisticated filtration system. The only complaint that Rhonda has now is weight gain. “I was a fool to tell Tony to sell desserts,” she says. “He sells them to our firm’s employees at half price, and everyone in the library has put on a few pounds. Some of our lawyers are getting pudgy, too. But at least we no longer work in an atmosphere saturated with pizza smells.”

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19.3  Unhappy hour Librarians have been forced to deal with the smell of manure from nearby garden shops and nurseries, the overpowering reek of fancy soaps, gas and diesel fuels, industrial emissions, and public washrooms. In some cases, it is the behavior that accompanies the odor that is most irritating. “We have regular patrons who insist on wearing heavy perfumes and other scents,” says Lynne, who works as a clerk at a public library branch on Vancouver Island. “At the circulation desk, we can actually smell a certain patron before she walks through the entrance. Her perfume is nauseating—really sweet. It’s enough to make you gag. We’re tempted to say something to her, but the branch head says that we should’t because the patron operates a business across the street, and we must maintain good relations with her. I just wish that she didn’t hang around the circulation desk so much. She is very talkative and likes to chat, which is a politically correct way of saying that she won’t shut up.” But loquacious patrons wearing what are called “attack perfumes” are not nearly as offensive as those who frequent neighboring pubs and other drinking establishments, and who visit the library after a few hours of carousing. Years ago on the Prairies, a public library branch was invaded every Friday afternoon (TGIF!) by what incident reports described as “intoxicated users.” Two local pubs had organized happy hours that continued from early afternoon until closing time. Highballs were cheap, and doubles were popular. The result: drunks in the branch. They showed up singly or in small groups, often loud and obnoxious. They rambled through public areas in search of the washrooms, which they left in dreadful condition. They fell asleep in the newspaper section. They vomited everywhere. They had no respect for the collections or the staff. “The drunks were no damn good at all,” says Natalie, now retired, who used to work at the reference desk. “They treated everything around them disrespectfully, and there didn’t seem to be anything that we could do about it until the branch head noticed that many of them had parked their cars nearby. They would come into the library and use the washroom, and then stagger out to their cars and drive away. It was downright dangerous, and the branch head decided to stop it. She got nowhere with the pub managers, who said that they couldn’t stop people from drinking. The pub managers suggested that the library should allow drunks to sleep in the branch’s public areas until they sobered up. That wasn’t on.” Then the branch head phoned the police and offered them a deal. Shortly after the start of happy hour, police cars would start patrolling the neighborhood. One police car would park outside the library, and officers would join library staff for coffee and doughnuts in the staff room. When intoxicated users left the branch, a police officer would follow them to their cars. If intoxicated users attempted to start their cars, the officer would let them know that they could be in serious trouble. News of the police patrols spread, and incidents with drunks decreased to almost nothing. Natalie notes that the solution did not involve much more than a few extra boxes of doughnuts. “The pub managers were livid when their business dropped,” she says. “We didn’t care. Over time our relations with them improved, and these days on Friday evenings

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you’ll see a library staffer or two drinking responsibly in those establishments. Ongoing acrimony doesn’t work to anybody’s benefit.” And the police still drop in for coffee and doughnuts, a small price for additional security.

19.4  Banking on cooperation Some neighborhood problems are more difficult to resolve. A library in British Columbia’s Interior is located near a bank that has been robbed several times. The robbers leave the bank with stolen money and weapons including knives and handguns. “One robber ran through the library and left by the rear door,” says Janine, a clerk who was working on the information desk at the time. “The police caught him in the parking lot. It was very frightening for a couple of us, especially when we saw that the man was armed with a revolver. In this part of the province we see lots of guns. People hunt with them, and carry them in their vehicles. But a revolver is not for hunting deer.” One positive aspect of this event was the library staff’s new relationship with the bank staff. The bank manager invited Janine and her colleagues to an in-house seminar on staying safe during a robbery. The library invited the bank manager to host a program on retirement financing for seniors. Coffee and doughnuts were served on both occasions, and the community became closer. “Everybody knows everybody else in our town,” says Janine. “But now the bankers know a little more about what the library does, and the library staff know more about security and saving for retirement.” But the risk of future robberies remains, and until the bank or the library moves to a different location some distance away, the library staff must be prepared for robbers on the loose. Libraries in malls must deal with persons who loiter and look for opportunities to entertain themselves in negative, sometimes criminal, ways. Librarians whose workplaces are located in malls note that graffiti and littering are the least of their concerns. “We get some truly nasty individuals hanging around outside our mall-based branch,” says Michelle, a children’s librarian on the Prairies. “They have intimidated patrons entering and leaving the branch, and demanded money from some of our elderly regulars. They have also made inappropriate remarks to staff members as they walk to their cars in the parking lot. The mall security staff have told these individuals not to harass us, but aside from that, there is little they can do aside from calling 911 if a mugging or assault occurs.” The mall management has asked the local police to patrol the mall and has installed better lighting in walkways and the parking lot. “Those measures have improved the situation,” says Michelle, “but we must be constantly vigilant, and make a note of every unpleasant incident, no matter how trivial it might seem. We are dealing mostly with unemployed youths and school dropouts. The majority of them are harmless. But a few are gang members and dope dealers, and some want to prove how tough they are by pushing around our staff and patrons. The problem will never disappear altogether.”

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19.5  The pain of divorce, the pleasures of chai Perhaps the most disturbing problem arising from proximity is that of a special library that serves a Toronto investment firm. The firm is located in an office block. On the same floor is a firm of lawyers who specialize in divorce and family law. Occasionally disgruntled clients accidentally have entered the library through a side door. “These clients are upset and very angry about their cases, particularly when they involve child custody,” says Colin, the library manager. “They think that our library employees are somehow connected to the law firm. They walk in and start shouting about how unfairly they have been treated. Sometimes they are drunk or stoned, and on a couple of occasions they have threatened my assistant and me. They were deadly serious. I dialed 911 right away, and the police took away the offenders.” Colin has locked the side door, but legal clients have wandered through the investment firm’s reception area and into the library without realizing that they are in the wrong office. “Alcohol and drugs can render people less aware of their surroundings,” says Colin. “It’s obvious to us, however, that anger and a sense of injustice can have a similar effect. When I tell angry legal clients that they’re in the wrong place, they can refuse to believe me, and continue ranting. Frankly I’d prefer a smelly pizzeria to a firm of divorce lawyers.” Such are some of the more troubling problems that arise in the neighborhoods of libraries. Fortunately, however, most library staffs find themselves on the same block as businesses and organizations that have good things to offer. In Victoria, the staff of a nonprofit library gets a reduced price on lessons provided by a next-door dance studio. (Too many carbohydrates? Waltz away that extra weight on your lunch break!) In Winnipeg, the librarian at a school library attends cut-rate sessions at a yoga studio down the block. And in Mr. Sandhu’s restaurant, the happiest librarians in the country sip chai and load their plates with steaming rice and butter chicken. So who’s next door to you? (2013)

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Worldwide weeding: when books no longer furnish a room

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Mike sleeps rough. At dusk, he wanders through Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, looking for a safe place to unroll his tarp and blankets and recline until daybreak. Unless the temperature drops below freezing, he avoids government housing for the homeless. He prefers dry spaces in parkades and doorways. Recently Mike discovered a doorway on the edge of a neighborhood in the urban core that he considered ideal. It was the entrance to a vacant storefront, deep enough to shelter not only him and his bedding but also the shopping cart that carries his worldly goods. When he first spotted the doorway, it was partially blocked with a pile of green garbage bags filled with old books and magazines. Ever resourceful, Mike stretched out on a couple of bags that were particularly soft and drifted off to sleep. As usual, he awoke at dawn the next morning. The local church had not yet opened to serve coffee to homeless people, so Mike decided to stay warm under his tarp. Out of curiosity, he reached into the garbage bag that served as a cushion for his head and withdrew a handful of old paperbacks. He recognized them immediately: Pan editions from the 1960s of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Dr. No and You Only Live Twice. Mike was delighted. He had read these thrillers as a teenager and could not wait to reread them. That morning he did not show up for his coffee at the church. Further exploration of the garbage bags revealed two hardcover Harry Potter titles, the most recent edition of a medical dictionary, three paperback novels by Willa Cather, the latest edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, a stack of Puffin Classics, a Vintage paperback of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and the Pelican edition of Shakespeare’s narrative poems. Everything was clean and in good shape.

20.1  Manner of disposal Who dumped those bags in that doorway, and why? The same signature on the flyleaves indicated one owner for the lot. Apparently he did not consider donating them to a library or thrift shop. He had simply dumped the bags in a slum doorway, and that—he thought—was that. “Those are good books, aren’t they?” says Mike. “You find all sorts of things on the streets, but you don’t expect to come across Harry Potter. I mean, why would somebody throw away stuff like that? It’s just not right.” Mike loaded the books into his shopping cart and took them to a local public library branch. He asked the librarian if she could use them. She glanced at them and said that she did not need them on her shelves. She could, however, include a couple of them in a library sale. Then she told Mike that in coming decades libraries would be “moving away” from hard copy books, and that most “sources” would be digital. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00020-7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“One day,” she said, “you’ll be able to enjoy all of your favourite authors in e-books. They’re easier to hold, and you can adjust the type size if you wish. You’ll like that.” But Mike was aghast. Would the library discard its collection of what he called “real books”? Would they be dumped in doorways? “No,” said the librarian. “We’ll let the popular titles like Harry Potter wear out, and then either put them in our sale or send them to a shredder. Perhaps one day we might sell some of our collections, or donate them to other libraries, although it’s uncertain whether other libraries would want to take them.”

20.2  More fiction than ever The librarian tried to reassure Mike that he would not lose access to any book or periodical that he liked. In fact, she told him, the library would probably be able to provide even more items that he might want. The collection would no longer be limited by space restrictions, and Mike could enjoy more fiction than ever before. The library would provide the necessary e-book reader; Mike would not be obliged to buy anything extra. Undoubtedly the librarian’s reasoning was sound, and Mike thanked her. But he was not convinced. For several days thereafter, rolling his shopping cart along alleys and past empty lots, he noticed all sorts of discarded books. Dumpsters and garbage cans might contain dozens of titles; hundreds of meters of abandoned shelves stood in residential lanes, waiting to be taken away by anyone who wanted them. Mike saw a young man disassembling a large wooden shelf in the front yard of a new house. “He was chopping it up with a hatchet,” said Mike. “It was the kind of hatchet you take camping. I asked him why he was taking the shelf apart. He said he didn’t need it because he had discarded all of his books, and the shelf was taking up space that he could use for something else. He wasn’t going to use the wood for kindling, since his house had gas fireplaces. He was chopping up the shelf so that it would be easy to fit the pieces in a garbage can.” Mike was uncomfortable about these things. He did not like the idea of a huge print purge. While he trusted the librarian and was sure that e-books would be okay, he did not want to see “old-fashioned” books disappear. Despite the fact that he was not the heaviest reader or most frequent library user, he thought that there was still a demand for books with paper pages and good-looking covers that “smelled fresh.” Librarians take note: Mike’s attachment to such books may be nothing more than sentimental, but it remains an obstacle that could take many years to overcome. Many users—and library staff members—might require more orientation to e-books, what IT specialists call an adaptation path. Adapting to a digital culture might force us to accept the disposal of items that we hold dear. There is a little bit of Mike in many of us, and even those librarians who accept e-books without question might find the evidence for the universal disposal of “old-fashioned” books—what we can refer to as worldwide weeding—disturbing. But worldwide weeding is ongoing, and obvious in numerous ways. Consider, for example, the current plight of secondhand and antiquarian bookshops across North America and Europe.

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“Like many book dealers in the secondhand trade, I’ve never had such a fine selection,” says Barry, who runs a shop in Vancouver. “People come in every day and offer to sell me their books. A few years ago most of what I was offered was trash, and I didn’t even look at it. But now I’m offered even more trash, along with a lot of very good books that I can’t use because chances are that nobody will buy them. People are dumping books in record amounts.” Barry worries about his shop’s overhead. His rent increases every year, along with other expenses. He no longer hands out bookmarks or business cards because he can’t afford them. He keeps the heat turned down and no longer supplies bags with purchases.

20.3  Dinosaurs choose Proust “I can’t compete with outfits like Amazon,” he says. “And with e-books becoming more common, my market is declining. I’m a dinosaur. I’ll stay in business for a couple of Years and then retire. When I do, I’ll sit on my back deck and read Proust. Not in an e-book, either. My generation may be the last to read the book in codex form. Man, that’s hard to accept.” Barry observes that most bookshops that close will have excess stock to offload. It is not as if there will always be someone or some organization that can accept this stock, hence it can end up in doorways. But, much to the traditionalist’s joy, there are other points of disposal, such as thrift shops. The book stocks of these establishments have grown apace over the past decade; British booksellers, already struggling with a severe recession, complain that thrift shops are taking away their business. In Canterbury, not far from the cathedral to which Chaucer’s pilgrims were headed, a large thrift shop offers an excellent selection of titles in a broad range of subject areas. The clerk, a jovial gentleman in tweeds who asked to remain anonymous, has mixed feelings about the increasing influx of stock. “I can understand why the dealers are unhappy with organizations such as ours,” he says. “After all, we are attracting so many of their usual customers. We didn’t plan to do that. Years ago we simply wanted to work alongside dealers, both new and second-hand. But now things are changing quickly. I imagine that the largest British and European dealers will survive for years yet, but the smaller ones will go out of business. And it’s not just the young people who prefer other sources of entertainment to books in proper wrappers and jackets. It’s the oldies, too.” The clerk says that he is “on the good side of 70” and still “able to hold up my end in most ways.” In future, however, he will join the growing population of seniors, and must adjust his reading habits accordingly. “I’ll get tired of holding heavy volumes, and won’t enjoy resting them on my lap,” he says. “My eyes will weaken, but I’ll still want to read. So I’ll acquire one of those electronic books—they’re perfect for the old and decrepit—and I can read Dick Francis until I reach the end, so to speak. Electronic books are a godsend, you know, particularly for people who have arthritis in their fingers and wrists. I’ll have to get used to the electronic gadgetry, but that will be a doddle. Good heavens, what will happen to all of our splendid old books? I suppose we’ll have to toss them out.”

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20.4  New uses for space As worldwide weeding continues, there will be consequences in other spheres. Library architecture will contain more “people space” or “patron activity areas” and less shelving. Technical service departments will change as well. “More screens, less space dedicated to hardcopy acquisitions,” says Dave, a library IT specialist in Toronto. “That trend has been going on for some years now. Technical staffers are dealing with new media that entail different footprints and office layouts. The controversy that will erupt—I believe that it’s inevitable—concerns the allocation of space. If Tech Services no longer needs shelving, why should the department have so much space? Why can’t the library use Tech Services space for other purposes, such as children’s programs? Why not outsource technical services completely? You see the kind of slippery slopes that librarians might have to contend with in future. And I guarantee that they won’t be too worried about what happens to the hardcopy books they delete from their systems.” The need for less shelving also influences residential design. In Vancouver, recently constructed housing contains little space for books. According to Diana, a well-established realtor, buyers no longer need traditional library space in their residences. “Homes are getting smaller because buyers can afford less,” she says. “The young couple who would buy a small detached house 30 years ago can no longer handle the mortgage. They choose a condo instead. The condo is small to begin with, and there’s no way that the couple will want to fill space with shelves for books that they don’t need or want to keep around. These days, people under 40 are more concerned about where they can store their bicycles. I hear that from realtors across the country. If parents leave their kids a collection of books, those books will often find their way to the dumpster. Sorry, but that’s what’s happening.” Diana suggests that lighting is always a matter of concern in a private residence, but for different reasons now than before. Buyers want natural light to save power, but also want it to illuminate their home offices. “Buyers want to be able to work at home on their computers,” she says, “and they want the lighting from any source—natural or electrical—to facilitate their work. So they will turn down an otherwise acceptable property because the skylight is in the wrong place, or the light fixtures are in the wrong place, or a room is too bright, or not bright enough. I suppose that it was always like this, but now the way in which light falls on a computer screen has become a major issue for many folks. And books? Nobody wants a well-lit, cozy reading space any more. You may not like my saying so, but the only concern is whether the dumpster on site is big enough to handle them. Maybe that’s not something I should say to a librarian, but it’s the truth.”

20.5  Back to 007 Diana notes that, in her experience, residential space requirements started to change when vinyl recordings— the legendary LPs—gave way to CDs and motion pictures moved from VHS format to DVDs. Hard copy books were the next medium to become

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obsolescent. Along with many people in the communications sector, she believes that eventually telephone landlines will disappear, and we shall depend on mobile phones. And our living spaces will continue to change accordingly, whereas older technologies and media become fond memories for most people. Meanwhile, Mike rolls his shopping cart through Vancouver’s West End until he reaches the bosky edge of Stanley Park. There he sits on his favorite bench and reads Dr. No. “You tell your librarians that there is nothing like James Bond on a warm day in the park,” he says. “I’ll read this old book till either it falls apart, or I do. All this talk about e-books makes me antsy. I guess I’m shaken, but not stirred enough to own one, if you get my meaning. And there’ll be people like me for a long time to come, so maybe it’s best not to throw out all those books.” (2013)

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What care ye for raiment? Dress codes and styles in our libraries

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Soaring above the burning city, the dragon belches a torrent of flame. A demon leaps from a mountain cave to hurl his fiery trident at a drooling zombie. Meanwhile, to one side, Daffy Duck stamps his foot and looks peeved. This scene appears as a tattoo on the arm of a clerical worker in a Canadian public library branch. “That tattoo has received mixed reviews,” says Lorna, the branch manager. “It’s that demon, who looks a little like Peter Sellers. I don’t think the resemblance was intended. The tattoo artist tried to create a macabre countenance, but people of my generation can’t help thinking about the Pink Panther when the clerical rolls up his sleeves. And why is Daffy Duck hanging around? The mind boggles.” Despite her concerns, Lorna did not consult her library’s dress code in connection with that tattoo. She says that like many of the library’s policies, it is vague and outof-date. Written in the late 1970s, it does not mention tattoos, piercings, or green hair. Besides, these recent fashion trends do not worry Lorna and many other librarians across North America as much as other personal styles and habits.

21.1  Slob alert “I have had worse problems with employees who simply do not wash their clothes often enough,” she says. One of her librarians wore blouses with large perspiration stains under each arm. On several occasions that librarian also wore her library outfits to tend her garden, and when she arrived at the branch, her shoes and trousers were muddy. One day she appeared with a piece of nylon rope for a belt that held up a pair of tattered jeans. At that point, Lorna told her that her outfit was unacceptable. She sent the librarian home to change. When the librarian returned, she apologized to Lorna and promised to dress appropriately in future. “I was greatly relieved that the librarian responded that way,” says Lorna. “I feared that she would resent my comments and hold a grudge, but she didn’t, and we get along fine. In fact, these days we even trade gardening tips over coffee. But if you’re going to criticize an employee’s appearance, you should do so tactfully. This can be challenging. I’d say that a friendly, informal approach is best, and you should avoid embarrassing people as much as possible. By the way, there was no point in referring to our dress code, which does not address laundry issues.” Some employees may be clean and tidy, but dress outrageously. Or appear undressed. At a public library on the Prairies, the librarians voice concerns about staff members who bare too much of themselves. “It’s warm here in the summer,” says Don, the technical services manager. “In July and August, our air conditioning is not very effective, and staff are inclined either to Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00021-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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appear on the job in less clothing than usual, or to take off clothing to make themselves more comfortable as they work. I deal with male staff members—usually the younger ones—who take off their shirts in our processing area. I agree that it’s hot in there, but the library isn’t a manufacturing plant, and we need to maintain a decent standard.” He insists that the men wear their shirts on the job.

21.2  First the shirts, and then … Don admits that patrons do not see employees in his processing area, so it is not as if there will be complaints from the public about shirtless men in the library. But he insists upon maintaining the standard in order to avoid what he calls “a slippery slope.” He explains what he means: “Once the shirts are off, it’s only a matter of time before the lads start wearing even less. No, I don’t have any proof that this will be the case, but … I’m not going to take any chances. This can be a difficult issue, and no way of dealing with it will guarantee the desired results. You want to talk about the women who work here? Don’t ask me. I’d probably say something politically incorrect and get myself in trouble.” Managers have similar fears about political correctness when the topic of hairstyles arises. Dress codes, if they mention hair, are often cautiously vague to avoid offence. For example, one Ontario public library code states that “employees’ hair should be neat and above the collar,” and that “sideburns and beards should be respectfully trimmed.” Elaine, who retired from the library several years ago, remembers the committee meetings during which the code was formulated. “I don’t think that we knew what we were doing,” she says. “There was lots of talk about the need for staff members to look professional, but no one was certain what that meant, and what was professional to one of us was definitely not to somebody else. We spent an entire afternoon arguing about hair. We couldn’t reach a consensus about what our standards should be. In the end we opted for that above-the-collar statement. As for the ‘respectful’ trimming of facial hair, I believe that a typo crept into the code. The wording should probably be ‘respectably trimmed’—whatever that was supposed to mean. But since our dress code is seldom consulted, we’re in no hurry to correct or update it.”

21.3  Hair off the spectrum Hair dyed what some would consider unusual colors has caused concern in a number of libraries, but managers are often unsure if they should express their disapproval. In some libraries, an employee’s glossy purple head of hair might be seen as a style popular with young adults, and thus appropriate when that employee is working in a library that caters to a large number of such patrons. But should such allowances be included in dress codes?

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“Probably not,” says Megan, a college library administrator in Vancouver. “No dress code can cover every hairstyle—or any other trend in personal appearance—that becomes popular. To keep a library’s dress code up to date, you’d need a committee that met every month, and that was prepared to spend many hours discussing tiny details. It’s not worth the trouble. All you can do as a manager is to set a decent example, and hope that your staff follow suit.” As for written codes, Megan suggests that while their usefulness may be limited, they are still worthwhile. She notes that they can give direction to an employee who wants to get an idea of what to wear at the library, and they can reinforce occupational health and safety guidelines. “People like to fit in,” she says. “That does not mean that we should adopt uniform styles like the Army, but we should offer employees an acceptable range of styles. We should insist on a neat and clean appearance for all employees. And in general, we should discourage any clothing or adornment that might lead to safety concerns.”

21.4  High-altitude footwear For examples of items that might be unsafe, Megan mentions dangling earrings “and any other jewelry that a child could grab,” footwear that leave toes exposed, and any clothing or jewelry that could get caught in machinery such as photocopiers. But the relationship between dress, adornment, and safety can be more complicated in different libraries. In this context, heel height becomes a common topic. “Over the centuries heels have gone up and down,” says Jill, a corporate head librarian in Toronto. “These days people in my library want comfortable shoes. Comfort is the basis of selection when it comes to choosing footwear, and that means that while I see lots of stylish low heels and soft leather, occasionally I see ugly jogging shoes with multi-coloured insteps and thick soles. And that’s where I put my food down, so to speak. Even though they’re probably safer than most footwear, they aren’t appropriate in our workplace.” The dress code at Jill’s downtown office is included in a Corporate Manual that also contains stern instructions about changing passwords and washing one’s coffee mug to prevent the spread of germs. The code demonstrates how “business casual” can mean different things, depending on organizational culture. For example, Jill and her fellow managers are expected to wear outfits that in other settings would be considered formal. Dark colors and conservative cuts are preferred. No sandals or other open-toed shoes; no “overly revealing apparel,” no golf shirts, no jeans or cargo pants, and absolutely no readable badges (“metal pin-backs with political or other messages and designs”). Hair is to be “maintained at a suitable length.” There is no mention of beards or mustaches because, according to Jill, the organizational culture has always discouraged them. “The only time that anyone wears a beard is before the Christmas break, when the CEO dresses up as Santa. He or she is obliged to wander around on the traditional red

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outfit and a fake beard, and that’s the only beard I’ve seen in my 15 years of working in this library.”

21.5  Footwear, cont The dress code in Jill’s office also includes photos of “suitable footwear”: black brogues for men, low-heeled lace-up shoes for women. Ideally one should be able to polish their shoes, or have them polished by the elderly gentleman in the shoeshine corner of the lobby. It is safe to infer that canvas and suede shoes are forbidden, and spike heels are out of the question. The dress code for Jill’s library technicians and clericals is slightly less strict, although paraprofessional and clerical staff members are expected to adhere to standards higher than those one would find in many other libraries. The men wear ties and jackets—usually blazers. The women favor dark slacks and jackets, and almost no jewelry aside from wedding rings and simple necklaces. Shelvers are permitted to doff their jackets and roll up their sleeves to do their jobs. “I don’t mind wearing more formal clothes to work,” says Jonathan, one of Jill’s library technicians. “One thing I discovered was that dressing for this job can be less expensive than it was for the public library job I had a few years ago. For my current job, I bought two blazers and a couple of pairs of dress pants, plus some shirts and ties, and it cost me substantially less than the clothes that I wore at the public library. Informal clothes are expensive and there are fewer deals on many brands than there are on the kind of clothes that I wear in my corporate library.” One gets the impression that, as far as their dress codes are concerned, every library is different. Much depends on how seriously employees take the codes formulated for their libraries, and how strictly the codes are enforced. In many libraries, organizational culture is equally influential as any code, and sometimes even more influential. And so is the weather. “It gets cold in Saskatchewan in the winter,” says Ed, a reference librarian in Regina. “When the temperature drops below minus-40 with the wind chill, nobody cares much about dress codes in our library, or any other library in the province. Your main concern is to avoid freezing to death. You wear warm clothing, and if it isn’t Gucci or Armani, who cares?”

21.6  Watch for icicles Another point that Ed emphasizes is that reference and information desks are often placed near the front doors of libraries. In winter, librarians working at these desks are blasted by cold air every time a patron opens the door. Thus Ed wears a coat during his shift at the reference desk, and uses a small space heater to keep his feet warm. In the summer, however, lighter outfits are in order. Ed has not witnessed shirtless men in his library’s processing areas, but he notes that the staff adopts styles prevailing in the warmer regions of the US. Men wear linen jackets and light khaki trousers,

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and have been seen sockless in elegant sandals. Women wear light cotton tops and skirts, and occasionally canvas deck shoes. Saskatchewan’s summer heat can wear one out quickly if one does not take advantage of hot weather styles, as library employees affirm from work areas that feel like ovens from dawn to nightfall. Hence it should not come as a surprise that there is no standard dress code for libraries, or for particular kinds of libraries. It is not unusual to find librarians who have not bothered to read their workplace codes, and who do not care about other staff members’ choice of apparel as long as the latter will not draw complaints from patrons or cause small children to stop and stare. Comfort and safety are factors most often mentioned by library managers when asked about styles of dress and adornment. They also point out the need for library employees to blend in with their colleagues and sometimes their library’s patrons. The most sensible course for any new library employee who wants to find out how to dress appropriately on the job is to see how his or her colleagues dress, and do something similar. It is prudent to avoid anything over the top, or plain daffy. (2013)

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Circulation counter service in public and academic libraries: dealing face-to-face with patrons

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“I can’t find my teeth,” said the elderly gentleman to Monica, a clerk at the circulation counter of a public library branch in the Midwestern US. “They were in my mouth when I came to the library. I sat in one of your armchairs and started to read a book, but it wasn’t very interesting and I dozed off. When I woke up, my teeth were gone. They were quality dentures, and I paid a lot for them. Did anybody turn them in?” Another day, another unusual problem. Monica began a search of the area around the armchair in which the gentleman had dozed off. In fact, this was not the first missing denture mystery that she had been obliged to solve. “Older people lose things,” said Monica. “Anyone who works in a public f­ acility— and particularly a busy library—must be prepared to hunt for items that seniors have misplaced.” She mentions umbrellas and canes, eyeglasses, pens, wallets, purses, hearing aids, and walkers. “Dentures disappear from time to time, but fortunately there is a process to recover them that in my experience usually works.”

22.1  Bronzino Most of the interactions that occur at circulation counters are straightforward. In many public and academic libraries, people ask for directions, to the washrooms, to different departments, and to interesting places and noteworthy attractions in the vicinity. At the Charing Cross Library in Central London, a clerk mentions that she received numerous questions about the photocopiers and free WiFi. Occasionally, however, a patron asks for something that surprises her. “A gentleman from Hong Kong asked me where he might find the nearest Bronzino,” she says. “I didn’t know what he was talking about. The way he said it made it sound like a restaurant chain. But he explained that Bronzino was a famous painter, and I assumed that he might find what he wanted in the National Gallery, which is a short distance from our library. I was right. Google told us that there are several of Bronzino’s paintings in the Gallery. The librarian could have answered the patron’s question, but she was busy, so I filled in.” At many libraries, the most common circulation desk transactions concern the borrowing and return of items. Circulation clerks discharge returned items, collect fines, set aside items for repair and cleaning, issue borrower cards, and take note of items that have gone missing. Patrons can return items by leaving them on the counter or pushing them through a chute into a return container such as a box, bin or cart. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00022-0 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Over many years, these containers have been the source of numerous ghastly tales that involve things that do not belong in libraries. “Libraries across the US have had to deal with ugly things arriving in the return boxes. Circulation people have discovered everything from dead cats and bags of excrement to discarded garments, rusty garden tools and broken appliances,” says Larry, a circulation manager at a public library in California. “I imagine that some reports are exaggerated or arise from urban legends, but at our library we’ve found lots of garbage in the return box, including pizza boxes and junk food wrappers, empty liquor bottles, and disposable coffee cups. We’ve also found cell phones, wallets, and keys that passers-by have picked up in the parking areas near the library. People think that the library will return lost items to their owners, so after business hours, they’ll shove the items down the return chute.”

22.2  Put on hold Larry recalls hearing a cell phone ringing in the return box near his main circulation counter. He delved into the box, retrieved the phone, and answered the call. The phone’s owner was attempting to recover it by calling the number and catching the attention of anyone who had found it. “The owner was really happy that we had his phone, which he had dropped on the way back to his car,” said Larry. “Somebody had spotted the phone on the ground and shoved it into our return box. But the owner told me that he had outstanding library fines, and he thought that I might demand money from him if he came in to claim his phone. I told him not to worry, that we’d give him back his phone and let him pay his fines at a later date. But I warned him not to wait too long, since those fines were mounting up. He came by the next day and picked up his phone. A few days after that, he paid his fines. This story ended happily.” Some stories do not have happy endings. Occasionally patrons refuse to take responsibility for damage to items that they return. DVDs and CDs reappear covered with food stains; books and periodicals suffer water damage and the illicit removal of illustrations and pages of text. Kits and hard copy games can lose one or more components. Maps can lose entire regions to eager scissors. Jane, a circulation counter supervisor at a public library in Florida, remembers a confrontation with a patron who returned a children’s book that had been treated harshly. “A woman came to my counter with a recently published picture book that somebody had defaced with crayons. Actually the whole book was a mess. The woman was the first patron to borrow the book, but she swore that she didn’t know who had crayoned it. I had to accept what she said, but then she got angry and suggested that I was accusing her beloved child of defacing the book. I denied it, but she refused to back off. She left the library in a huff. I’m certain that her child was the culprit, but in these situations there’s not much we can do.” Jane believes that to escalate such matters can waste time and achieve negligible results. She could suspend the patron’s borrowing privileges, but to do so could lead to letters of complaint arriving on her Director’s desk. Even in cases where the

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patron is clearly guilty of damaging items, it is often a matter of “we said/they said.” Fortunately many patrons will confess to their crimes, and offer to pay for repairs of replacements.

22.3  In the wet “You would be amazed by the number of books that patrons drop in the bath,” says Jane. “Here in Florida, they drop them in swimming pools, too, and in hot tubs.” Relaxing in warm water, readers can become drowsy, and their books and magazines slip from their hands. They awake with a start and grab their reading material before it sinks completely: hence a book will return to the library with its bottom half swollen from submersion, and its top half intact. Jane and her colleagues see this kind of problem frequently, and particularly after holidays during which borrowers have opportunities to combine bathing and reading. “People can be very embarrassed when they return water-damaged items, and get tongue-tied when they tell us what happened. Sometimes they volunteer to replace the item, or to pay us for replacing it, and we’re pleased to accept their offer. But occasionally the embarrassment is too much for people, and they slip the wet book down the return chute with paper money acting as a bookmark. Of course we can find out who returned the book with the $20 bill inserted, but we don’t investigate these matters further. We’re simply grateful that the patron is willing to make amends.” Patrons still approach the librarian or library technician who sits at the reference desk and ask her to resolve various problems that are best handled at the circulation counter. In fact, in many public and academic libraries patrons make no distinction between library employees. Hence library policies should address not what patrons should do, but what they will do. Mike, a reference librarian at a community college in Kansas, explains how he and his colleagues help patrons with different kinds of requests: “When students come to my desk with a reference question, I do my best to help them. When they come to me with matters that our circulation people should handle— late fines, lost library cards, and hold retrievals—I send them to the circ. counter. The division of labour is easy to determine in these cases. But when I get a directional question about the location of the Fine Arts collection or a public washroom, I simply answer it, as would the circ. counter people. We agree that’s the best way to do things. We also agree that if I’m busy, when students line up at the reference desk for assistance with research, then the circ. counter people can answer simple, one-step reference questions.”

22.4  A matter of qualifications These days many circulation counter employees have been trained as library technicians, and some have earned degrees in library and information science. In regions where jobs for librarians are scarce, some will gladly accept paraprofessional and

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clerical positions to pay the bills, and will be pleased to answer reference questions at the circulation counter. Library administrators will often express their willingness to let overqualified circulation staff answer reference questions if the reference librarian is unavailable or overwhelmed with demands for service. “Frankly, as long as patrons are satisfied with our service, so am I,” says Brian, the Reference Services Manager at a public library in the southern US. “We emphasize teamwork in our library, and if a circ. counter person can answer a simple question, I don’t want to get in the way. We’ve never had a problem with the boundary between reference desk activities and circulation counter tasks. We all pitch in, and everybody’s happy”. But what about job descriptions? Could librarians complain that circulation staff are stealing their work? Might circulation clerks resent having to answer simple reference questions and to perform other functions that their job descriptions do not cover? Brian makes sure that employees at all levels—including senior management—understand that occasionally librarians and circulation staff might be asked to provide service outside the normal bounds. “I take people through their respective job descriptions and point out the clause that mentions ‘other services if required’. In the decade I’ve worked [as a manager], nobody has complained. A ready reference question at our circ. counter can add variety to the job, and the circ. staff don’t mind at all.”

22.5  Security Perhaps the least attractive aspect of working at a circulation counter involves dealing with security problems. In many libraries, the most common is verbal abuse of staff and patrons. The abuser might be intoxicated or emotionally disturbed, or simply in a bad mood. But grumpy, complaining patrons do not necessarily pose security threats. Their anger can be justified. Technical difficulties can cause serious frustration at many circulation counters. Printers and photocopiers run out of paper, staples, and toner; computer screens suddenly go blank; scanners fail to scan, and returned items are not discharged. In the latter cases, patrons can be charged late return fees that they refuse to pay. They are right to complain vigorously. They cross the line, however, if their anger leads them to threaten or insult circulation counter staff or any other library employees. “Some people are better than others at defusing unpleasant confrontations,” said Denise, the circulation manager at a college library in Pennsylvania. “Our circ. counter supervisor deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for cooling down bad situations. She makes great eye contact. She uses the palms-down hand motion to get furious [patrons] to stop shouting, and she lets them know that she’s listening and wants to know what they need. When some undergrad calls her a rude word, she tells him that he doesn’t mean it. The confrontation can conclude on friendly terms. I don’t know what I’d do without [the supervisor]. Every library needs somebody with her face-to-face skills.” Circulation counter staff can be responsible for other safety and security tasks. They can provide first aid to injured patrons and colleagues. In some libraries they

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supervise evacuation drills and, if disaster strikes, lead actual evacuations. They can make sure that fire alarms and emergency lighting are functional, and lock library doors at the end of the day.

22.6  The case of the missing molars, cont. Clerks can also manage the lost property cupboard or lost-and-found drawer. In the latter, Monica discovered the elderly gentleman’s dentures. She had searched the area around the armchair in which he had fallen asleep, but not before the janitor had found the dentures while dusting the nearby shelves. The janitor had deposited the dentures in the lost-and-found drawer. Monica wrapped them carefully in Kleenex and handed them to the gentleman, who was overjoyed. He popped them into his mouth and smiled broadly. “Sometimes people remove their dentures as they’re falling asleep,” said Monica, also smiling. “They let their dentures drop on the floor, or fall into the space between the armchair’s cushion and arm. Right now in my drawer I have a couple of sets of dentures and an orthodontic retainer. I expect the owners to show up eventually. People can neglect to claim umbrellas and cheap pens, but they can’t get by without their mouth gear.” Note: The names of persons quoted in this article have been changed at their request. (2018)

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Section C Visiting the Library: People and Programs

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Gold, Frankincense, and Murder: the wise bookseller’s guide to corporate gifts

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What every image-conscious corporation needs to know. You’re the manager in charge of corporate gifts at an insurance company in Toronto, a credit union in Winnipeg, or an investment brokerage in Vancouver. I’m your best friend. I’m a bookseller, and I can give you the advice and service you need to make outstanding charitable donations. I can help you decide on gifts for your suppliers and clients. When a colleague retires, I have ideas for the most appropriate item to present to him or her at that farewell dinner. I can save you time, money, and grief at Christmas. Name the occasion, and I can surprise and delight your major shareholders, board members, and illustrious visitors. With my help, you can bring joy to any elected official or government honcho. I can make you the most intelligent and generous corporate citizen in your neighborhood, city, or province. Interested? Of course you are. Let’s consider a variety of mutual opportunities. Christmas is the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. You are expected to present your top clients with something more than pretty cards. Unsure of what they would enjoy, you decide to give them expensive items. Your clients might not like what you select for them, but when they realize that you’ve paid a bundle for that crystal statuette of a duck, they’ll know that you value their service. Or so you think. But your clients are tired of crystal ducks, titanium pen sets, vibrating footrests, and all the other gewgaws that arrive in their offices every December. What they want is something to divert them. For example, last year a lawyer in Calgary sent his clients hardcovers by John Grisham. His inscription: “Who says lawyers are dull? May this humble gift take your mind off the usual madness of the season. Merry Christmas.” His clients responded favorably. An oil company president wrote in his note of thanks, “I loved the Grisham, couldn’t put it down. Since I’ve renewed your retainer, your New Year will be happy and prosperous. Cheers.” Credit for the lawyer’s book selection goes to a Calgary bookseller, who received a bottle of scotch and an order for “the same hot stuff next year.” Honored visitors and guests like hot stuff, too. They expect a bunch of roses that they will abandon in their hotel room, or a brass-and-enamel plaque that commemorates their visit to your office. The plaque will probably end up in an airport garbage bin. What you can give them is a book that appeals to them, suits their tastes, and demonstrates your sensitivity to their interests. When a Japanese CEO arrived in Vancouver this year, his corporate hosts gave him a recent work on British Columbian shipwrecks. The CEO was entranced. He is known for his love of scuba diving. He sat through the lunch in his honor with his nose Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00023-2 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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planted in maritime history. When he rose to give a toast, he announced that he would need time to find an equally suitable gift for his hosts, but that since he intended to do substantial business in Western Canada, he was certain that he’d be able to reciprocate eventually. His hosts were thrilled. As for the local bookseller who supplied the work on shipwrecks, she received a long-term P.O. number and a gift certificate for a sushi dinner. Books are suitable gifts at any time, but especially when you and your company want to make a point in public. Let’s assume that you want to draw attention to your corporate commitment to high quality. Talk to me! I can offer a selection of books that will emphasize your commitment; I can even suggest recipients. Let me select the highest quality of children’s books on the market: award-winners, classics, and titles too good to miss. The best recipients for these will be the public library, a children’s hospital, or a local school library. You can announce this gift to the media and note that because you’re committed to high quality, you want to give the best books to society’s most valuable asset, our children. You can mention your dedication to fostering literacy. Don’t miss that photo opportunity with the librarian or hospital CEO, that interview with the business columnist, or that tax break. If somebody asks you why you give books rather than software, suggest that the slickest high-tech package doesn’t have the longevity of a Newberry or Caldecott winner, and that while your company relies on software as much as anyone else, you’re interested in quality that lasts longer than the latest version of Windows. There are book-giving opportunities to underscore any positive corporate image. If your market is global, donate an atlas to a local school. For a company that promotes a healthy lifestyle, a gift of diet and exercise books to a public library is suitable. Innovative companies can stock school library shelves with biographies of scientists and inventors. On any worthy cause or idea there are hundreds of titles, and I can provide them. One date to remember is April 23, which is International Book Day as well as Shakespeare’s birthday. In acknowledging this date, why not donate the Bard for a school prize-giving ceremony? A modern edition of his Collected Plays is a good choice for a first-class student of English literature or a talented young actor. With my guidance, you can also make Canada Book Day donations to a broader group of community organizations: selections of fiction to seniors’ centers, books on games and playtime activities to daycares, music reference titles to music schools and choirs. Chances are that you will be invited to deliver a speech explaining why you’ve donated these books; here’s your chance to broadcast your message and polish your corporate image. In fact, even though books are less expensive than many other corporate gifts, they have more inherent dignity. When you help a young person to discover Shakespeare, you have every right to mount that stage and tell the assembled parents how noble you and your company are. Others may donate computers or video equipment, sporting goods or laboratory supplies: all useful and welcome, but pale stuff beside Hamlet and King Lear. You can be sure that most thinking parents know it.

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As a bookseller, I’m an excellent source of ideas for all gift-giving occasions. We should talk further. Feel free to discuss with me your past donations, corporate gift-giving traditions, and future needs. I’ll be happy to tell you what’s new from the publishers, what’s exciting, and what’s appropriate for different panjandrums. I’m sure that we can develop a healthy business relationship, and never again will you be tempted to hand out crystal ducks. (1998)

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“It’s not just the books!” Wheelchair patrons speak out  

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For the past century, chess masters have relied on defensive strategies to lure their opponents into error and defeat. These days, the brutally aggressive player is uncommon. Carl, aged 40, is an example. On a late summer day in the activities room of a BC public library, we find him destroying simultaneously three members of the local chess club. Carl arranges their captured pieces in tidy rows to one side. The local club never had a hope. Once upon a time, neither did Carl. Every year accidents kill and maim numerous loggers in British Columbia’s forests. Carl lost his legs when a 20-m Douglas fir fell across them. He awoke in a Vancouver hospital with two neatly bandaged stumps. An orderly taught him the basic chess moves; a girlfriend gave him a pile of texts on the middle game and the tactics of famous Russian players. Carl studied and practiced endlessly. Within a few weeks, he had whipped a platoon of orderlies and nurses, his physiotherapist and rehabilitation coordinator, and the hapless orthopedic surgeon who fitted him for a wheelchair. Carl has become a regular library patron for several reasons. First, libraries contain much of the information he needs to complete his vocational retraining program. Secondly, they offer handicapped stalls in the washrooms. Thirdly, they provide quiet space for chess games. Lastly, they’re full of willing victims, people who will sit with Carl for hours and allow him to tear them apart, piece by piece.

24.1  Safe spots “When you end up in a wheelchair, you look for safe spots, places where you can be comfortable,” says Carl. “You’re vulnerable, even in cities that try to accommodate the physically challenged. But libraries are almost always safe. People won’t push you out of the way or ram you with a shopping cart, and library staffers are helpful. Most wheelchair people will tell you that libraries give them a break from the anxiety of dealing with sidewalks and malls.” Many large North American libraries started to adapt their facilities for wheelchair access in the early 1960s. Fifty years later, most public libraries have parking spaces reserved for handicapped persons. A wheelchair patron can enter the library either through a street-level door or along a ramp that’s not too steep. Ramps have handrails on one or both sides. Doorways and aisles are wide enough for wheelchair patrons to negotiate without difficulty. Elevators remain open for several seconds, enough time for a wheelchair patron to enter or exit without colliding with doors in motion. Those elevators are regularly serviced to ensure that they stop at a point level with the floor, so that wheelchairs don’t have to lurch dangerously when they cross the threshold. Signage is geared to meet wheelchair patrons’ needs, especially in directing them to washrooms and emergency exits. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00024-4 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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24.2  Library attitudes Attitudes toward wheelchair patrons have become more sophisticated as well. Library staffers can anticipate problems that a wheelchair might encounter in different parts of the library and assist patrons at the appropriate moment. “Librarians have learned patience,” says Mary, an 88-year-old retired landscape architect with a balance impairment who depends on a wheelchair to perform errands. “They understand that some of us can’t get past turnstiles and stairways, and that we can get stuck turning a corner or changing direction on certain types of carpets. Some of us simply run out of energy and need a hand.” Mary is a heavy reader and can’t conceive of life without access to books and magazines. She relies on Vancouver libraries for her chief source of entertainment and her main connection to the world at large. Not even her TV can give her what she gets from a stack of old magazines or a weekend’s worth of mysteries. Since she started to use a wheelchair, she has become acutely aware of the different ways that library staffers treat her.

“There’s a subtlety that many librarians develop,” she says. “They take note of people in wheelchairs. When a wheelchair patron has trouble reaching a book on a high shelf, they appear to offer assistance. But they have a gift of not making you feel self-conscious about needing help. That’s a special kind of service. It’s not available in every library, but it should be.” Many wheelchair patrons do not like excessive attention. They do not like staff members to follow them around and monitor their every move.

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24.3  Independence on wheels “It’s annoying when all eyes are trained on me,” says Carl. “Once I’m past the front door, I don’t want extra attention. I get irritated with the non-handicapped people who monopolize Internet stations that are set up for wheelchair folks, but I don’t want the librarian to intervene on my behalf and reprimand some character who wasn’t aware of me because he was too busy examining a popular website. I can handle those situations myself. I simply say ‘After you,’ and the guy will usually make way for me. But when the librarian steps in, he gets embarrassed, and I feel like a nuisance. This is not a small point. When the librarian or any other service worker acts on my behalf like that, I feel like a cripple. I assure you that I can handle most of these situations myself.” Librarians must realize that every wheelchair patron is unique, and that some occasionally need a special kind of help. Liz, aged 38, is one such. She suffers from a form of multiple sclerosis that allows her to walk with a cane but occasionally forces her into a wheelchair. She and her family recently moved to Vancouver from Northern Manitoba so that she could receive more advanced medical treatment and counseling. “My MS is unpredictable,” she says. “I have good and bad days, but I can’t alter my routine significantly, not with two daughters in elementary school. Our schedule includes regular visits to the local library for Storytime, the young readers’ club, and random browsing. I think it’s important to make the library part of my daughters’ lives, so no matter how unstable I’m feeling, we’re off to the library. With my husband at work, I’m in charge of the girls.”

24.4  When to ignore the rules Library policies and practices may limit the amount of physical assistance that library staff members can offer Liz, but she admits that occasionally they have ignored official restrictions to help her. “Sometimes I’m feeling strong enough to get about with nothing more than a cane,” she says. “But by the time I reach the library, I’m tired. That’s when I’m at my worst, and there’s a risk that I’ll collapse. At my library branch, however, they look out for me. One of the staffers appears out of nowhere and helps me to a chair. Then somebody brings me a glass of water, while the children’s librarian grabs my girls and gives them something to read. When I’m feeling better, the librarian makes sure that I have a lift home. I guarantee that there’s nothing in the procedures manual that demands this level of attention devoted to one patron. My husband says that I probably receive better care in the library than I do at the hospital.” When Liz appears at the library in her wheelchair, the staff treat her with the same consideration. She notes that an assistant has volunteered to “escort” her around the library. “That means that he will push my wheelchair around the stacks, and hand me anything I can’t reach. He’ll also check out my books and pack them in the bag at the

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back of my chair. But he doesn’t treat me like an oddity. We enjoy complaining about the weather and civic politics, and we wax indignant about the incompetence of local hockey and football teams. In other words, there’s nothing strained or uncomfortable about my interaction with the library employee. And that’s how it should be.”

24.5  Individual respect Carl, Mary, and Liz are encouraged by the ways in which libraries serve them as individuals. “You have to be impressed when you see librarians getting to know you and your physical limitations so quickly,” says Carl. “After my accident, the social worker sent me to a support group for people who were recently handicapped and who relied on wheelchairs. What struck me right away was that wheelchair people have different limitations and challenges. There are paraplegics and quadriplegics. Some of us are incontinent, or asthmatic, or depressed, or heavily medicated. Elderly wheelchair users can get drowsy and fall asleep in the reference area. Younger users might require constant supervision. But you don’t hear librarians complain about us. We seem to be as welcome as anyone else, no matter how severely challenged we are. And that’s why so many of us become regular library users. It’s not just the books, it’s the quality of the staff and the way they treat us like ordinary people.” Liz mentions that she sees an increasing number of wheelchair patrons in her library. She notes that all have different ways of using libraries. “For example, my husband Tom has just joined a chess club, and the fellow he’s playing tonight is in a wheelchair. He’s supposed to be a good player. Tom’s looking forward to meeting him.” Poor Tom. Carl has no mercy. (2004)

What’s cooking at your library: a special event

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You are your library’s Special Events Coordinator. Later today a gentleman will appear in your office and announce that he is the Pickle King. You will welcome him, since he is the presenter at this evening’s library event, “Organizing Power Buffets.” The Pickle King will demonstrate the best way to prepare a cold lunch spread of vichyssoise, salads, beef, salmon, rice pudding, chocolate mousse, and fruit punch, along with a bushel of gherkins arranged to form messages such as Viva Women’s Wrestling! and Monarchists Rule! The Pickle King strives to be versatile and inclusive. He will attract a large audience, perhaps more than one hundred people. Preregistration has been brisk. Your director is delighted. At first she thought that you were crazy. She saw the Pickle King on TV telling Oprah about the dangers of genetically modified dills. Was a respectable public library the appropriate venue for him? Then the Mayor phoned to congratulate her on “snagging the P.K.” The Mayor planned to attend the event, as did the Chief of Police, a Member of Parliament and the inevitable media crew. The Pickle King was deemed worthy. Your director considers you a genius.

25.1  Getting started The success of this evening’s event will owe as much to your planning and preparations as to the presenter’s celebrity. What steps must you take to ensure that all goes well? First, determine what topics would interest your patrons. Inspired by TV chefs such as Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver, they seemed to be in the mood for a cookery presentation. Recently they’ve borrowed heavily from the cookery collection and requested the acquisition of many new large-format recipe books. Your colleagues on the Reference Desk have been asked repeatedly for new ways to serve asparagus and better methods of poaching sole.

25.2  Cook it and they will come Cookery events have become popular not only in urban libraries but also in smaller and remote branches. People like to eat well, and if a library provides learning opportunities involving asparagus and sole, patrons will be eager to attend. Before you make your final decision, however, you should review your patrons’ reception of previous events. You note that cookery programs have been successful at your library in the past, as have presentations concerned with antique collecting and evaluation, silent films, local history, and safe travel for seniors. You were wise to remind yourself of programs that were unsuccessful: chess and bridge tutorials, Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00025-6 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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a lecture on the care and feeding of pet reptiles, an evening with Canada’s foremost expert on junk bonds, and an adult puppet show that was more adult than the audience was expecting. You are certain about the kinds of events that you should avoid, although they might be well-received at other libraries.

25.3  Finding a presenter Having decided on a cookery presentation, you needed a presenter. You asked local restaurateurs for recommendations. You asked home economics teachers, nutritionists, journalists, and cable channel producers to put you in touch with somebody interesting. You wanted a good public speaker who knew how to handle audiences. While cookery programs have succeeded with lectures and audiovisual presentations, you wanted a demonstration of actual food preparation. This would appeal to the broadest audience, including ESL patrons who benefit most from the physical presence of what they’re learning about in English. The food columnist at your local newspaper suggests that you contact the Pickle King. You do. He’s available to give a presentation in your library. He’ll do the job for free, on condition that he can set up a display of his latest books and videos. You offer to help him organize the display in a conspicuous spot near the front entrance if he will donate signed copies of his books to the library. He agrees without hesitation. He knows that libraries can give presenters invaluable opportunities to promote their products and services.

25.4  Setting a date What date did you have in mind? The success of your event depends on choosing a day and time that do not conflict with football and hockey games, rock concerts, and holidays. You decide on a Tuesday evening in March. You make sure that there are no much-anticipated movies to be released that day at local theatres. Checking TV schedules, you’re relieved to discover that there will be no must-see specials on the day of your event. You’ve even investigated weather predictions, which, taking into account patterns of the past 5 years, indicate higher than average temperatures. Do you worry too much about weather? No. Special events coordinators assert that a drop of one degree Celsius can result in lower attendance, while an increase of one degree can lead to a long and enthusiastic queue outside your public meeting room. If local sports teams are inactive on a certain day, that’s a potential time for your event. Common sense demands that you avoid scheduling anything on the day of an important playoff game or cup final.

25.5  Getting the word out The next step is promotion. Most libraries rely on posters announcing the event. These appear on library bulletin boards. You can also distribute them to community centers, schools, colleges and universities, bookstores, supermarkets, and banks. Your library

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website is a natural vehicle for event announcements. Local daily and weekly newspapers often contain a section dedicated to public events, and editors might be willing to interview you or your presenter, or to publish a review of the event. Multicultural associations appreciate any library promotional materials that they receive. Be sure to encourage association managers and newsletter editors to translate your announcement for their members. Producers at cable networks and radio stations are often willing to promote library events, especially if a celebrity is involved. Occasionally you or your presenter will be invited to chat with a host on air. For the sake of your library’s public profile, accept the invitation. If you don’t feel comfortable in front of a camera or a microphone, find a colleague who is. (What are directors for?) If your presenter is invited to a broadcast interview, remind him or her to mention the date, time, and location of the event, or to ask the host to do so. Accuracy of broadcast event information is essential. An incorrect announcement can lead hundreds of patrons to arrive at the wrong time or location, with embarrassing repercussions.

25.6  Signing up Preregistration for a special event gives you an idea of audience size. It also increases the chances that patrons will attend, since it reinforces the impression that the event is exclusive and in demand. Ideally patrons will preregister at your library, although some libraries permit patrons to sign up by e-mail. Don’t expect your preregistration list to be completely accurate, since circumstances might prevent some patrons from showing up, and walk-ins can arrive at the last moment.

25.7  Final preparations A comprehensive review of necessities is wise on the day before the event. Start with your presenter. Call the Pickle King and make sure that he has all of the supplies and equipment he needs. An experienced food presenter will be prepared to bring backup components—extra ingredients, pans, burners, and implements. You should find out what he expects from your library. Doubtless he will ask for tables and counter space, bright lights, electrical outlets, and lined garbage containers. He might also ask for enough paper plates, cutlery, and napkins to serve his feast to the audience. What about a microphone? To keep their hands free, food presenters prefer the clip-on variety, although for events in classroom-sized spaces they will often rely on their unamplified voices. In fact, the less audiovisual equipment you use, the less there is to malfunction or break down.

25.8  Signage Post signs on the day of your event. In most libraries, three-part directional signage is effective. Patrons see the first sign on the library’s front door or in the main entrance. An arrow points them to the Reference desk or circulation counter, where another sign

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and arrow shows them the way to the event room. The door of the events room sports a large bright sign that indicates that this room and no other is where they should be. Too much signage? Impossible. Even the clearest and most conspicuous signs can confuse patrons. Some have poor eyesight. Others might not understand English or French. And others might not be paying attention. Any librarian who has ever sat under a sign with “Information Desk” in bold lettering will remember patrons who have asked them whether this is indeed the Information Desk. Such inquiries go with the territory, no matter how many signs you post in it.

25.9  Day of reckoning Ask the Pickle King to arrive at least 2 h before the event, so that he has ample time to set up and test his equipment. Does he have the lighting that he and his audience need? What about lined garbage containers? Lots of the latter are necessary for any food presentation in a library, since not even a trace of food should be allowed to remain near collection areas or workspace. At the conclusion of the event all containers should be emptied outside the library to avoid attracting insects and vermin. People arrive. Signs take them (one hopes) to the event room. They are seated. You and the Pickle King stand up front. You deliver your introductory remarks. Keep them brief. The library welcomes the Pickle King. He has appeared on Oprah, who recommends his books. Tonight he will show us how to prepare a magnificent power buffet. Please save any questions until the end. Take it away, P.K. And he does. He’s good. He makes everything look so easy. Like other professional chefs, he never seems to make a mess. He produces meat that is perfect in shape and color. His rice pudding has a firm and consistent texture, with raisins equidistant throughout. Watch him chop those vegetables so quickly that the knife blade becomes a blur. Ah, he has nicked his finger!

25.10  Troubleshooting No matter how skillful he is, the Pickle King is human and might make mistakes. Food preparation involves the risk of cuts, scalds, and burns: do you have a first aid kit handy? That bleeding finger is hardly a disaster, and with a band-aid in place, the Pickle King can quickly resume action. Troubleshooting is an integral part of event planning. Increasingly dependent on high-tech equipment and computer programs such as PowerPoint, events coordinators and presenters need backups to ensure that any equipment failure can be rectified quickly. Coordinators should make a list of all equipment to be used during an event, then consider what would happen if any particular piece broke down. Fortunately, the well-experienced Pickle King improvise brilliantly, and since his buffet is cold, he has completed much of the basic food preparation before the event. Only a power outage can delay him now, and not for long: he has brought a box of candles to create an elegant atmosphere around his buffet table. It’s always an advantage to work with a presenter who can troubleshoot for himself.

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25.11  A savory conclusion In the tradition of the Galloping Gourmet, the Pickle King invites audience members to share his cold buffet at the end of his presentation. Everything is sliced and ready for serving. Meanwhile, a library staffer lingers by the door, advising people not to wander through the collection with plates piled high with salmon and salad. As attendees leave, they can borrow cookery books from the library or buy them from the Pickle King. With its high turnout and the audience’s expression of satisfaction, the event is an obvious success. The Mayor finishes a large helping of chocolate mousse and promises to go on a diet. The next day, you should hold a debriefing session with library staff to discuss any problems arising from the event. You should send a note of thanks to the Pickle King and commend him for his efforts. It is acceptable to mention the library’s willingness to repeat the event the following year, perhaps with a different menu. Certainly the Return of the Pickle King would be popular. (2004)

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Abroad in your library: what tourists want, what they get

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that an English gentlewoman on holiday in Western Canada must want to see a bear. Lady Anne is a rear admiral’s widow. From her flat in Knightsbridge, one of London’s more exclusive neighborhoods, she spots few examples of wildlife, aside from pigeons and the occasional skinhead. Having arrived in Vancouver, she’s ready for something huge, hairy, and exotic. “I discovered a little library down the street from my hotel,” she says. “I told the librarian that I needed a good look at a bear, and she told me that there were a couple available. That’s first rate service.” Canadian librarians receive numerous questions about local flora and fauna. Lady Anne is one of countless tourists who are eager to look at a big dirty mammal with a taste for garbage. The librarian recommended that she visit the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife, about 90 min by bus and Skyride gondola from downtown Vancouver. At the Refuge, Lady Anne observed the antics of Grinder and Coola, orphaned Grizzlies who arrived on Grouse in 2001. She was thrilled to see them. “Watching those bears wrestle was the high point of my trip,” she says. “I wouldn’t have found them without the assistance of the librarian, who seemed to know a good deal about the Refuge and its inhabitants. I take it that she answers questions about bears all the time.” Some nature questions are absurd and require diplomacy. How should a librarian at the Toronto Reference Library deal with a Chilean gentleman who asks for data about the whales in Lake Ontario? What is the best way for a children’s specialist in Halifax to inform a group of Japanese teenagers that there are no wild alligators in Nova Scotia? And what can the readers’ advisor in Regina tell a group of elderly Germans who want to see Saskatchewan’s legendary camel herds? “They were retired doctors and their spouses from Munich,” says the reader’s advisor, a woman with over 20 years at the reference desk. “They were very unhappy to hear that the Saskatchewan camels didn’t exist. I think that somebody’s mischievous relative suggested that go in search of camels as soon as they arrived in Regina. It was a practical joke.” In answering tourists’ questions, librarians need patience and should realize that Canadians abroad ask as many ridiculous questions as anyone else. We must also avoid oversensitivity to faux pas arising from ignorance of different societies. Many Europeans are accustomed to outdated notions of First Nations cultures and continue to refer to “Red Indians,” who are assumed to spend most of their time erecting teepees and carving totem poles. According to Wolfram, a systems analyst from Hamburg, there should have been totem poles all over North America. When he asked a librarian in Winnipeg, however, he was disappointed to learn that totem carving is Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00026-8 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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an aspect of Pacific Northwest Aboriginal culture, and that he was a long way from British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii–formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands--where totem poles are common. “The textbooks I had in school included pictures of First Nations wigwams beside totem poles, and every person in the tribe wore a bonnet of feathers,” says Wolfram. “Actually First Nations cultures are far more sophisticated than many Europeans realize.” Wolfram has committed no crime and is not necessarily a racist. Like most tourists, he will accept a librarian’s guidance regarding cultural data and appropriate terminology. In the end, he might also find his ignorance amusing and regale friends back home with tales of his misunderstanding. “Totem poles everywhere!” he says. “How could one be so foolish? But then, many Canadians believe that Germans are born wearing lederhosen. There is no limit to people’s ignorance of other people.” Wolfram readily admits that he finds Canada confusing. It’s so big, and everything is so far from everything else. Sparsely populated by European standards, Canada’s cities sprawl in every possible direction. One moment you’re downtown; the next, you’re in a wilderness area. It’s easy to lose one’s bearings and become disorientated. Fortunately librarians keep maps handy. Tourists are always keen to see where they are in relation to other places. “A good atlas is invaluable, but so are the maps designed for tourist use,” says Wolfram. “I find Canadian librarians especially good at presenting online maps, and they’re always willing to print out what you need. But an online map doesn’t give the same perspective as an atlas. You open the big book, and you get a much better sense of the distance between places in Canada. An atlas makes you feel that you have a firmer grasp of the territory.” In a land as big and confusing as Canada, libraries can also serve as refuges for tourists who need a break from hectic travel and site-seeing schedules. Libraries are quiet. One can sit comfortably and read a newspaper from home. There are clean washrooms. In some libraries one can buy coffee and snacks. And there are librarians, who seem so pleased to offer information to out-of-towners. “The first time I drove from Houston to Ottawa, I was really beat when I arrived,” says Bill, a cattle rancher. “Of course I got lost, and somehow I ended up talking to a librarian at the Main public library. She sorted me out right quick. She told me how to get to my hotel. She gave me a list of restaurants. She told me to go see the local war museum, and to take a tour of Parliament Hill. But first I was welcome to relax for a bit and gather my wits. She gave me an American newspaper and a book about Ontario farms, and I felt a lot better.” Bill says that his first trip to Ottawa would have been far less pleasurable without the librarian’s assistance. She saved him a lot of time and directed him to the city’s more interesting sights. He has returned several times and is interested in buying property in a small community outside the city. He has never owned a borrower’s card from the library in his hometown, but he wants one from the Ottawa Public Library as soon as he purchases his property.

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“Sometimes you have to travel a ways before you understand the value of something,” he says. “I had to drive thousands of miles before I could feel good in a library. But then that library made me feel right at home, and the librarians always remember me when I visit. They’ve got memories like elephants.” Maybe so, but then a man who’s 6′4″ and over 300 pounds, with a big red beard and snakeskin boots, is hard to forget. Librarians are familiar with tourists who complain that they can’t find anything distinctly Canadian. Rick and Marcia, who visited Toronto from Silver City, New Mexico, were frustrated that they couldn’t find any Canadian food. What do Canadians eat that no one else eats? “Well, the librarian at the public library just smiled and said ‘poutine’,” says Rick. “So my wife asked her what that was, and the librarian comes back to us with a recipe for it. And I looked at it and said no thank you. We went back to the hotel and had burgers, and that was that. My wife still has a photocopy of that recipe, and she’s going to show the folks back home what Canadians eat. The librarian said that not all Canadians eat poutine, which I was relieved to hear. But you can’t accuse Americans of eating too much fat when there are Canadians who eat gravy and cheese curds together. Wow!” More familiar to tourists than the national cuisine are Canada’s writers, who have produced books that attract a global audience. Margaret Atwood and Leonard Cohen are popular in most of the English-speaking world, whereas L.M. Montgomery continues to entertain readers throughout Asia. Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Doug Coupland have dedicated American readerships, whereas William Gibson and Spider Robinson are highly influential in science fiction circles. When tourists come to Canada, they often visit libraries to find out if there are any other Canadian writers worth reading. What surprises them most is not that there are many worthwhile Canadian novelists and poets, but that many of the more interesting writers are little known outside Canada. “How about Hugh MacLennan?” asks Wolfram. “Canadians read his novels in high school. Perhaps they don’t care about him so much, but German readers would be fascinated by his treatment of two solitudes, and his story about the explosion in Halifax harbour. Those things mean a lot to Germans these days, with the reunification of East and West, and since the bombings of the Second World War.” Wolfram didn’t hear about MacLennan until a Winnipeg librarian recommended Barometer rising. He returned home with a collection of MacLennan’s books, which he intends to read and share with his friends. Meanwhile, Lady Anne has packed a copy of Marian Engel’s Bear to take back to her Knightsbridge ladies’ reading club. “The librarian wasn’t sure that Bear is the right sort of thing for an elderly women such as myself,” she says. “But there’s no harm in trying something new. Besides, the heroine of this novel becomes very fond of a bear, so I think that she and I have a lot in common. And that can’t be so bad, can it?” Quite.

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Canadian subject areas and genres that interest tourists • Activities for children • Adventure tourism (e.g., long-distance kayaking, white-water rafting) • Antiques • Arts and crafts • Biographies of famous Canadians • Early Canadian history • Exploration of different regions • First Nations culture and history • Guides to local sights • Landmarks, natural and manmade • Literature, popular and lesser-known • Local history • Atlases and tourist maps • Sports • Wildlife

  

(2006)

Here’s looking at you, kid: what special visitors want when they tour your library

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Build it and they will come: municipal managers, architects, urban planners, interior decorators, academic administrators, and miscellaneous panjandrums, all eager to tour your library and look, as they say, at specifics. They travel thousands of miles to view your front entrance, reference area, lighting, and carpets. They inspect the parking lot and tiptoe through the landscaping, check out the washrooms, and reflect deeply on the colorful corner reserved for puppet shows. Some warn you that they’re coming; others arrive unannounced. They comment enthusiastically on your library’s design strengths and ask quietly about costs. They distribute business cards like confetti. Some have been known to send effusive letters of thanks for your time and information, whereas others disappear after a brief visit, never to bother you again. The visitor who demands the most is your out-of-town fellow librarian. She’s the Manager of Patron Services in a growing public library on the other side of the continent. With her training and experience, she knows far more about library operations than a civic bureaucrat or planner. She tells you that she’s on a fact-finding mission. Her library is building a new branch, and she needs to know all about your library’s architect selection process. At least that’s what she tells you in her e-mail message. Shortly after you meet her in your office, it turns out that she wants to know a lot more.

27.1  The vision She’s up against the Vision, which is her boss’s notion of what a library should look like. Her boss could be a board chairperson, a mayor, a university president, or a donor. All such people swear that they want what’s best for the public, although rumors circulate about their desire for a lasting monument to their wisdom and power. They’re accused of building personal pyramids, although other ancient styles of structure are popular. Traditional library architecture includes numerous buildings that echo Greek temples. In Vancouver, the architect designed a Roman Coliseum to serve as the new public library. Some bosses have in mind a beautiful structure such as Christopher Wren’s library in Trinity College, Cambridge, or the Boston Athenaeum, or the National Library of Austria in Vienna. Some hanker after a controversial design, such as that of the Seattle Public Library. Some want a high-tech building with lots of space for computer hardware and not so much for printed items. But then the question of cost arises, and the boss isn’t so sure that his or her Electronic Parthenon is possible. What have other people done? Send the Manager of Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00027-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Patron services to find out. Perhaps she can discover a compromise Vision that doesn’t drain the budget so quickly.

27.2  Location, location Your visiting librarian’s first question concerns location. What decided you and your bosses to build a building where it is? What were the options? What was the decision-making process? The truth is different for every library, but almost always involves politics and the use of whatever space is readily available. Library buildings may employ planners to identify potential space for a new library, and their reports can be thick and detailed. Usually, however, librarians must accept the land that has been allocated for their purposes since Carnegie’s day. Architects must work with whatever lot they’re offered. It was ever thus. Your visitor will be interested in your library site’s distance from malls and shopping areas, community centers, sports venues, seniors’ centers, schools, and bus routes. While you might not have had much say in the library’s location, you and your architect might have been able to influence its orientation. For example, by designing the front entrance at a corner of the building, your architect will make the library more visible to pedestrians traveling to and from a shopping complex and a community center that includes a daycare and a skating rink.

27.3  On the outside Reinforcing your building’s orientation are landscaping—those splendid tulip beds!— and access routes, parking areas, and signage. These days visitors are eager to know more about the size and layout of your parking areas. Why have you so few spaces for small vehicles and bicycles? What kind of security system would you recommend to decrease auto theft and vandalism in your parking lot? And how much does it cost to illuminate your outside areas? There are also questions concerning signage. Sign design and placement are undervalued arts. For an effective exterior signage system, you must consider everything from materials (which must withstand winter storms and summer heat), size, message (directional or informational?), and placement. Why does your library’s logo appear on the big sign near the front entrance, but not on any of the other exterior signs? Usually because you need to control costs, and reproducing that logo on every sign would have been expensive. Besides, the boss wanted to spend as much money as possible on landscaping. Tulips are preferable to logos.

27.4  Staff workspace Visitors are often eager to find out about your staff workspace: its size, shape, and amenities. This is because an unpleasant workspace can lead to poor morale and inefficiency. Librarians who have visited many different libraries across North America

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note that workspace size is not as important as one might initially assume. Of course it’s good to have lots of space in which to work, but a large, badly organized space can be as depressing as a smaller one. That’s why visitors will often ask about workspace windows, lighting, air-conditioning, and the layout of desks, tables, and counters. By the way, did you buy new chairs or reuse old ones from various branches? And what about the use of dividers? Because dividers are so easy to move around, workspace can become a series of stalls or dark corners more suitable for livestock than human beings. Our perspective on our own workspace—including administrators’ offices—can be limited by familiarity and subjectivity. We can become accustomed to the most dismal space, and consider it cosy. It’s important to keep this narrowness of perception in mind, especially when a visitor expresses sympathy for staff members who seem stuck in oubliettes. Another matter of great interest is the staff washroom. Is there one “coed” room containing a sink, mirror, and toilet, or are there men’s and women’s washrooms? There’s no absolute rule on the number and size of library staff washrooms, although anecdotal evidence suggests that libraries designed and constructed during economic booms provide more spacious and comfortable staff washrooms than those that were built during recessions.

27.5  For the public Moving into the public areas, polite visitors will ask permission to take photographs of the various interesting details. While every visitor has a different set of interests and questions, it’s likely that he or she will want to examine the layout of public space, and the relation between shelving and patron seating. Architects emphasize that everything in a public area influences everything else. Hence, large seating areas need more lighting, which must be installed in such a way to avoid being blocked by shelving, which can require a different kind of lighting to keep browsers happy. Meanwhile, how much did you pay for that carpet, and is it wearing well? Who made the final decision about carpet color and texture? Did a librarian overrule an interior designer, or vice versa? Finally, when considered as an integrated whole, is the public space “welcoming”? That term covers a multitude of characteristics and their interaction. What visitors frequently forget is that public space can take time, in some instances a few years, to feel welcoming. Newness of facilities and furniture can foster a sense of coldness and sterility that doesn’t necessarily last long. The more experienced visitor takes into account the age of a library’s public space before deciding whether it feels welcoming. And naturally subjectivity rules in such decisions. One visitor will consider a room frigid and forbidding, whereas the next will appreciate its warmth and charm.

27.6  Shelving Because shelving takes up so much space in libraries, inevitably visitors will want to know about yours. Do you have enough? How long before your shelves become overloaded? Then what will you do?

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It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We assumed that the Electronic Age would decrease our need for books to the point where we needed less shelf space, not more. So much for such predictions. Currently the question that many visitors ask, especially in larger libraries, concerns the use of compact shelving. If you don’t have it, when will you? If you’ve installed compact shelving, do you like it? There’s no sign at present that the book is about to become extinct, so it’s likely that an increasing number of librarians will be asking and answering questions about compact shelving and its effect on space and operations.

27.7  Your influence What the Manager of Patron Services takes back home includes a mishmash of facts, statistics, and impressions that will inform the decisions that her superiors and fellow library managers make regarding the design of that new branch, and perhaps the renovation of others. Your influence as host and guide might be far greater than you realize, as you and she examine your staff washroom and chat about the strength needed to slide compact shelving along its tracks. In fact such tours are an essential part of library culture, as we influence our colleagues and allow them to influence us in matters of professional import. Even in this Electronic Age, most urban dwellers expect their communities to build and maintain library buildings for the convenience of the general public. And tired of staring at computer screens, many patrons prefer books—there’s no question about that. (2006)

Discover your inner elf: Christmas programs for public libraries

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As a young man in Cairo, Ali earned his living as a tour guide. He took groups of Americans, Britons, and Germans to Giza and introduced them to the Sphinx. Occasionally, if his tourists were young and fit, he’d lead them on the arduous climb to the summit of the Great Pyramid, from which they could observe the surroundings for miles. But they couldn’t stay there long, since the sun roasted everything, and the massive stones became uncomfortably hot to stand on. In Egypt, the sun seems bigger and more powerful than everything else. No wonder the ancient Egyptians worshiped Ra, the Sun God. Most modern Egyptians, however, are Muslims, and some of them move to cooler and damper places such as Vancouver, where Ali settled with his family in 1993. It took Ali years to get used to Vancouver’s rain, and the gloomy days from October to March that can depress even the most cheerful local. One activity that Ali relies on to get him through the fall and winter is visiting his public library, especially around Christmas, when the decorations and little lights sparkle and even the drab stacks seemed jollier. “Christmas keeps me from going mad when the rain doesn’t stop and everything is so dark,” says Ali. “If there were no Christmas, I don’t know how anyone would make it through December. I want my library to celebrate the holiday as enthusiastically as possible. If you’re familiar with Vancouver’s rain, you’ll understand why a Muslim— or a Sikh, or a Hindu, or anyone else—can appreciate Christmas lights as much as a Christian.” Canada’s winters are notorious, not only for Vancouver’s rain but also for the snow and storms everywhere else. That’s why people from warmer climes like to see public libraries across the country celebrate Christmas with a variety of programs. It’s not just another holiday. It can also be a welcome respite and spirit lifter for people of all faiths and traditions.

28.1  Deck the hall The most basic Christmas program involves seasonal decorations. Many libraries attach strings of lights along the edges of circulation counters and reference desks and hang ornaments on walls and shelves. These days, they prefer LED lights to save power, and unbreakable, kid-safe ornaments that can’t puncture or cut little hands, and won’t shatter or explode. A Christmas tree is always popular, and needn’t be enormous: a small desktop evergreen will suffice. Some libraries use plastic trees that Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00028-1 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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appear year after year. Others demand a natural tree, either to be discarded at season’s end or—if it’s a living specimen—to be replanted with the municipality’s assistance. A decoration program can also involve arts and crafts events for patrons of all ages. You can invite adults to attend an ornament workshop, where they can design and produce Christmas table settings, tree and wall decorations, and wreaths and posters for their residences. Organize a similar event for children. Provide simple materials including construction paper, ribbon and colorful tape, and stickers and clay and offer samples from books and magazines that cover Christmas crafts. Children’s craft workshops can be busier than any other, so be sure to stock extra supplies of materials. You might be forced to provide glue to young workshop participants. If so, don’t allow it to end up in the wrong places, such as on the rug, between pages of books, and in your hair. There are excellent reasons why workshop leaders wear Jolly Old Elf hats for protection. During workshops, invite children to make decorations for your library’s Christmas tree or bulletin board. At the conclusion of a workshop, lead participants to the tree or board and help them to place their decorations, one at a time. Avoid a wild dash, or that tree might topple. Don’t underestimate the excitement of the season.

28.2  Scrooge, etc. Aside from decorations, a Christmas reading shelf is a tradition in many libraries, not only for children but also for adults. Most children’s sections have a couple of meters of seasonally appropriate titles for circulation. New Christmas books appear every year in the fall, along with assorted DVDs and CDs. Often these circulate heavily until mid-January, after which they can return to their shelves in the storage room. Adult Christmas reading includes Dickens’s Christmas Carol, which remains the most popular title in many libraries in December. Other ghost stories are popular as well, including those of M.R. James and Robertson Davies. With time off for the holidays, adults enjoy purely escapist fiction, such as fantasy works by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who wrote their best-known works for children, but who continue to attract large adult audiences. Borrowing periods for Christmas materials should be kept brief; the standard is one week, which will allow more patrons to enjoy The Night Before Christmas, White Christmas, and Alastair Sim as Scrooge. Many libraries set a limit on the number of Christmas books and other items that can be borrowed. Otherwise some patrons will take out everything available in hopes of keeping themselves and their families entertained until the spring thaw. Meanwhile, the photocopier heats up like an oven, as patrons photocopy Martha Stewart’s recipes for gravy and cranberry dressing, as well as her design for a yuletide bobeche that will render cynical in-laws speechless. Cookery books of all kinds are in demand during the holiday season, as patrons try out new dishes on family members and unsuspecting visitors. Unfortunately, these books are sometimes vandalized; particular recipes are torn out, and spines fall apart owing to rough handling.

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28.3  Annually, or else It’s safe to assume that Christmas is the busiest time of the year for many public libraries, and that every December event will attract crowds. Storytimes are crowded and often boisterous affairs and might require a space larger than the usual corner or activity room. Christmas puppet shows are recommended with the warning that once a library starts offering them, patrons will expect them every year. Libraries that do not repeat a holiday puppet show risk complaints from parents who expect to see a Christmas version of Punch and Judy—or else. Patrons will want the library to repeat other events as well, including choral concerts, which might be nothing more than a series of carols sung outside the front entrance by members of a local church choir, or a grand and booming song cycle presented by the local university’s music department. Once your library sponsors these events, it becomes difficult to avoid them in future. The same is true for Santa. Especially for Santa. On a whim, the children’s librarian puts on a red hat and fake beard, and hands out candy canes to patrons in the children’s area. This becomes an instant tradition, and people won’t forget it. They will come to the library and ask for Santa, who at that time is discussing the acquisitions policy with the Technical Services manager. They will wait for Santa, who’d better show up quickly to ensure that the Director doesn’t receive an angry complaint. An acceptable and beard-free approach is to forgo Santa and let library employees dress as elves. Elfin apparel includes bright waistcoats, conical headgear, medieval pointy footwear, and little bells on everything. Elves may tell stories and not fear numerous whispered requests for Christmas presents; elves need not ho-ho-ho or allow tots to climb aggressively into their laps. They can also advise young patrons on the best ways to write to Santa, who will enjoy colorful cards made during an elf-facilitated “Let’s write to Santa” workshop. (Santa likes pictures of reindeer and snowmen; he deplores demands for gifts itemized in priority order with suggested brand names in the margin.)

28.4  Facilities management With larger numbers of patrons visiting your library, it’s wise to ensure that facilities are well maintained and inspected more frequently for seasonal problems and additional wear and tear. Walkways should be kept clear of snow and ice. Large icicles should be removed before they break off and injure somebody. Exterior and interior decorations should be safely attached to supporting surfaces that will bear their weight for an indefinite period. Electrical outlets should be kept in good working condition, and replaced if there is any doubt about their safety. Circulating items also need attention before they find their way into the hands of young and enthusiastic patrons. Any book that will circulate frequently during the Christmas season should be reinforced with library tape. Spines of children’s large-format picture books are vulnerable and deserve taping to prevent cracking and disintegration. Unfortunately, there are no truly effective ways to strengthen inherently

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fragile items such as CDs and DVDs. The best available protection is a label asking patrons to treat them with care. They will still sustain damage, but the label, affixed to each item and not just its case, will reduce some rough handling and allow that recording of Bing Crosby to survive a little longer. Some librarians worry that their festivities might alienate patrons who don’t celebrate Christmas, or who consider its customs inappropriate in a public space. There are concerns about political correctness. Fortunately, serious complaints about Christmas programs in public libraries are uncommon. In fact, if libraries refused to acknowledge the holiday, there might be even more complaints, as patrons would wonder why there were no decorations, crafts, or elves. Certainly Ali would be disappointed. He would demand that his library offer the usual programs. After all, Vancouver is a long way from Giza, and he needs all the bright lights he can get. (2009)

Boo! Halloween in our libraries  

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Information science has yet to acknowledge the effects of paranormal phenomena on library operations. Recent reports of vampire sightings in public libraries have been ignored by everyone except children’s librarians, whom leading academics have described as “hysterical” and “oversensitive.” The same academics have dismissed claims regarding werewolf activity in college and university stacks as “tall tales about coyotes” and “bear phobia.” Nevertheless, howling during full moons has been heard near campus libraries for many years. A comprehensive literature search reveals that paranormal topics are seldom mentioned in peer-reviewed journals. The prevailing culture of the information professions does not consider paranormality to be appropriate for serious study. Ironically, professors of information science avoid discussing spirits of the dead, even as poltergeists cause computer malfunctions in academic settings across North America. Paranormal entities including demons, dragons, ghosts, ghouls, unicorns, vampires, werewolves, witches, and a multiplicity of indeterminate monsters appear in droves toward the end of October. Public libraries report numerous sightings of these creatures as Halloween approaches, and the correlation between the time of year and the appearance of so many small and obstreperous horrors is undeniable. What do these creatures want? How can librarians satisfy their needs? Experienced program developers offer a variety of answers.

29.1  Plastic bats “Our philosophy entails service to patrons of all ages and…shapes,” says Joanne, a reference librarian in Vancouver. “Everyone enjoys Halloween decorations from Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00029-3 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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around the middle of October until the first week of November. Children are the main audience for the plastic bats hanging from the ceilings, the monster posters, the spooky book displays and the images of jack-o’-lanterns, but adults have come to expect these decorations as well. In fact, adults often ask us when we plan to dig out the Halloween stuff.” Joanne advises all libraries to avoid using real pumpkins for jack-o’-lanterns. “Events involving the carving of pumpkins can result in a horrendous mess,” she says. “Sticky pumpkin debris gets into everything, including books and other media. The smell can be nauseating, and the stains on walls and paper are almost impossible to remove. That’s why we don’t bring in real pumpkins. As well, patrons might expect us to light a candle inside our jack-o’-lantern. The Fire Marshal takes a dim view of candles. So we’re content with orange paper cutouts, stencils and posters.” Some libraries base their Halloween decorating on a single theme. For example, an entire branch can become a haunted house, with grim and ghastly ornaments around the main entrance, and a corpse-like scarecrow acting as a doorman. Ghouls handle checkouts and returns at the circulation desk, whereas witches answer reference questions and provide advice on bubbling cauldrons, spells, and broomstick maintenance. Shelving duties fall to a team of ghosts, who not only return books and other items to their correct places but also dust tops of volumes with their long and dreadful cotton sleeves. Occasionally, terrifying laughter issues from the branch manager’s office, as darkness and the new budget descend on the library. Every library employee can participate in Halloween celebrations, and most patrons will enjoy the grisly goings-on.

29.2  Storytime One of the more popular Halloween programs is Scary Storytime. Program coordinators invite children to show up in costume and to hear tales of ghosts and goblins. During these decades of Harry Potter mania, there can be difficulties in choosing the best costumes for prizes. “At a Halloween Storytime a couple of years ago, I had a dozen Harry Potters in my audience,” says Karen, a Toronto children’s librarian. “Not one Ron, not one Hermione. It was all Harry, all the time. A dozen pairs of old-fashioned eyeglasses, with a little charcoal scar on each forehead. I had a package of bat-shaped candies that I was planning to give to one cleverly costumed child, but in the end I was forced to open the package and give a candy to everyone. Then a father showed up in a black leather jacket and said he was Severus Snape. He looked unhappy when I didn’t have a candy for him. I thought that he was about to turn me into a toad. These Dark Arts people make me nervous. They really do.” There is a plethora of ghost stories to entertain young audiences, but every librarian has a favorite, or a favorite collection. Having studied children’s literature in graduate school, librarians can list dozens of titles that their professors recommended. More ghost stories appear in print every month; there’s always something new and good to offer a seated circle of excited children. If librarians are honest, however, they will admit to a bias for the stories that thrilled them when they were young.

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“I grew up on Alfred Hitchcock’s anthologies of ghost stories,” says Anne, a librarian who has worked as a storyteller in daycares and elementary schools in Ontario and the United States. “These volumes weren’t mentioned by my library school profs, but I’ve always loved them, and I’ve had considerable success with the stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful, which appeared in 1961. The terrific crowd-pleasers in this volume are Walter R. Brooks’s ‘Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons’ and John Kendrick Bangs’s ‘The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall.’ I guarantee audience satisfaction with either or both of these stories. Adults might enjoy them, too.”

29.3  Adult fiction In fact, adults love ghost stories. Many parents are just as interested in Halloween storytelling as their children. During other times of the year, nannies will bring children to the library, but when the storyteller is dressed up as a witch or a werewolf, parents are inclined to accompany their children and nannies to hear about a haunted attic or the monster that lurked in a forest. Adults appreciate book displays of new and classic horror and will borrow anything with an appropriately macabre cover. They might also recall particularly frightening stories that their parents read to them. Unfortunately, people forget authors and titles, and reference librarians receive inquiries worded in ways that obscure details rather than clarify them. Hence, a reference inquiry last year from a Vancouver Public Library patron: “I’m looking for a red hardcover story about a ghost that haunted a castle somewhere in Europe, or maybe Pennsylvania, and the heroine marries her boyfriend who turns out to be a vampire, but the relationship works out.” Who wrote this story? “It was an old guy. No, it was a woman, but it wasn’t Anne Rice, although it might have been.” Any idea when it was published? “Within the last 25 years or so.” Or so. “Actually, my dad read me the book, and it might have belonged to my grandparents, who lived in Pennsylvania before they moved to Vancouver. So it might be older than 25 years. But not by much, I’m sure.” You’re sure. “Yes, but I’ll ask my sister and see if she remembers the book. I’ll call you if she does.” Days later the patron called to say that his sister remembered the book, but it was about a homicidal clown in a sewer, not a ghost in a castle. The story was set in Maine. There was no heroine with a vampire boyfriend. The author was Stephen King, who published the novel entitled It in 1986. And the patron’s grandparents had moved back to Pennsylvania because they didn’t like Vancouver’s wet weather. They took King’s book with them, so the patron was delighted to find a copy in the library.

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29.4  Costumes will be worn Reference librarians note that in October some patrons read or recall so many scary stories that characters and plots become confused in their minds, and only a bibliographical wizard could sort out what they want. A wizard would also prove helpful in managing a library’s Halloween arts-and-crafts events, which could be known by a variety of names. There might be a Young Witch Workshop or a Ghoul School. A branch in a trendier neighborhood might organize an event called Excellence in Haunting: A Workshop for Young Ghosts. Invitations to such events can request that attendees wear their costumes, but demand that broomsticks be parked by the door. On arrival, attendees are greeted by the head of Children’s Services, who has spent the preceding hour attempting to glue a large rubber wart onto her nose. The glue will not stick but causes a rash, and the head of Children’s Services makes a rather blotchy witch. Never mind! She has a story to tell, and the young Phantoms-of-the-Opera and Draculas and Batwomen shriek with delight as she spins her ghastly yarn. Then everyone dashes to a long table where, with a supply of crayons and markers brought in for the occasion, they draw and color their favorite character from the story, although some prefer to draw Dad wearing his King Kong mask, or Mum trying to wash the innards of a jack-o’-lantern out of her hair. Halloween workshops can include costume design and construction, although strained library budgets do not allow for the provision of large amounts of the required materials: textiles, papier mâché and cardboard, plastic, and adhesives for masks. “I wouldn’t organize a costume workshop unless I could afford to provide a good supply of construction materials,” says Karen, a librarian who has worked in public and school libraries across North America. “You go through a lot of textiles quickly, and you’ll always run out of something essential like buttons or a certain colour of thread. Patrons have high expectations of these events, so for the sake of the library’s image you have to manage everything well – right down to the last button, which you hope that you needn’t use before things wrap up.”

29.5  Ghoulish Donald What worries librarians more than a button shortage are the controversies that can arise from Halloween festivities. Some patrons believe that in allowing children to dress up as devils and other evil beings, the library (or school, or community center) is encouraging Satanism. The director and trustees might receive complaints. There could be negative media coverage. It is appropriate for the director to assure the person or group making the complaint that the library is not encouraging Satanism, any more than it is encouraging Republicanism in allowing a child to attend Ghoul School in a Donald Trump mask. It is a relief to note that most of these controversies dissipate shortly after Halloween, and that it is rare for patrons to remain concerned about such matters into November. But it is prudent for directors to keep records of such complaints, and to note how

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the library has dealt with them. In some cities, the same persons make similar complaints about Halloween every year, as if they were obliged to make a public gesture against evil images in public facilities. It is uncommon, however, for libraries to cancel Halloween events for fear that they will offend some patrons.

29.6  Off the wall Libraries in some areas can experience vandalism around the time of Halloween, usually in the form of graffiti. “I’d say that in general, school libraries have more trouble with Halloween tagging and other graffiti than public libraries,” says Helen, a teacher-librarian in Toronto. “In October we see more than the usual amount of large scale tagging on exterior walls and in washrooms. Removing tags can be expensive, since the paint can etch them into surfaces. But you have to get rid of tags as soon as possible. To leave them in place will attract other taggers, and soon walls will be covered with wild initials and messages.” Some public libraries report slightly higher maintenance costs in connection to Halloween events. Small children spill paint, and occasionally use a crayon to draw the Great Pumpkin on a wall before a parent or librarian can stop them. Classic Halloween titles can also suffer grievous damage from young annotators, who might also be tempted to cut out illustrations of notable ghosts. Janis, a librarian in Victoria, mentions that there is a risk of “food damage” to Halloween books, videos, and DVDs. “In the first half of November, a book falls through the return slot with pages stuck together. A borrower has leafed through it with chocolate on her fingers – Halloween treats. Toffee is the worst to deal with, on any surface. Toffee-stained DVDs might not be salvageable. We see this sort of thing every year.” And then there are those countless software poltergeists, who wipe out data all year round. Until information scientists develop strategies for electronic exorcism, librarians must continue to back up their vital data regularly. At present there is no sure defense against the ghost in the machine, especially one that chews toffee. (2010)

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Confessions of a library Santa

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On a crisp December day 30 years ago, a young librarian reported for what he assumed was relief duty on the reference desk of a suburban public library branch. The branch manager poked him in the ribs and said, “Too skinny. Why couldn’t HR send me the fat person I need?” I was that young librarian. The branch manager was notorious for her bad attitude and her shoe collection, which enabled her to appear each morning in a new pair of Spanish spiked heels or Parisian sandals, or something chic and frightfully expensive from Milan. She berated everyone around her and had no patience for underlings who lacked style or were unable to give her precisely what she wanted, when she wanted it. Reader, I loved her. She despised me, of course, since she had demanded a pudgy man to dress up as Santa Claus for the branch’s Christmas programs, and my waistline was found wanting. “Apparently you’re the best we’ll get at short notice,” said the branch head, whom I’ll call Evelyn. “Go into the staff room and find your outfit. I’ll be in my office.” What I discovered draped over a chair was what costumers call a Santa suit: cheap red velvet trimmed with ersatz white fur; a top with large black buttons and enormous pockets; voluminous trousers; and a soft pointed cap with a white pompom at the top. The outfit was lined with burlap. Everything smelled vaguely of sweat. Under the chair was a pair of huge black work boots, several sizes too large for all but a giant’s feet. Undaunted, I put on the outfit that was to be my second skin for an unforgettable fortnight. At first Evelyn was unimpressed. “You look puny and forlorn,” she said. She handed me a fluffy fake beard, then grabbed a cushion from her office chair and crammed it down the front of my trousers. “You should wear thicker underwear if you want to protect your pink bits,” she said helpfully. “That burlap can be rough on the skin. And don’t chew the beard, since it’s probably made from radioactive waste.” With the chair cushion adding to my waist, and the beard stuck to my cheeks and chin, I looked pathetic. But Evelyn seemed satisfied, playfully punching me in the cushion and grinning maliciously. “The brats will love you,” she said. Unfortunately, my role as Santa was ill-defined. I was ostensibly part of a Christmas program that included library-wide ornaments and a tree—that year, a spindly fir that the librarians dubbed “Charlie Brown”—as well as Storytimes, arts and crafts, and a donation system that inspired the Technical Services Department to dump its discarded softcovers at various hospitals and seniors’ residences. My job description, however, was vague. Evelyn told me to spend time on the reference desk “looking jolly,” and an hour or so per shift in the stacks and other public areas, where I was to “spread cheer.” The only firmly scheduled event that featured the Library Santa was what Evelyn referred to as “enthronement,” during which I was to sit for 90 min each morning in a creaky high-backed armchair draped with red and green blankets, chat Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00030-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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with young patrons, and allow them to perch on my knee for parental photo-taking opportunities. Evelyn ordered the throne to be positioned near the circulation desk “for convenience,” although she never revealed whose convenience she had in mind. My initial stint on the reference desk was inauspicious. The first patron to approach me was an ancient drunk in search of the morning newspaper, which was stored in a nearby locked cabinet. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. I told him. “You should find yourself a real job,” he replied, wandering away with the newspaper. “And by the way,” he muttered over his shoulder, “Since when does Santa lend stuff instead of giving it?” I told Evelyn about this encounter. She said, “Just ignore that old coot. He’s been annoying us for decades. And make sure he doesn’t steal the papers. He tries that every now and then.” But my most disturbing reference encounter took place with a woman who wanted information about Australia, which she planned to visit the following spring. In the middle of a lengthy enquiry about music festivals in New South Wales, she stopped and asked me if I needed help. “You might like to call your doctor, Santa,” she said. When I asked why, she told me to look in a mirror. I retreated to the staff washroom, where I examined my faux-bearded face. It was covered with bright red hives. And so, on further inspection was most of my skin, which was allergic to the burlap that lined the Santa suit. When I told Evelyn, she sneered. “Wouldn’t you know it?” she said. “Our Santa is too delicate to answer reference questions. Find yourself a pair of long-johns, Bucko, and return to work.” And she flounced away in a pair patent leather pumps made popular by New York fashionistas. A sporting goods shop in a neighboring mall sold me the long johns, which covered my pink bits admirably. Now, however, the Santa suit made me feel even hotter, and each moment on duty reminded of high summer in Australia’s Great Western Desert. To make the job even more uncomfortable was my enthronement, which attracted swarms of excited children. It was rare for only a single, well-behaved child to sit quietly on my knee. Each 90-min throne period involved as many as four or five children clambering onto my lap at the same time, as if I were some sort of mountain ledge. They clung to my suit and my cap and beard, which frequently separated from my cheeks with a nasty ripping sound that caused great merriment among my assailants. Eventually, I would restore order with the help of parents, circulation desk staffers, and on one occasion with the dexterity of the ancient drunken newspaper reader, who sprang to my aid on witnessing the attempt by a little boy to remove one of my ears with a pair of scissors from a recent arts and crafts session. “I hope they give you danger pay,” said the ancient drunk. I turned my attention to the little girl who sat on my knee. “What would you like from Santa this year?” “I want a Camaro,” said she with a 4-year-old’s sincerity. “And what would you do with a Camaro?” “Burn rubber,” she replied with a glance at her father, a burly fellow who looked as if he managed the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels. He beamed with pride and snapped our picture, which now probably decorates the wall of either a grim-looking clubhouse or one of Her Majesty’s high security institutions.

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As the holidays grew nearer, the number of children and camera-toting parents increased, and Evelyn decided that I needed seasonally appropriate assistants. These included two young women employed as clericals and their supervisor, whom I’ll call Jane. They dressed up as elves, and enjoyed themselves far more than I did, owing to their success at attaining the Christmas spirit. They performed crowd control duties around my throne, calmed down overheated children and impatient parents, pointed out the location of the washroom with its brand-new changing table, steered as many patrons as possible toward the Christmas book displays and arts and crafts room, and stood prepared to offer me first aid as required. Jane brought me cold drinks. Once she smuggled me a thermos of beer. (And Jane, if you’re out there, I toast your memory every December, my thermos held on high.) Meanwhile the clericals made sure that no more than two children arrived on my lap at any one time, and that parents did not trigger their flashbulbs within a foot of my face. We sweated hard, my team and I, and at the conclusion of every throne session my Santa suit showed the dark perspiration stains. “Go clean yourself up,” said Evelyn with disgust. “Use some talcum powder before you return, and if the sweat soaks off your beard, I’ll have Jane reattach it with electrical tape.” She warned me that local politicians and celebrities could show up at any time, and that I must be prepared to receive them. “You can give us a better Ho-Ho-Ho, too,” she said. “Try not to sound like a wimp.” At that point I regretted my refusal to attend law school, or medical school, or a training program for undertakers: anything but a library school that would deliver me into the clutches of Evelyn and her kind. But somehow I persisted, even during the visit of the Mayor, who ignored me, and the riding’s MP, ditto, and a Canadian rock star who ignored everyone else and lectured me at the reference desk for an hour about the wonders of Scientology. I admit that every morning I was tempted to quit, or call in sick, or run away to join the circus, but Evelyn and her program challenged me to persevere. I knew that if I could finish my Santa assignment, I could do anything, such as climbing Mt. Everest and teaching subject classification, although not simultaneously. My most satisfying moments on the job were during my forays into the stacks to spread cheer. I understood that task entailed my asking people if they wanted assistance in finding items on the shelves; otherwise I assumed that I was obliged to do little more than wander around, beefing up my wimpy Ho-Ho-Ho and enhancing the twinkle in my eye, while tolerating the sweat that permeated my long johns and eventually pooled in my enormous boots. I was pleased to help elderly patrons carry their books to the circulation desk. I invited a young mother to try the new changing table in the washroom, rather than provide her infant with a fresh diaper on the floor of the fiction section. And when the fellow with Down syndrome believed that he had met the real Santa in the Children’s section, I knew that I had done my duty. (At home that evening I tossed my application to law school into the fireplace.) Patrons were grateful for my efforts. Several parents gave me copies of the photos that they had taken of their children on my lap, and no, these are not for public consumption. Suffice it to say that I regret that my beard could not disguise my threatening scowl or otherwise Grinch-like facial expression as one little boy vomited on poor Jane’s shoe; nor could I disguise the look of astonished delight when another boy

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wiped his muddy mitts on Evelyn’s red satin dress. My responses to these events are recorded on film, and so far they’ve remained private. One day, however, they might disgrace me on the Internet. Perhaps by that time I’ll be too old and befuddled to care. On my last day at the branch, the ancient drunk gave me the gift of a tattered men’s magazine and a painfully stiff handshake. “For God’s sake, lose that stupid outfit,” he said. Then he handed me a scrap of paper that I treasure to this day. On it he had scribbled the address of a union hiring hall, below which he had added a message: “Talk to Ted about a real job. There’s good money to be made in construction, and a guy like you could go far. Ho Ho Ho.” Before I could doff my Santa suit for the last time, Evelyn amazed me by requesting that I return to my throne so that she could sit on my knee for a photo, which one of the clericals would take with the library’s Polaroid camera. “Your knee is too damn bony,” said Evelyn as she positioned herself for the shot. That day she wore a shot silk blouse and black skirt and had on her feet a pair of weapons-grade stilettos. “Don’t think that this photo is for me,” she snarled. “I want it for the next Trustees’ meeting after Christmas. I want to demonstrate how everyone in the branch participated in the festivities.” As I was leaving, Evelyn gave me a gift certificate to a movie house. “Better fatten up by next year,” she said, “or there’s no way that I’ll employ you as the branch Santa.” And from that day to this, dear reader, I’ve striven to stay slim. (2010)

November memories: librarians and patrons observe Remembrance Day

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Every Sunday in a little church on the outskirts of Vancouver, an old woman sits in a pew beneath a bronze plaque that lists the names of soldiers killed in World War One. The names of her father and uncle are engraved on that plaque. Both died in 1917 at Passchendaele. On the wall beside it is another plaque with the names of soldiers who died in World War Two. The name of her first husband appears on that plaque. He was killed in 1943 at Ortona. She remarried in the 1950s and had a son. He married and had a son, who joined the Canadian armed forces and fought in Afghanistan. While he spent a year exchanging fire with the Taliban in Kandahar Province, his grandmother prayed for his safe return. Now that he has come home with nothing more than a sunburn, his grandmother goes to the church every Sunday and gives thanks that her grandson avoided the fate of the other soldiers in her family. She notes that her grandson plans to attend graduate school, but first he will marry “a splendid girl,” a nurse at a local hospital. “I want people to remember that Canadians fought and made tremendous contributions during wartime,” says the old woman. “I’m pleased that my local library makes an effort every November to set up a Remembrance Day display, and to circulate war histories and novels. Years ago, the librarians placed photos of my father and uncle in a display dedicated to Canadians on the Western Front. Patrons liked the display and told the librarians so. At one point the branch ran out of war books to lend. I didn’t complain. After all, my generation got used to shortages and rationing of essentials. We didn’t have any choice.”

31.1  Blazers and berets Her generation is passing away. No Canadian veterans of World War One survive. Most World War Two veterans are in their early nineties or older. Memories of the largest conflicts of the 20th century fade, and many young Canadians have little exposure to military history aside from the occasional war movie that is more notable for its special effects than for its accuracy. That is, except in November, when people wear poppies on their lapels and stay home from work on Remembrance Day. Television provides images of old men and women marching in their Legion blazers and berets, and of politicians laying wreaths at cenotaphs across the country. Perhaps the news hour features an interview with a veteran of a lesser-known struggle such as the Korean War. And soon there will be interviews with Canadians who fought in Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00031-1 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Afghanistan, in some of the bleakest terrain on earth. As one generation disappears, another takes its place, with its own veterans and war stories. “There’s something undeniably special about Canada’s efforts in World Wars One and Two,” says Janet, a public librarian on the Prairies. “I don’t mean to belittle the challenges that our Afghanistan vets have faced, but when you read about the fighting at Vimy Ridge and Dieppe and D-Day, you realize that we had so much more at stake as a country. We lost many more soldiers in those wars, too.” Every November, Janet mounts a display in her library’s history department. Included are not only books and history periodicals that concentrate on military themes but also artifacts that have patrons have donated: A helmet that a Canadian soldier wore during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, a row of campaign medals from a veteran who fought in both Europe and Korea, a map of the Netherlands used by a regimental commander during the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944, a battered belt buckle, a navy captain’s pocket compass, and a Lancaster bomber pilot’s leather helmet.

31.2  Photos and their contexts “I also have a big selection of photos that people have given the library,” says Janet. “In fact I’ve sent some to our provincial archives, and others to the special collections departments of university libraries. Some of the images are especially valuable from an historical perspective. For example, I received an envelope of photos from a former sailor who documented life aboard Canadian destroyers during the Battle of the Atlantic. There were good shots of men at action stations and during combat. The images were clearer than many I’ve seen. I thought it best to see that they were preserved in a research collection, and so I made the transfer. The special collections people were delighted when I provided them with good background data for each photograph—dates, the photographer’s name, the names of the subjects and the ships, every scrap of information that researchers use to establish a historical context for a photograph. That kind of information is so easy to lose.” Janet is careful to avoid offending patrons by displaying items that are potentially controversial. Occasionally libraries receive “souvenirs” that soldiers have brought home from battlefields. Stored for many years in attics and basements, these include artifacts with prominent swastikas and other symbols of the Third Reich, captured weapons such as German small arms and Japanese swords, and graphic photographs of casualties. But there are circumstances in which Janet feels comfortable in displaying such items. She gives as an example the donation of a Nazi battle flag that arrived in the library with a photo of Canadian soldiers who captured it. Standing in a row, the soldiers hold an edge of the flag in one hand a bottle of wine in the other. “An appropriate victory celebration,” says Janet. “At least we didn’t receive the empty bottles along with the flag and photo. Although that might have enriched the historical context.”

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31.3  Not on display A display of the flag and photo together could hardly be considered a glorification of Nazi Germany, and thus for Janet’s purposes would be appropriate. She refuses, however, to display any photographs of dead soldiers or civilians of any nationality. “Some images of dead people are simply too awful to show the general public,” she says. “It’s my judgment call, and I’m sure that there are opposing and perfectly valid views, but I draw the line at photos of truly hideous trauma, dead children, and persons who have been tortured. I’m not only concerned about how patrons will react. Think about library employees who have to look at that kind of material in their workplace for an extended period. Don’t underestimate the effect of that material on a sensitive employee who might find it hard to take.” In the end, Janet believes that Remembrance Day should offer more than an opportunity to view horrific photographs. Above all, in her library and numerous others, it’s a time to learn about Canada’s role in global conflicts, and about the sacrifices that Canadians have made in fighting fascism, among other things. She mentions that in November the demand increases for all kinds of war-related materials. Most popular are general histories of World Wars One and Two, histories of specific campaigns and battles, biographies and memoirs of combatants, accounts of life on the home front, and documentaries on DVD. There is also more interest in earlier wars, including the US Civil War, the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, and English Civil War. War fiction circulates heavily, in particular Canadian novels such as Earl Birney’s Turvey (1949) and Timothy Findlay’s The Wars (1977), and classics such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929). And then there is the poem.

31.4  Year-round circulation In fact there is a sizeable corpus of poetry from World War One, and many patrons are familiar with the works of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. But in Canada, the most famous war poem is John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” (1915), which generations of schoolchildren have memorized and which has appeared in many reprinted editions. One edition that includes useful background information on the poem is Linda Granfield’s In Flanders Fields: The Story of the Poem by John McCrae (1995), a Canadian Library Association Honour Book that Granfield has followed up with Remembering John McCrae: Soldier, Doctor, Poet (2009). Both titles appeal to a wide variety of readers, and many libraries note that both circulate not only in November but also regularly throughout the year. “McRae’s poem is probably Canada’s best-known poem,” says Karen, who has worked in public libraries in British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick. “ I recall a storytime thirty years ago at a branch in Toronto, during which the children’s librarian intended to read ‘In Flanders Fields’ to a group of school kids. As the librarian was opening an anthology that contained the poem, an elderly veteran in a Seaforth Highlander’s cap showed up out of nowhere and announced that he would be pleased

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to recite the poem, which he did. He recited it with great dignity, and as he did so I noticed that he had a long scar running down the side of his face, and that he was missing fingers on both hands. Later he told me that he had served in Flanders, and that he had been wounded by shrapnel. Then he left, and I never saw him again. His recitation of the poem was the most memorable event of my library career.”

31.5  Accommodating veterans As Remembrance Day approaches, Karen mounts appropriately themed displays in her current branch. She sets up a shelf to hold war-related items, but does not put out everything at once. If she did, the shelf would be empty most of the time. As she sits at the information desk, she prepares herself for older patrons who want to share their memories with her. Sometimes they will occupy the chair by the desk for an hour or more. She does not urge them to move on. “I consider it my duty to listen to these seniors. Some of them went through a lot in wartime, and the least I can do is to hear them out. And other patrons don’t seem to mind.” Occasionally vets with trays of poppies to sell stand outside Karen’s branch. If the weather is inclement, they might wander into the branch for a break. Patrons strike up conversations with them in the adult services area, and they have little opportunity to rest. Sometimes they retreat to an area in a corner where one can sit in armchairs and read. But the poppy sellers usually fall asleep. Karen ignores the library’s No Sleeping policy in these circumstances; she believes that the poppy sellers have earned the right to doze in her branch. “I look at them and wish that I could cover them with blankets,” she says. “That’s impractical and contrary to library policy, of course, but I bet you that other library staffers would like to do the same.”

31.6  Snipers Meanwhile, in the Vancouver church, the old woman removes an envelope from her pocket. It contains a collection of poppies from previous years. She keeps them all, and always buys a new one on the first day of November. “I like to think that the older men in my family would have volunteered for poppy-selling duties,” she says. “It’s better than sitting in the Legion’s bar all day. I’m not sure that my grandson will do either, at least not until he is much older.” Why not? “Well, he’s off to graduate school next year. He’s going to become a librarian. He tells me that he might find a job at a local public library, but if he doesn’t, there are other prospects. I can’t imagine my father or uncle or first husband working in a library, but my grandson is probably a little wiser than they were. Librarians have good lives, don’t they? And they never run out of things to read. Apart from that, there are very few snipers in the stacks. That’s reassuring.” (2011)

Gone astray: an exploration of library lost-and-founds  

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Jack gets around. This afternoon he has examined fearsome insects in the Amazonian rainforest and wandered through Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. He paused briefly at an ancient monastery in the Sinai desert and then dived to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean to meet a hideous new species of deepwater fish. Jack’s life is full of adventure, as long as he can reach a certain chair in a BC public library. Beside that chair is a magazine rack stuffed with old copies of National Geographic. In spite of the dementia that forces Jack to live in a seniors’ care center, he is happy to spend hours leafing through them, enjoying the splendid photographs. Jack’s nurses become alarmed when he goes AWOL from the care center. Although they’re sure that he’s at the library, cutting a path through a jungle or observing the habits of a family of chimpanzees, they consider him lost. They send out an orderly to retrieve him. The orderly strolls three blocks to the library. He stops at the reference desk. “Jack’s lost,” he says. “He was busy in Tanzania a few minutes ago,” says the librarian. “Thanks,” says the orderly. He walks through the periodical department to Jack’s chair. “Hello, Jack,” he says. “Did you get lost again?” Jack looks up. “Hippos,” he says. “Very dangerous, you know. Much worse than lions.” “I’m glad I found you,” says the orderly. “I’m here to take you home.” Jack smiles. “I’m too big to fit in the lost-and-found drawer, so they put me here,” he says.

32.1  Contents of the drawer There are numerous items smaller than Jack that people lose in libraries. Every library employee knows what she will find in the lost-and-found, be it a small drawer or a sizeable closet. Inevitably there are mittens and gloves, singletons and pairs. There are scarves, caps, and toques, plain or emblazoned with the logos of sports teams, manufacturers, colleges, and universities. There are countless keys. (How could anyone drive home that Porsche without the key to its ignition? How could the driver unlock the door to his house?) There are eyeglasses of every description and often a wristwatch or two. And there are the forgotten umbrellas, which grow in number during the rainy season. Folded neatly, little umbrellas fit in the lost-and-found drawer. Larger, nonfolding models that open with a thud and close with snap are stored in the lostand-found annex, a closet in the staff room that contains a basket for anything long and abandoned—mostly umbrellas, but occasionally canes, rolled-up building plans, baseball bats, and golf clubs. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00032-3 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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“Some lost items are inherently comical,” says Paula, a clerical employee at a library in Metro Toronto. “I can’t look at an abandoned set of dentures without laughing. Sometimes I imagine them laughing back at me. And some of the dental gear that ends up in our lost-and-found is amazing. The retainers and night guards and other orthodontic paraphernalia … How could anybody leave that stuff behind?” Paula notes that while children lose dental appliances, it is most often their parents who show up to claim that precious retainer or headgear. “Orthodontic treatment is expensive, so parents don’t hesitate to ask us if we have their child’s appliance in our lost-and-found,” she says. “I struggle not to chuckle when a mother sounds so profoundly relieved when I open the drawer and reveal the lost item. It’s as if I’ve returned her lost child to her. But that retainer probably cost enough to push the parents into a second mortgage. I should be more sympathetic.”

32.2  The wandering wallet Most patrons who lose a wallet or purse show up at the reference desk or circulation counter shortly thereafter. Why do so many wallets go astray? Because they contain their owners’ library cards. A patron takes out his wallet and removes the card. He might be standing at a public terminal and needs his card number to use the Internet or to reserve an item. He puts down the wallet beside the keyboard, types in his card number, and then places the card in his breast pocket. Having completed his online task, he walks away from the terminal and leaves his wallet behind. The wallet contains his rent money, four credit cards, his driver’s license, and a picture of his infant daughter. The next patron to use the terminal sees the wallet. She ignores it. It’s not hers, and she doesn’t want to touch it. Besides, she has an appointment with her physiotherapist in a few minutes and doesn’t want to deal with somebody’s lost property. The wallet stays by the keyboard. Another patron uses the terminal but doesn’t spot the wallet. Finally an elderly woman picks up the wallet and hands it to the clerical at the circulation counter. The clerical opens the wallet, sees the cash and credit cards, and drops the wallet in the lost-and-found drawer. “I’d call the owner of a lost purse or wallet at the end of the day,” says Lois, a clerical in Toronto. “Usually, however, that’s unnecessary. The owner returns to the library within a couple of hours, and I can identify him or her immediately by the desperate look, the wide-open eyes, and the high speed at which he or she arrives at the circulation counter. I open the drawer and take out the wallet or purse, and I hear a gasp of recognition, which is followed by an exclamation of gratitude. Sometimes people try to grab my hand. I swear that one fellow would have tried to kiss my feet had there not been a counter between us.”

32.3  Lottery winner The recovery of personal technology can also lead to exaggerated behavior. People carry handheld devices and laptops that contain substantial amounts of valuable data, some of it sensitive and highly confidential. The misplacement or loss of a cell phone

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can cause more than simple dismay. The owner might feel disconnected from his or her entire social network, including family members, friends, and business associates. Panic sets in. The owner might dial the number of the phone to see if anyone picks up the call. Hence, the following exchange, recalled by a librarian in Victoria: “Hello! Are you there?” “Yes. You’ve reached the public library. This cell phone was turned in an hour ago. Are you the owner?” “I am! Yes!” “We’re open until 6:00 this evening, sir, if you’d like to retrieve your property”. “Oh, thank you so much. You’re the finest damn library person on earth, and I love you.” “I will leave your phone in the lost-and-found drawer.” “I’ll be there in a nanosecond. You’re just too wonderful for words.” “We close at 6:00, sir.” “I hope you win the lottery.” “So do I, sir. Thank you for your support.”

32.4  Emotional response When a lost item has sentimental value, the owner can be even more effusive. Recently a Vancouver patron removed her wedding ring to wash her hands in the women’s room. She left the ring on a shelf beside the sink. Another patron turned in the ring, and the owner reclaimed it an hour later. On replacing it on her finger, she burst into tears and told the circulation supervisor that the library had probably saved her marriage. The supervisor said that she was glad that everything had worked out. The ring owner told the supervisor that the library had spared three small children from a lifetime of shame and loneliness. “I started feeling a little scared,” says the supervisor. “The woman was obviously serious, and I wondered what she was dealing with at home. She looked hysterical. But when she returned to the branch the following week, she brought her kids to storytime, and seemed completely normal again. To be fair, if I lost my wedding ring I’d be pretty unhappy, too. But I don’t think that I’d lose my composure like that. At least I hope not.” If adults act strangely in such circumstances, children can simply explode. No personal possession is too small or seemingly insignificant to provoke a screaming fit when a child leaves it behind after a visit to the library with Mum. Thus librarians and clericals are careful to treat stuffed animals with respect, no matter how dirty and damaged that teddy bear or doll may be.

32.5  For the love of a plastic duck Lindsay, a library technician who works in the children’s services area of a library in Alberta, notes that children become so attached to humble items that to lose them can result in lengthy periods of anxiety and sadness.

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“I call it the Rosebud Syndrome, after Citizen Kane’s toy sled,” she says. “A little boy leaves his ratty old security blanket in our library. We discard it because it doesn’t appear to be of any value. That’s a mistake. The boy’s mother returns to the library and learns that the blanket has been tossed out. The mother understands why, but the boy might be inconsolable. That’s why it’s best to roll it up and put it the lost and found. If it’s really dirty, we can wrap it in a plastic bag. “Aside from blankets, we’ve kept in our lost-and-found a plastic toy soldier that either a dog or a child had chewed, a headless Barbie doll, a string-less yo–yo, and a plastic duck with its wings torn off. The point is that eventually all of these items were reclaimed by their owners, or the owners’ parents. And there was joy upon the reunion of child and toy in each case. So it’s wise to keep every wretched non-perishable thing for an extended period, in the event that the owner shows up.” Some libraries maintain policies—formal or informal—regarding the length of time an item may be held in the lost-and-found. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that few of these policies are strictly enforced, and that in many cases items might stay in that drawer for years. Library staff members do not have time to keep an inventory of lost items nor does the public expect libraries to offer such a service. Certain items are held only briefly before they are discarded. Grocery bags that contain perishables such as fresh fruit, vegetables, or dairy products are often discarded at the end of the day. Libraries are not obliged to store them for any length of time. Prescription drugs may be held for a few days. If the prescription data on the label include the telephone number of the pharmacy, some librarians will phone the pharmacist to say that a customer has left a supply of pills at the library, and that they will be held only for a limited time.

32.6  Police matters Occasionally people leave behind items that they do not intend to claim. Examples include drug paraphernalia, knives, and stolen property. Staff members should hand these to the police without delay, since they could be connected to criminal activity. Police would also like to examine any stash of money that staff members discover concealed in washrooms or in stack areas. This money can be the proceeds of crime and is best left with the police. None of these items belongs in the lost-and-found. What about handguns? The discovery of firearms in Canadian libraries is extremely rare, and most instances are not announced to the public for reasons of security and staff safety. The police will take possession of any firearm found in a library and do not want to hear that a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic has been stored in the lost-and-found for any length of time. Such a weapon can be even more dangerous than a hippo or a lion, and while it fits neatly in a corner of the drawer, it does not belong there. Even intrepid Jack would agree. (2011)

Cat care programs in public libraries: providing essential information to owners

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A fictional cat owner describes what a cat care program might include and discusses practical aspects of managing such an event at a branch. We need to talk about Farley. Seriously. He has put on weight recently, and he’s addicted to grass. Last week he got into a fight with a cat who lives down the street. Farley’s getting older, and he should be more careful. But he won’t listen. What can we do? Along with other concerned owners of cats, we can go to the library. The local branch is offering a cat care program, an evening event that includes speakers and displays and materials that we can take home with us. We’re not allowed to bring Farley, since if owners brought their cats there could be an outbreak of feline hostilities. The event has been described as “Humans Only.” There’s going to be a variety of attendees. There’ll be owners like us, who want general information on keeping cats healthy. A mother of three young children will show up and ask for advice on choosing a kitten. An elderly widow who lives in an apartment with four Siamese cats will attend just for fun. She will enjoy chatting with other cat owners about the personalities of her cats. A young couple will arrive looking worried. They suspect that their old Angora has diabetes. Since cats are popular pets, the audience could be large. The Events Room in the branch can accommodate 30 people, but more might want to attend. That’s why we have to register our names at the Information Desk to reserve seats. The librarian will remind us to leave Farley at home and invite us to look at the Pet Care display in the Reference Section: books, magazines, and DVDs that we can borrow if we like, and flyers from the SPCA and local animal shelters. There’s material on cats, dogs, horses, birds, guinea pigs, and hamsters; there’s a shelf crammed with booklets on different species of tropical fish. Librarians note that their patrons include lots of people who are eager to find reliable information on their pets.

33.1  One reason why “Vet bills can be painful,” says Denise, a Vancouver librarian and owner of two fat Persians. “Pet owners can pay thousands of dollars for a single course of treatment. That’s one reason why they want good information that will save them money. I believe that a number of health problems can be avoided if owners take the necessary steps laid out in standard pet care manuals. And because cats are so common Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00033-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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in North American households, there’s a plethora of good publications on cat care. A cat care program in a public library is likely to attract a good audience. If I were a cynic, I’d say that a lot of people would show up because misery loves company. Your cat has failing kidneys; you want to talk to other owners whose cats have the same problem. There’s nothing wrong with that.” What will the Cat Care Program include? Aside from displays dedicated to cats, there will be speakers. Some will give PowerPoint presentations; others will simply stand at the lectern and talk. First, a librarian introduces the program. She thanks everyone for attending and expresses the hope that people will get the information they need. She says that her new kitten, a terror named Gonzo, has shredded the upholstery on her new sofa and is starting to work on the antique armchair in her bedroom. Can Gonzo be stopped? She looks directly at the next speaker, a young veterinarian who practices in a local clinic. He stands at the lectern and discusses kittens: how to select and care for one. He talks about vaccinations and the kinds of diseases that owners should watch for. He describes kitten behavior, bad and good, at which point attendees start to nod in agreement, smirk, and groan. Kittens and upholstery don’t mix. Should Gonzo’s claws be trimmed? Or is upholstery damage unavoidable? The vet offers advice. He also recommends a number of books and pamphlets on kitten care and feeding and invites the next speaker to take over.

33.2  Nutrition She is a biology instructor at the local university. She has published articles on feline nutrition. She owns two cats and says that proper feeding of any pet is not something that an owner can take for granted. She describes the foods that cats need and don’t need; she mentions changes of diet and the nutritional problems of older cats. She talks about feline obesity; a gentleman in the back row sits up straight in an attempt to flatten his own protruding stomach. She repeats that she is careful about giving general feeding advice for any animal and makes it clear that an experienced nutritionist will always warn people that every cat is different and might require a special diet. Vets are often the best people to consult, since they can spot dietary deficiencies and recommend new kinds of food. The librarian interrupts to say that she has pamphlets on feline nutrition for anyone interested, and that it is time for a break. Coffee and cookies are served. They’ve been donated by a coffee shop near the branch. The proprietor of the coffee shop is in attendance and is pleased to see that her Kenyan Blend is popular. But the audience is even more interested in the display that a pet shop has set up along the wall of the Events Room. The pet shop owner is passing out sample cans of cat food, and while he would prefer Program attendees to take away food that is appropriate for cats, attendees grab whatever comes to hand.

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The librarian announces that the second half of the Program will commence and asks people to take their seats. She invites the next speaker to step up to the lectern: another vet, who talks for 20 min about the care of older cats.

33.3  The unhappy question All animals die, and their protracted dying can cause much grief. The vet is soft-spoken and compassionate, but blunt. He talks about the diseases that end cats’ lives: cancer and organ failures, infections, and vascular problems. He says that cats are inclined to hide their symptoms, and that diagnosis can be difficult. And yes, it can be expensive. The audience is listening carefully; the vet has everyone’s rapt attention. And somebody shouts out the inevitable question: “So when is a good time to euthanize a cat?”

The vet has had a rough week, having put down three old cats. He was especially concerned about an elderly owner who sat in the waiting room and wept after the euthanizing of his ancient orange tabby. The vet had expected the question of euthanasia, since it often arises in pet care programs. It is never an easy question to answer. He says that nature takes its course, but nobody wants a cat to suffer. The decision to euthanize a cat is the owner’s. The procedure is painless. Every case, however, is different; and vets are willing to discuss such matters with owners. The librarian announces that it’s time for the next speaker to address an issue that is on everyone’s mind.

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A Provincial Wildlife Officer steps up to lectern and starts with a single word. “Coyotes.” The audience mutters and grumbles. They don’t like coyotes.

33.4  On the prowl The Wildlife Officer says that coyotes have been spotted in every local neighborhood, and that they have killed a number of cats. He advises people to keep their cats indoors. A woman in the front row is indignant. She says that her cat has a right to roam around outside, and that the Wildlife Officer should shoot every coyote found in local neighborhoods. The Wildlife Officer has heard this before, sometimes from owners of missing cats whose disappearance might be due to a coyote. The Wildlife Officer recommends that owners keep their cats indoors as much as possible, but particularly during early morning hours and at dusk, when coyotes are often on the prowl. He also mentions that raccoons can threaten cats, and that no food should be left outside, since it attracts raccoons. “Why don’t you just shoot them?” says the woman in the front row. The Wildlife Officer says that discharging firearms in residential areas is a poor idea, and that he would do so only in extreme circumstances. For example, if a wild animal were to threaten people. He then says that there’s a final speaker waiting to talk about first aid for cats. He thinks that everyone present should listen carefully to the retired vet who is waiting patiently to take over the lectern. The retired vet has a good sense of humor. He says that people can be more interested in first aid for cats than they are in first aid for humans. “But cats are better than people,” says a young woman at the back of the room. “You’re probably right,” says the vet. And he describes emergencies that demand first aid for cats: cuts, burns, and internal injuries. He advises people to keep the telephone number of the local emergency veterinary clinic on their home bulletin board, and in cases where a cat has been injured, to take it to that clinic as soon as possible. He describes how to deal with bleeding and limbs that have been broken, and how a vet will treat such injuries when the injured cats arrive at the clinic. He ends by noting that cats are hardy animals, and that while the notion that they have nine lives is wrong, it is rooted in their ability to survive in difficult circumstances.

33.5  Q & Q & Q & A The librarian thanks everyone for attending and offers special thanks to the speakers, who sit or stand in different places in the Events Room. “And are there any questions for our speakers?” The librarian might not have anticipated the number of questions that attendees ask the speakers. It is necessary to be firm in closing the question period, since in some cases cat owners will try to keep the library open all night. They have already emptied the shelves of titles on cats; they have even borrowed the entire collection of children’s cat stories.

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And they are slow to leave the branch, since they are busy chatting with the speakers or fellow owners. As the clericals start shutting down the branch, a journalist from the local newspaper approaches the librarian and tells her that he will publish a story on the Cat Care Program. The librarian says that she appreciates the positive publicity. The journalist asks if the branch will host another Cat Care Program, and the librarian, thinking on her feet, says that she will consider it. Perhaps, however, she will narrow the topic and make it more specific. For example, she suspects that there would be a large audience for briefer programs on the care of older cats, on the selection and care of kittens, on common diseases in cats, and—potentially the heaviest draw—on feline behavior and what it means. The journalist scribbles away and asks the librarian to pose for a photo beside a poster of kittens that hangs in the branch entrance.

33.6  Fame The photo and article appear in the weekend newspaper. The journalist writes about the practicality and usefulness of the Cat Care Program and says, “the public library is providing an excellent service. In lean times, people look for value, and it’s reasonable to say that the library is providing it. Politicians should consider the ramifications of cutting library budgets.” The librarian read this. She goes into her office and shuts the door. She says one word. “Wow.” The phone rings. It’s the Chief Librarian at the Central Branch. He says another word. “Upholstery.” What? “Upholstery. The kitten that my daughter gave me is ripping up the couch that we just had recovered, and he’s going after our new curtains, too. Let me know when you schedule the next Cat Care Program. I’m coming, and so is my wife. She’s really annoyed at Pooky, who is a tiny monster. We need advice.” Lots of people need advice about their cats, which brings me back to Farley. We need to talk about him, but first, I think that we should attend that Cat Care Program at the library and hear from the experts. I want to ask about feline obesity, and whether Farley needs more exercise. I wonder if there’s a book on aerobics for cats. Nine titles for nine lives These titles are recommended for your Pets section, and for any displays of resources for cat owners:

  

Alderton, David. The Cat Selector: How to choose the right cat for you. New York, 2011. Allport, Richard. Heal Your Cat The Natural Way. Vancouver, 1997. Borzendowski, Janice. Caring for Your Aging Cat: A Quality-of-Life Guide for Your Cat’s Senior Years. New York, 2007.

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Christensen, Wendy, et al. The Humane Society of the United States Complete Guide to Cat Care. New York, 2002. Davis, Karen Leigh. The Cat Handbook. New York, 2010. Fogle, Dr. Bruce. Cats. New York, 2006. Malone, John. The 125 Most Asked Questions About Cats (And the Answers). New York, 1992. Siegal, Mordecai. I just got a kitten. What do I do? New York, 2006. Siegal, Mordecai, ed. The Cat Fanciers’ Association Complete Cat Book. New York, 2004. … And one light-hearted classic Busch, Heather, and Silver, Burton. Why Cats Paint: A theory of feline aesthetics. Berkeley, California, 1994.

 

(2013)

Serving the solitary: librarians demonstrate “in-reach”  

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Nancy is profoundly shy. She lives alone in a small apartment in Vancouver’s West End. Rather than friends, she has acquaintances, most of whom are her coworkers at an insurance brokerage. Her job entails sitting in a cubicle and processing electronic forms. She avoids the staff room, preferring to eat her lunch at her desk. Days can pass between Nancy’s interactions with people. She does her banking and much of her shopping online, but she shuns social media. Though she loves music, she does not feel comfortable at concerts. She used to confine her listening to radio programs, until recently she discovered that local libraries allowed patrons to borrow CDs. These recordings she describes as “pure,” that is, they do not include a radio host’s commentary. All that CDs contain is music: pure Bach, pure Beethoven, and pure Brahms. Nancy is more comfortable without some radio host’s attempts to engage her attention. Engagement is what Nancy is determined to avoid.

34.1  Various reasons “Many libraries have patrons who are solitary souls,” says Tina, a public librarian who has worked in Vancouver and Victoria. “They make few demands on library staff. They will not make eye contact, and they gravitate toward public areas with less traffic—corners and nooks. They prefer to keep their distance from other patrons. Naturally they’re fans of self-checkout systems, which allow them to borrow items without talking to clericals. They can come and go without anyone noticing.” But generalizations about solitary persons can be misleading. Because their backgrounds are so diverse, solitary patrons don’t have a definite profile. They can come from any group within the general population, and each solitary person has various reasons for wanting to be alone. Some have emotional problems; some are homeless and desperate. A number are substance abusers or alcoholic. They might be agoraphobic, or suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Others function effectively in daily life and simply prefer to keep to themselves. We describe them as “loners.” Sometimes we assume that they are eccentric, in part—if we dare to admit it—because they are different from us. We are outgoing and social and enjoy the company of others; solitary persons do not. “Librarians are not social workers,” says Marilyn, who works at a public library in Ontario. It’s not our job to determine what ails any of our patrons. We’re not qualified to do so. What we need to do is to serve as best we can those patrons who do not want social contact, and who for whatever reasons need to keep it to a minimum. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00034-7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Marilyn describes what she calls her “crowning moment as a professional,” which included a reference interview with a patron who had visited her branch regularly for years without speaking to any staff member. “He was in late middle age. He wore a shabby grey overcoat and a floppy hat with a brim that shielded his eyes in such a way that he could see his way forward without anyone getting a view of his full face. He gripped his briefcase in both hands and spoke in a whisper. He was very worried about his dog, a small mongrel that he had owned for years. It had stopped eating. He arrived at the library and shuffled up to the reference desk. He was obviously upset, and took almost a minute to speak at a volume that I could understand.”

34.2  Excruciating For this patron, revealing pet-related concerns to Marilyn required a major effort, both mental and physical. Marilyn noted that he appeared confused and uncomfortable. “I assumed that the patron’s concern for the dog was contending with his need to be free from social contact. In the end, the dog won. The patron asked me for advice about how to deal with his sick little dog. I spoke quietly, and said that I could provide him with material that might give him the information that he and his dog needed. The poor fellow seemed to find my attention excruciating—no exaggeration. I invited him to sit at a table in a corner, and told him that I would bring him what he needed. For just a second, I think that he might have smiled. He shuffled off to the table. I brought him a manual of veterinary care for dog owners, and a directory containing phone numbers and addresses for local vets. I put a Post-It note beside the number for a vet clinic that offered 24-hour emergency service, and I delivered everything to the patron.” He reached into his knapsack for a pen and paper. Furiously he scribbled down the information he needed. He replaced the pen and paper in his knapsack and prepared to leave. “I watched him out of the corner of my eye,” says Marilyn. “He was not sure what to do. He didn’t know whether to return the manual and directory to me at the reference desk, or simply to make his escape. He fingered the Post-It note. I could tell that, while deciding what to do in these circumstances would be straightforward for most of us, it was agony for him. Finally he brought the manual and directory back to the desk while I looked the other way, and left them on an empty spot to one side. When I turned back, he was gone, and I didn’t see him for a week. I got the idea of interacting with me took a lot out of him.”

34.3  In-reach defined Serving such patrons effectively can be described as “in-reach.” While librarians establish outreach services to serve patrons who are physically or emotionally challenged and who cannot travel to libraries, there are numerous other patrons who can

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visit branches but who need a special kind of attention. As solitary people, they might have difficulty vocalizing questions at the reference desk, and they might find even eye contact with the clericals at the circulation counter hard to take. But they want what libraries provide and would appreciate opportunities to avail themselves of whatever services they can tolerate. “Dealing with solitary people—especially those who are painfully shy—demands sensitivity,” says Donna, who has worked in public and universities in Ontario and the Maritimes. “You need an awareness of a shy patron’s personal boundaries. Your body language shouldn’t be too loud. That’s to say, you should not stand too close to the patron; you should give him or her more space than you would anyone else. You should keep your voice down, and not direct your gaze at the patron. You should not expect expressions of thanks for what you give the patron, who may be very grateful for your efforts, but who can’t get verbalize gratitude. Above all, you will need patience.” Donna notes that some solitary patrons stutter and are embarrassed as they stand at the reference desk and try with limited success to verbalize questions. “I have dealt with several stutterers over the years,” she says. What I do is to listen to them, and when it appears that it is simply too hard for them to tell me what they want, I slip a piece of paper and a pen across the desk and quietly ask them to write down their requests, with the most important at the top. And I tell them not to worry because I can track down all sorts of things.

34.4  A common need This way of handling a shy stutterer has worked well for Donna, except on one occasion. The patron approached the desk and, covering much of his face with his hands, he tried to verbalize his question. His stutter was strong, and he started to turn red. Donna passed him paper and pen, and he wrote one word at high speed: Washroom!

Donna made the customary directional hand signals, and the patron dashed off. He reappeared shortly thereafter with a big smile on his face. Donna passed him a fresh piece of paper, on which he wrote: Just in time! Thanks!

Later Donna discovered that the patron was a dedicated reader of detective mysteries and science fiction. He and she developed a service strategy that worked for years. He would arrive at the library, walk past Donna at the reference desk, and sit at a nearby table. Noting his presence, she would check the selection of new titles in the library’s workroom and take anything that would appeal to the patron. If there were no suitable titles in the workroom, she would search the paperback carousels. On most occasions she succeeded in finding something that the patron would enjoy, and he would sit and read it for hours.

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Because interacting with people was so difficult for him, Donna and he developed a way that he could borrow books without dealing with the circulation staff, many of whom were temporary or “floating,” and who were not aware of the patron’s problems. At closing time, he would come to the reference desk and silently place the titles that he wanted to borrow in front of Donna, along with his library card. She would check out everything for him, and he would depart without a word. This process continued for years, until Donna found a job elsewhere. But she did not leave without informing the new librarian about the patron, and making sure that the librarian could carry out the necessary interaction rituals comfortably. “In fact, the woman who replaced me at the reference desk was gifted at dealing with the stutterer,” says Donna. “She had worked at a school for children with a variety of challenges, and she carried on where I left off with him. Last I heard, she had got him interested in graphic novels, so his use of the library should never cease. Such is effective in-reach.”

34.5  A common service experience Many other librarians have served—or tried to serve—solitary patrons, with varying levels of success. An apparently homeless man who frequented a BC public library branch presented Barbara, a reference specialist, with a variety of problems. “He sat in the periodicals section reading newspapers all day,” she says. “We wouldn’t see his face because he hid behind the newspaper. One day I heard him weeping very quietly. I approached him and asked if he were all right. He lowered the newspaper and whispered that his sister in Montreal had cancer. He said that he didn’t want to cause trouble, and just wanted to be alone, so I left him. He showed up the next day, and most days of the week after that. He told me that he was an alcoholic, and that he attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in a community centre not far from the branch. He dropped in to the branch before and sometimes after meetings, which he found very difficult to get through, largely because he hated to speak to a group. He liked the library because people left him alone. He didn’t really read the newspaper as much as he hid behind it to feel safe.” The homeless patron took weeks to tell Barbara his story. Interestingly, he felt safest in the library, which guaranteed him more privacy than he had in the temporary shelters where he slept. Unlike social workers, librarians left him alone. One day he stopped coming to the library, and Barbara is not sure what became of him. “I imagine that he moved on, as many homeless people do,” she says. I just hope he found another branch where he could be comfortable. Serving him was mostly a matter of leaving him alone, since he wanted nothing more.

34.6  Shiny brogues Not all solitary people are poor or materially disadvantaged. For example, at a public library branch on the Prairies, a well-dressed gentleman appeared at opening times. He would march to the fiction section, select a couple of titles, and sit all day at a table.

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He would read the books he had chosen from cover to cover. At closing time he would stand up, march back to the fiction section, and reshelve the books. Then he would leave the library quickly and without a word. This behavior continued for years. The branch staff never heard him speak. He never borrowed books. He might not have owned a library card. But his suit was tailor-made, and he wore highly polished brogues. He looked like a banker, but if that was his occupation, his working hours were unusual. “He wouldn’t engage with anyone, but he was one of our most frequent patrons,” says Ellen, the branch head at the time. “Whenever any of us encountered him in the fiction section, he would turn away. I once asked him if he were looking for something in particular, and he ignored me. And that’s all right. It takes all kinds, doesn’t it?” In an age of constant self-exposure on social media and in person, solitary patrons seem anomalous. They might or might not have serious problems. In many cases, the librarians who practice in-reach in their attempts to serve them will never know for sure. But by offering in-reach, librarians could be performing small miracles and satisfying solitary patrons in ways that nobody else can. Nancy is not available to confirm this. She is too busy listening to the DVD of Glen Gould playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. She wants nothing more. (2014)

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Section D Senior Moments

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Seniors: what they want and what they get in Canada’s public libraries

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Harry never saw the Messerschmitt that peppered his bomber with machine-gun fire over France in 1944. He was the only crewmember to survive the subsequent crash landing, during which he suffered two broken legs and burns to his arms and chest. “The doctors patched me up as well as they could, but I still have trouble walking any distance,” he says. “That’s why I’m glad that I have Herman. He helps me around the library and makes sure that I find a chair when I need one.” Herman was an officer in the German parachute corps that invaded Crete in 1941. Owing to what he calls “vile luck,” he landed badly and fractured his left shoulder, arm, wrist, and several ribs. Arthritis has set in, leaving him in constant pain. To make his old age even more difficult, diabetes has left him almost blind. “Harry and I are quite a pair,” he says. “We help each other out. He leans on me and navigates, while I serve as a rudder. He selects my book tapes, and I carry his Westerns. He can’t stop reading Westerns, poor man.” While Harry and Herman enjoy their visits to the Vancouver Public Library, they speak in embarrassed whispers about their frequent need for a clean, well-lighted washroom with lots of space in readily available toilet cubicles. “I’ve lost my dignity twice in library washrooms, and I won’t say any more,” says Harry. “I rescued him both times,” says Herman. “He got stuck. There was no handrail beside the toilet, and he couldn’t pull himself up. If you laugh at that, one day you might find yourself trapped in one of those tiny cubicles, unable to stand, and you will not be amused. It’s a frequent problem for seniors, one that keeps many of us at home.” Herman adds that Harry reads Zane Grey in the washroom, and cubicle entrapment is fair punishment for such lowbrow taste. Harry threatens to whack him with his cane, and bursts out laughing. “At least I had the sense to stay in my aircraft,” he says. “Only a damn fool would jump out of a plane. Or listen to taped thrillers.” While seniors differ in myriad ways, the majority of them encounter similar difficulties in public libraries. “I don’t like to complain about libraries,” says octogenarian Helen in Burnaby, B.C. “Even a small branch can give an old soul like me a great deal of pleasure. But the physical world can be a dangerous place when you’re no longer agile. A stairway becomes a mountain range for anyone with a walker or wheelchair, and the doors that opened so easily when you were in your 30s suddenly weigh a ton. And the person who invented turnstiles was probably under 40; try to get through one when your balance is poor.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00035-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Seniors across Canada complain of slippery floors in library lobbies and entrance areas. In Toronto, Bert (“I don’t look a day over 90”) suggests that janitorial staff be more diligent about mopping up the puddles of water that collect near front doors. “They should either mop up the water or put down mats that reduce the risk of slipand-fall,” says Bert, who practised law for over 50 years. “Falls occur frequently in public buildings, and while it’s not only the senior who keels over, he or she is more likely to break a hip. You get weaker as you age.” Bert wants more chairs in reading areas. He wants better lighting and clearer signage. “Library architects should put somebody like me on their payroll,” he says. “I could tell them about the physical challenges that seniors face in libraries. It’s as if the generic patron is a robust 30-something. But the population is ageing, and the definition of ‘old’ is changing. After [World War Two], 75 was a grand old age. These days it’s not unusual to meet spry oldsters in their 90s. Fact is, however, they need to sit down more often than youngsters. And since their eyes are weak, they need bigger and clearer signage, especially signs that direct them to exits, washrooms, and various areas of the collection.” Anecdotal evidence from seniors and the librarians who serve them indicates that magazines, newspapers, and books are still the media of choice for most patrons over 65. Electronic resources have yet to appeal to the majority of seniors, whose attitudes toward the Internet, CDs, and databases vary from the curious to the downright hostile. “I’d like to learn more about the Internet,” says Joan, a retired accountant in Vancouver. “I’m worried, however, about the amount of training time that local librarians are able to give me. I’m not as quick as I used to be, especially with anything technical. And using a library computer can be challenging, since I can’t stand up for extended periods and computers with chairs are usually occupied – by younger patrons, I notice. As well, most library branches don’t offer terminals with larger type that I need because of my eyesight, which is poor. I don’t want to be a nuisance, so I’ll be content with large-type novels and magazines with pictures of the Royal family.” Arnold, however, has no interest in “anything more complicated than a light bulb or a toaster.” Having retired from his job as a structural engineer in Calgary several years ago, he prefers an unautomated life and is discouraged by the growth of electronic resources in libraries. “Of course there’s a use for computers, but I refuse to make a fetish out of them,” he says. “Most oldies realize that they don’t have a long time to live, so why should they waste what little they have left learning computer skills that they don’t really need? When I retired, I was thankful that I didn’t have to keep up to date any more. What a relief! Now I read mediaeval literature and history, which I love. And the librarians who know me support my interests completely. They probably don’t like the Internet any more than I do, but it’s not politically correct for them to say so, is it?” Arnold wants a more “senior-friendly” public library, with more books and less noise. He complains that noise levels in libraries have increased over the past decade, and he blames parents who refuse to keep their children quiet. “The result,” he says, “is chaos, especially in those libraries that offer extensive children’s programs in space that projects sound. Carpeting cuts only a fraction of the

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noise in some libraries. I’m sure that many patrons would like librarians to enforce a stricter noise-level code. I’m half-deaf, but I can still hear children shouting at each other. That behaviour is inappropriate.” To encourage the improvement of services to seniors, library associations, governments at different levels, and Friends of the Library groups have offered advice and issued guidelines on making libraries more senior-friendly. Seniors who have examined these guidelines view them favorably, but often they question the practicability of different measures. “These days you can’t do anything in a public institution without taking resources from somewhere else,” says Joan. “The guidelines from a local well-meaning agency call for the development of a library website for seniors. This website will take money and time to maintain. Where will the money come from? An existing program? I don’t like that idea, especially if it involves cutting budgets [for book and periodical acquisitions]. Librarians must establish priorities for their respective systems. Perhaps some can afford a website without cutting back on new fiction. Most, however, will be limited to the bare essentials of the guidelines.” While librarians struggle to maintain outreach services to seniors who are unable to travel to a library, they must also recognize the determination of those who refuse to stop their regular visits. “I will keep coming for as long as I can,” says Herman. “And so will Harry. For us, the most important part [of the guidelines] deals with the safety and comfort of library facilities for older persons. This section of the guidelines covers the essentials, and librarians should familiarize themselves with the major points. After all, when you follow the guidelines, you’re making the library safer and more comfortable for all patrons, not just seniors. When you decrease the risk of falling on a slippery floor or pulling a heavy book from a high shelf down on your head, you’re protecting everybody, including library staff. So looking after seniors is simply good librarianship.” Harry snorts derisively. “Pretty logical for a guy who jumps out of planes,” he says. “Of course that was a long time ago. He’s probably forgotten how to do it. Mind you, we’ve forgotten a lot over the years, haven’t we, Herr Leutnant?” “That’s probably all for the best,” says Herman. “But we won’t forget to return your frightful cowboy stories to the library, will we? The sooner the better.” (2001)

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Leisure reading for seniors: sorting out tastes and topics  

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36.1  Solve for X Remember high school algebra? It presented you with problems that sounded like these: A branch library employs one children’s librarian to offer services to approximately 400 patrons under the age of 18. If the branch also serves 1600 patrons over the age of 65, how many seniors’ librarians should the branch employ? And: A Library School offers four courses on Children’s Literature and Young Adult Services. Assume that students who take these courses will cater to 20 percent of the national population. If seniors constitute 25 percent of the population, how many courses should the Library School offer on services to seniors? And: On entering a public library, an 80-year-old gentleman’s blood pressure reading is 135/90. The librarian tells him to look up a title on the OPAC, which he doesn’t know how to use. The librarian hands him a directory that he finds too heavy to carry. It is filled with print that is too small for him to read. The librarian then recommends several titles by authors whom the gentleman cannot stand. If his blood pressure spikes by 20%, how much will his blood pressure reading increase before he leaves the library? What seniors want to read for pleasure is a problem that goes beyond mere algebra. Their backgrounds and identities are so varied that it is difficult to generalize about their interests in fiction and biography. Age, education, careers, and life experience create different kinds of persons. For example, consider a nonagenarian who graduated from the University of Toronto in 1931 and worked for the federal government in Ottawa until 1975. After retirement he traveled widely with his wife. They had three daughters. His wife died in 1993. He has lived alone since then, and rarely sees his family. He loves mysteries by P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Ian Rankin. Occasionally he reads works on the history of Ontario. He reads The Globe & Mail every morning. He subscribes to no magazines and falls asleep watching the History Channel. His name is Herb. His friend Doris is a few years younger, and from an entirely different background. They are regulars at a branch of the Toronto Public Library. “I’m a Prairie Flower,” she declares. “I was born in Regina, and trained as a nurse in Vancouver. I went overseas during the war [i.e. the Second World War] and worked in a military hospital outside London. I didn’t return to Canada until 1953. I met the man I was to marry at a club in Winnipeg. He was an American, a farm equipment salesman. We married a couple of months after we met. We had one son. I picked up my husband’s reading tastes: he liked modern American novelists like Sinclair Lewis and Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00036-0 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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John Dos Passos, and he read and reread everything by Fitzgerald and Hemingway. My husband passed away years ago, but I still adore the writers he favoured. So much talent! Unfortunately I can’t bear the gory things that Herb reads. In fact we have little in common when we visit the library. He disappears into the history section while I wander through fiction.”

36.2  TV tie-ins Do Herb and Doris share any reading tastes? They confer at length, then Herb notes that they like “things that you see on TV and later they publish a book about it.” Doris nods enthusiastically. “Civilization!” she says. She refers to the TV series with Sir Kenneth Clark, who introduces his audience to his favorite paintings and sculpture in perfect upper-class English. “And then there’s that Polish guy who talks about science,” says Herb. “I liked him. He explained science and technology in a really engaging way.” He means Jacob Bronowski, the author of The Ascent of Man. The branch librarians thrilled Herb and Doris by providing them with videos of these series, and recommending other, more recent productions on historical topics. Since seniors can be heavy TV viewers, their interest in published tie-ins to popular programs is to be expected. Their responses to the different media vary. Herb notes that he “gets more” from a printed text, even though it takes more effort and time to absorb. He complains that he doesn’t recall as much of what he learns from TV programming. “If I want to remember something to share with my friends, a fact or a story, I should read about it,” he says. “Otherwise it slips my mind pretty fast. That’s what happens when you live into your tenth decade. And I find that even the most entertaining TV program makes me sleepy.”

36.3  Club talk What keep Herb and Doris wide awake are the recent discussions at their seniors’ book club. What started as a Great Books seminar has evolved into a literary free-for-all. In the beginning, around a dozen people got together to drink decaf and talk about Jane Austen and Tolstoy. Talk of the latter led to a heated exchange regarding his religious ideas. Then somebody brought up Graham Greene’s Catholicism, and by the time the coffee urn was empty, they were comparing notes about his thrillers. “Then we agreed to discuss our favourite thrillers and mysteries at the following meeting,” says Doris. “Herb was happy to maunder on about his usual gory fare, but I had to look around for a master of the genre whose work didn’t upset me.” Her branch librarian recommended Agatha Christie. Unfortunately the branch’s stock of these authors was low, owing to heavy use. The librarian noted that branches serving large numbers of seniors frequently see their Christie collections read to bits.

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Doris relied on interlibrary loan for the dozen Christie titles that she has devoured lately. She is also “experimenting” with Margery Allingham and Ross Macdonald. It turns out that everyone in the club reads mysteries, and they all have distinct preferences regarding the settings, historical periods, and protagonists of the titles they select. Aside from Herb and Doris, there are three fans of whodunits set in Ancient Rome by authors such as Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, and John Maddox Roberts. One woman rereads everything by Josephine Tey annually; a retired engineer who spent 30 years looking for oil in the Northwest Territories finishes one of Michael Innes’s titles and can’t stop himself from picking up another. Is there one mystery writer—aside from Agatha Christie—whom every member of the club can enjoy? “We’re still looking,” says Herb. “It’s difficult, since the genre has so many different facets. We came close with Peter Dickinson, but a certain party didn’t approve of him.” He looks accusingly at Doris, who stares back defiantly. “I wish that we could talk about romance novels,” she says. “Over my dead and dismembered body,” says Herb with a mischievous grin.

36.4  Romance and children’s treasures In fact many older women enjoy romance novels as much as they did when they were younger. Doris reads at least one title in the “Regency” subgenre every month, by authors including Elizabeth Mansfield and Glenda Garland. “It’s harmless stuff, and women of any age love it. I guess it’s gender specific material, but ask any public librarian, and she’ll tell you that romance fiction is tremendously popular. In fact the librarians in our branch read it, and make great recommendations.” Doris prods Herb affectionately. “After all, romance has its roots in some of the finest fiction—the Brontes, for example. It’s not all trash, despite what certain people think—people who have never read it, but who make stern judgments.” Those titles that Herb and Doris agree on without question are the books of their childhood. Many of these are now considered classics. Herb has reread Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Kidnapped many times and swears that his all-time favorite book is Kingsley’s The Water Babies. Doris says that Treasure Island gave her nightmares as a child. “It was the character of Blind Pew. He still gives me the creeps. But that book is wonderful. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like it.”

36.5  Other formats What often determines their choice of any title is its availability in a form that they handle comfortably. Herb’s eyes tire quickly now, and while he continues to borrow books with a standard type size, he also likes audiobooks and large-type publications.

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Doris complains of arthritis in her wrists and says that large-type volumes are often too heavy for her to hold. She likes audiobooks and notes that many of her peers refuse to borrow anything else. She has misgivings about e-books, which she dismisses as “new-­ fangled.” She still prefers a well-designed hardcover novel, despite her sore wrists. “Of course oldies like me are inclined toward the large type and audiobook shelves,” she says. “But there’s no guarantee that our preferred titles will be available in these forms, so we’ll put up with the old-fashioned book for as long as we can. I’m not sure that I can make the switch to e-books, no matter how easy they are to use. To me, they just don’t feel like books.” Herb notes that Storytime sessions in seniors’ centers and residences are increasingly popular, and that session facilitators often welcome title requests from audience members. “The fellow who runs the sessions in our residence is pretty good,” says Herb. “He has some difficulty in choosing books that we’ll all enjoy, but he usually finds something that we’ll like. Choosing for a group of seniors will always be a problem, but it’s not insurmountable.” And fortunately, it’s not algebraic. Popular genres for seniors Anecdotal evidence suggests that seniors prefer these genres for their leisure reading:

  

• Mysteries and thrillers • Biographies • Popular narrative history • Romance novels • Crafts • Personal favorites from childhood • TV tie-ins

  Aids to reading in libraries: what seniors need • Good lighting • Quiet zones with signage requesting no talking, etc. • Comfortable seating with arm rests • Tables and chairs for reading large format volumes and newspapers • Audiobooks: Current titles and classics • Large-type books • Librarians’ recommendations • Book displays geared to seniors’ interests • Clear and conspicuous signage in stack areas

  

 

(2006)

Finance, felines, and figuring It all out: utilitarian reading for seniors

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On a summer morning in 1932, in a remote area of the US Sierra Nevada, a young man bent down to tie his bootlace. As he did so, his eye caught a sparkle on the ground between his feet. It was a nugget of gold. “That was the high point of my prospecting days,” says Jack, a 95-year-old resident of a seniors’ residence in Vancouver. “As I recall, that nugget paid for two months’ worth of food, a bottle of whiskey, and a new blanket. During the Depression, those purchases were pure luxury. And I bought something else, too: a treasure at the time. I still have it.” From a shelf beside his bed, Jack removes a battered Webster’s Dictionary held together with duct tape and elastic bands. “I consult this book several times a week. I’ve carried with me from mine sites in California to logging camps in Northern British Columbia. I wouldn’t feel comfortable without it.”

37.1  Seniors need books and more Retirement and old age don’t necessarily decrease a person’s reading for utilitarian purposes. While many seniors are heavy leisure readers, others use a variety of information sources to assist them in jobs and different practical tasks. For example, Jack uses his Webster’s when he writes articles on nature topics for the newsletter of his local community center. His daughter-in-law lends him her laptop so that he can glean facts on Western Canadian wildlife from his favorite websites. He visits branches of the local public library with his care aide twice a month and borrows a lot. “I load up my walker with books and magazines that I need for my writing,” he says. “I load up my care aide, too. She doesn’t mind, though she’s not that big. As long as I don’t ask her to carry oversize volumes, she’s happy to help me.” Jack notes that numerous elderly researchers use libraries. Unlike people who seek entertainment, these researchers might still be employed in traditional jobs. Some are dedicated hobbyists, working on crafts and other sophisticated projects. Others have serious personal needs. Consider Beth. Widowed and childless, aged 73, she continues to live by herself in a little flat on the edge of Vancouver’s Stanley Park. Three mornings a week, she works as a legal secretary. She’s obliged to hunt down information on imports and exports at local libraries. During her lunch break, she checks stock market reports on any computer at hand, to make sure that her investments are performing well. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00037-2 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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37.2  A matter of health While Beth appears healthy and vigorous, she suffers from arthritis, food allergies, and asthma. She follows the exercise regimen and diet that her doctor has organized for her, and she swallows the pills that he prescribes, but she spends hours every week reading articles on treatments for her ailments. She believes that she can improve on what the doctor has recommended. “I’ve just discovered Hatha yoga,” she says. “It’s a godsend. I’m using fewer drugs for my asthma, and I’m not nearly as stiff and sore as I used to be. And since Vancouver is a hotbed of New Age thinking, our libraries have good collections of yoga books, DVDs and videos.” Local bookstores also offer numerous titles on yoga and other topics that interest seniors. Internationally famous is Banyen Books in the Kitsilano neighborhood, where one can buy a large statue of Buddha or Siva, any kind of incense, Tibetan prayer flags, recordings of music to facilitate meditation, and thousands of books on topics that interest seniors.

37.3  Ending up without fear In an aisle of Banyen books, Graham, aged 81, browses in a section of books on death. He doesn’t seem frightened of anything but the prices of the latest volumes. “Every senior thinks about dying,” says Graham. “You always know that you’re going to die, but when you hit my age, you realize that the end will be sooner rather than later. It’s normal to wonder about the mechanics of dying. You stop breathing; then what? Everybody’s curious about what happens next. That’s why I’m here.” Unfortunately Graham’s public library branch has almost nothing on end-of-life topics, so he relies on Banyen and his church library for information on what his final days might include. He recommends three books: David Cole Gordon’s Overcoming the Fear of Death (1970), Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Life After Death (1991), and C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed (1961). “When I read these books, I feel better about the whole thing,” he says. “Our culture doesn’t offer us the kind of reassurance about death that other cultures provide. That’s why we need Gordon and Kubler-Ross to give us a sensible perspective. And C.S. Lewis handles the meaning of death brilliantly. You can understand why people borrow his book from libraries as often as they do. My church library’s copy is falling apart.”

37.4  Life is a garden Graham insists that while death is inevitable, he still has time to spend on useful projects. He dedicates two days a week to his garden, which contains flower beds, fruit trees, a shrubbery, and a tiny greenhouse in which he grows tomatoes.

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“I tried to grow orchids in the greenhouse, but they didn’t last,” he says. “I switched to tomatoes. I grow them year-round, and eat them with every dinner. They’re especially good with my wife’s mayonnaise, but don’t tell my doctor. He says that Lois’s mayonnaise is full of cholesterol, and that’s not good for me. But after reading KublerRoss, I feel that I can eat whatever I want.” Seniors are noted for their interest in materials on vegetable gardening, indoor plants, flowers (particularly roses), and techniques for pruning trees and shrubs. Even a bedridden senior in an advanced care ward might have a few pots of treasured plants, which require the correct amounts of light, moisture, and fertilizer. Hence, wherever seniors hunt for information, we’re wise to maintain a shelf of gardening books.

37.5  Pet care For companionship, seniors often rely on pets, especially dogs and cats. Many seniors swear that the only thing that can part them and their beloved spaniels and tabbies is death. They grow old—and older—together, and a pet’s health can become an urgent concern. Seniors on fixed incomes have difficulty paying veterinarians’ fees, which, along with the cost of feeding and grooming a pet, place a heavy burden on bank accounts. Pet care manuals and magazines that contain advice on disease prevention are in high demand among seniors, who strive to keep pets healthy. “I’ve learned a lot about my cat from Pets magazine,” says Beth. “It’s fair to say that my state of mind depends a great deal on her health. When she’s happy, so am I.”

37.6  Financial concerns However healthy a pet may be, seniors must always consider money matters. Under this heading, we find budgeting for basic needs, estate planning, investments, pensions, and debt management. Seniors find the plethora of books, magazines, newsletters, websites, DVDs, and videos on these topics both daunting and incomprehensible. There’s too much information to absorb in too little time. Moreover, the financial world seems to change so quickly. People whose lives were drastically affected by the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression are nervous when they hear dire predictions about recessions and increasing unemployment. To these people, an economic boom usually leads to a downturn. Naturally, many seniors are either fatalistic or cynical about the economy and prospects for the future. “On one hand you don’t care so much,” says Jack. “It’s the younger folks who’ll have to deal with our economy. On the other hand, you wonder what will happen to whatever you leave behind, in the form of property or investments. And when things change overnight, even an oldie like me has to worry about what’s going to happen.” Often the main sources of financial information for seniors are daily newspapers, local and national. Their finance sections include features and columns that attract

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a broad readership and sometimes focus on seniors’ concerns. Despite an increase in the publication of books and magazines that cover seniors’ finances, the newspapers remain the most popular vehicle for finance data and advice. The disadvantage of newspapers is their format. Some seniors might find their pages difficult to hold and fold. The solution is to provide table space for seniors to spread out newspapers for easy reading.

37.7  Life goes on Some utilitarian topics appeal more to seniors than to any other social group. Perhaps the most important can be dubbed “wisdom/humanitarian,” since it comprises religious materials and philosophical works that recommend courses of spiritual action and thought. “There’s always the Bible and other scriptures,” says Beth. “But there are other works that can give an old person food for thought, particularly about why one has lived one’s life. That sounds corny, but when you get old, it makes a lot of sense.” She recommends several works, including Tony Hendra’s Father Joe: The Man Who saved My Soul, Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty, and above all Malcolm Cowley’s The View from 80, which is a classic of the genre as well as a readable introduction to what is in store for all of us—if we’re lucky. Happily we can find gold at any age, and for busy seniors, the next nugget might be on the library shelf. Practical topics for seniors Seniors are likely to need utilitarian information about these topics:

  

• Crafts • Gardening • Health and drug treatments • Mental fitness and memory • Exercise programs, including general fitness, yoga, stretching, and fall prevention • Personal finance, including living on a fixed income • Pet care • Wills and estates • Wisdom/Humanitarian

  

 

(2006)

Tis the season: christmas programs for seniors  

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On a cold winter day in 1980, a distinguished professor of music broke the heart of his student by telling her that she would never make a successful concert pianist. “He said that I didn’t have quite enough talent,” says Becky. “I was so upset that I couldn’t speak for days. I managed to finish my music degree, then went to library school.” Thirty years later, Becky manages a corporate library in Vancouver. She sings in a church choir and bakes cookies for her reading club. In November, however, she breaks her routine. She gives Christmas concerts at a seniors’ residence. Seated at a battered Steinway, she performs Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin. Amateur she may be, but competently so. In fact, she plays with an energy and richness that have attracted an enthusiastic audience. Perhaps she hits the keys a little louder than the composers intended, but only because many seniors are hard of hearing. “I’ve developed an explosive style that works well for a Chopin polonaise,” says Becky. “Unfortunately I have to use the same style for Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. And I’ve had to get used to people humming along with me as I play. You don’t hear that at Roy Thompson Hall. In a seniors’ residence, however, humming or singing along is a sign that the performer is getting people involved and raising their spirits. That’s what Christmas programs are all about.” Becky tells her audience that she’s a librarian. She talks about the composers of the music she plays and recommends biographies and various recordings. And she sings. Shamelessly, in public, and with gusto, she belts out popular songs such as “Hello Dolly” and “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Cocoanuts.” She sings Percy French and George Formby, who made your grandparents happy, and perhaps still do. For an encore, she sings “Danny Boy,” and around her the tiny shrill voices of 25 nonagenarians join in. “People in seniors’ residences hear lots of Christmas songs on their TVs and radios,” says Becky. “There’s also the seasonal Muzak, which can get on everyone’s nerves. So I sing songs that people enjoy at any time of the year, even though it’s the Christmas season.”

38.1  Aptly nicknamed Not surprisingly, people at the seniors’ residence call Becky “the Singing Librarian” and look forward to her concerts, which are informal and voluntary. Public libraries cannot be as flexible with their schedules as Becky; nor can they cater to every senior in their areas. But they can offer Christmas programs that attract enthusiastic audiences of people who remember all of the words to “Abdul Abulbul Amir,” and who recall seeing Alastair Sim in A Christmas Carol shortly after its release in 1951. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00038-4 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Librarians like to decorate their public areas with posters, multicolored lights, and tinsel. They might also mount a twinkling tree in a corner or on a table. But for seniors, seating is an equally important part of any Christmas program. Many cannot stand for long and appreciate any kind of chair, even a metal fold-up. Some seniors’ Zimmer frames include fold-up seats that are convenient and safe, as long as the users avoid blocking busy aisles and passages. Hence, librarians should position a popular item such as a Christmas tree in an area where seniors can sit, rest, and take pleasure in the sparkling lights and ornaments. Parking a tree in a corner that patrons must squeeze through is unwise, since fewer patrons—including seniors—will be able to see it, and someone unsteady on her feet might knock it over. “Lots of seniors come to the library with younger people—for example, grandmother and grandchild,” says Anne, a Vancouver adult services coordinator. “It’s appropriate to offer programs that appeal to both ends of the age spectrum. To be honest, combining granny and grandchild for a Christmas crafts program doesn’t work. Granny wants that Christmas wreath to look a certain way, while her grandchild decides that no wreath is complete without plastic Halloween pumpkins and Easter eggs. Conflict is inevitable. The library elves must accept a peacekeeping role. It’s not worth the grief.”

38.2  Storytime Anne believes that the best program for seniors and children is a Christmas storytime, featuring old standards such as Clement Clarke Moore’s “Twas the Night before Christmas” and Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Carols, sing-along opportunities, and puppet shows are always welcome. In most cases, regular patrons will tolerate the increased noise level and might even take a break from online research to delight in the Grinch’s wicked behavior. “There are three things to remember about Christmas story-times for seniors and their grandchildren or young friends,” says Anne. “First, you don’t have to present obscure classics or the most recently published works. You needn’t be original. The standard stories are the most popular, and they’re what patrons of all ages expect. Second, the audiences will be a lot bigger than usual around Christmas. You’ll need more space, more chairs, and more patience. Finally, the librarian running the program will need more assistance than usual from other staff members—to clear the seating area and arrange the chairs, collect and organize materials to be used during the story-time, handle any advertising and promotion, and pack away everything at the end.” Anne suggests that a storytime librarian might need an assistant on hand to help any senior who has difficulty in managing young children. It is not unusual for a well-intentioned grandparent to bring a small horde of children to a storytime and to lose control of one 4-year-old who insists on wandering away from the storytime area. Shouts and weeping can erupt; grandpa cannot catch grandson, who moves so much faster. An assistant can encourage the child to return to grandpa and help grandpa to return to his seat and save the storyteller from further distractions.

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38.3  By oneself Many seniors will prefer to involve themselves in a library’s programs without the presence of children—or any other relative. Christmas reading displays delight older patrons, and such displays need not focus on purely yuletide themes. Of course some patrons will want to borrow Dickens’s Christmas books, and more religious patrons will look for works concerning the spiritual significance of Christmas. But popular genes such as horror, ghost stories, and crime fiction are even more popular as Christmas approaches, and the circulation of “dark genre” items from late November to mid-January can increase substantially. “I read detective stories all year,” says Kate, who lives in a seniors’ residence near a local public library branch. “But around Christmas I seem to enjoy them even more, and so do a lot of people my age. They’re a healthy distraction from all of the festivities. Murder makes the jolly side of Christmas even jollier. The same is true for ghost stories and tales of vampires. You can’t be cheered by bright lights and Santa unless you’re aware of homicide and ghosts. Face it, A Christmas Carol contains numerous ghosts. That’s why it’s been a hit for so long.” Christmas storytimes intended for seniors only can be well received, although storytellers need special skills to ensure that such programs go smoothly. Seniors can be more demanding—and less tolerant—than children. The program might have been scheduled for 1 h, but a gentleman in his late eighties wants another story, preferably by Robert Louis Stevenson. Why can’t the storyteller read all of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? It’s not so long, is it? Come now, young woman, nobody’s asking you to read War and Peace. If you don’t have a copy of the Stevenson classic, why don’t you just tell it to us? A person of your age has lots of energy. And you’ve only just got here. After Stevenson, perhaps you’d like to sing us something by Anne Murray. We can all enjoy that after Mr. Jones over there quits snoring. My God, he sounds like the bomber he flew over Berlin in ‘44. Well, what about Stevenson? Shut up, Jones! The challenge is obvious, and the risk of flak should be taken seriously. Storytimes for seniors can be lively all year, and not just at Christmas. In December, however, seniors’ demands on a librarian’s generosity can be even heavier.

38.4  Perfect for table or tree With children and grandchildren elsewhere, seniors can participate in crafts programs that allow them to make something useful. Perhaps they’ve worked all their lives and are eminently practical and want to make a contribution to family festivities. The kinds of crafts that seniors prefer include Christmas and New Year cards, small wreaths with stick-on attachments for ease of placement, table decorations, and ornaments for Christmas trees. Materials needed for such items are simple and inexpensive: construction paper and scrapbooking tools, colorful wrapping paper, twist-ties, sprigs of holly with berries, multicolored ribbons, Styrofoam sheets to serve as foundations for flat-surface decorations, and any small ornaments, tinsel, and faux frost. Dollar stores

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can provide large quantities of these items. There is no need to strain the programming budget in a stationery outlet. Seniors might need more time to work on their wreaths, or even a single Christmas card for a grandniece in Saskatoon. For scheduling purposes, a Crafts Drop-In program over a full day is usually most convenient for library personnel and patrons. To set the proper tone in any library, music is essential. Seniors like certain kinds of recorded music, including traditional Christmas carols sung by well-known choirs, and renditions of popular seasonal songs performed by Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. Some libraries are fortunate to have small groups of musicians and singers on staff, and they can perform for seniors and other patrons if space permits. Remember, however, that such performances should take place indoors. Winter can come early on the Prairies, and neither staff members nor seniors like standing outside the front entrance in the cold, no matter how cheerful the tunes.

38.5  Limited seating In some communities, church and secular choirs are prepared to offer brief concerts to library audiences, especially if such audiences include seniors. Again, finding enough space to accommodate choir and audience can pose a serious problem. The practical approach is to invite a smaller number of choristers—a few sopranos and altos, plus a pair of tenors and a bass for seasoning—and announce beforehand that seating will be limited. Above all in their Christmas programs for seniors, librarians need to be patient and understanding. These qualities comprehend forgiveness, which is essential when one is pressured to read entire novellas over the rumble of loud snoring, or scolded for not having enough copies of a Christmas classic, or yelled at because there aren’t enough berries on the holly intended for a table ornament. Becky, the Singing Librarian, exemplifies forgiveness when she remembers the professor who broke her heart. “He was probably correct about my lack of talent,” she says. “But more important, he made me channel my energies in a different direction. I know that I’m doing something good when I play old tunes to a group of seniors who really appreciate them. I forgive that professor because he did the right thing. And one day I might see him in my audience. He might have a different opinion of my playing, but by then it won’t really matter, and neither of us will care. Perhaps he’ll hum along.” (2009)

It’s never too late to Tolstoy: adventures of a seniors’ reading club 

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Hamlet was a lousy lover. Just ask Ophelia. “He wouldn’t shut up,” she says. “He drove me crazy. He was all talk. No wonder I drowned myself.” What? Who are these people? Hamlet, whose real name is Frank, sets the scene. “We’re members of a reading club in Vancouver,” he says. “The club meets weekly in the seniors’ residence where we live. Usually we discuss books, but lately we’ve been doing play readings. Our last play was Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and to put the record straight, as the Prince of Denmark I had my hands full. Things were rotten. Ophelia simply got in the way.” “That’s downright mean,” says Martha, a retired teacher who played Ophelia. “You used and abused me. And just look what you did to Barry.” Martha refers to the scene in which Hamlet unsheathes his sword and stabs an eavesdropper behind a curtain. The eavesdropper is Polonius, in this case played by a 90-year-old former lawyer named Barry. In the heat of the action, Frank pretended to stab Barry with his cane. While he survived, Barry suffered a bruised rib. “We’ve asked our librarian to provide a less dangerous play,” says Martha. Sarah, a freelance librarian who specializes in outreach services to seniors, is happy to oblige. “Performance readings of plays are very popular with seniors,” she says, “but there’s a long list of playwrights that one should avoid. Some seniors’ groups can manage Shakespeare, but it’s better to let them enjoy the great tragedies and comedies on DVDs from the local library. Fact is, Shakespeare is simply too demanding for many older people to perform, even in a seated reading. His plays have so much going on. So it’s best to let Sir Laurence Olivier and other great actors provide the drama.”

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39.1  Blithe spirits When seniors want something to perform, Sarah can provide good plays by Terence Rattigan, Noel Coward, and Neil Simon. These playwrights are amusing, intelligent, and not too heavy; and they don’t require many props or much physical action. Group members can sit around a large table and read a Rattigan play in a couple of hours or so, all the while entertaining nonperforming listeners. “I started as a listener, but after listening to a Coward play I had to get more involved,” says Martha. She began her acting career at the age of 87 in the role of Ophelia, and despite Hamlet’s loquacity, she is determined to play other leading roles. But first there is the ongoing question regarding fiction. Sarah explains: “This residence’s reading group held its first meeting several years ago. I was invited to lead a discussion concerning a couple of recent and popular novels by Joanna Trollope and Margaret Drabble. Midway through my introductory remarks, a retired locomotive engineer named Len broke in and said that we shouldn’t waste our time on a pair of what he called ‘mediocre women,’ and that we should focus on great works by writers such as Tolstoy and Hemingway. Naturally there were howls of outrage and accusations of sexism.” Len is unapologetic. He insists that there is little to say about Trollope and Drabble, and that “old codgers” should spend what time they have left in discussing the great authors. “I’m not sexist,” he says. “I’d certainly welcome a discussion concerning any of Jane Austen’s novels. They have more artistry and depth than anything published these days. Really, we waste far too much of our precious time on trash. For lack of anything else to do, seniors watch a lot of TV. They spend hours listening to radio talk shows. For reading material, they choose ghostwritten celebrity autobiographies and cheesy thrillers. Give me Austen any day, but throw in Tolstoy and Hemingway, and others at their level of achievement.”

39.2  What it takes Sarah’s demeanor with reading club members is calm and forbearing. She avoids interrupting them and pays attention to what they say. She nods as they make their points. If they repeat themselves—often several times in a single conversation—she does not stop them. She even notes their comments and observations in her “club log,” a thick three-ring binder. To confirm in members’ minds that she listens to them, she begins each meeting with a brief summary of what she has heard lately about who likes a particular author and why, who wants to know more about a particular subject, and which titles—old and new—people have mentioned to her as potential topics for discussion. “We talk about all sorts of different authors,” says Sarah. “Despite what Len might say, we’ve covered a variety of classics, including novels by Fielding and Dickens, and the first half of Don Quixote. I think it’s necessary, however, not to focus solely on

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the great works. There’s definitely a place for Joanna Trollope and Margaret Drabble, who aren’t up there with Tolstoy but who write pleasing and intelligent books that can be enjoyed without too much effort.” A consummate diplomat, Sarah does not mention the fact that Len likes to cause controversy and often says things just to annoy fellow club members. Ironically, months after the reading club’s first contentious meeting, he discovered that he loved Drabble’s The Radiant Way and insisted on lecturing the residence’s nursing staff, janitors and receptionists on the virtues of the novel. When the residence manager said that he might not have time to read it, Len called him a nincompoop. “When you work with seniors, occasionally you must deal with remarks that are politically incorrect,” says Sarah. “Seniors can lose their inhibitions and blurt out whatever pops into their heads. Sometimes they’re charming; sometimes they say things that are entirely inappropriate. Our reading group inspires all sorts of responses to literature. I’ve learned to be patient and to avoid overreacting to outrageous statements. Sometimes I have to take a group member aside and explain that his or her remarks are disrespectful or unkind. I use those words because they seem to have the best effect on older people. In most cases, the disrespectful or unkind person apologizes immediately.” In the end, Len apologized to the residence manager and gave him a chocolate bar and a tattered copy of War and Peace. The residence manager said that he would enjoy both.

39.3  Convoy formation Back to Martha, whose horizons broaden with every club meeting. While she aspires to further dramatic roles, she wants to read and discuss every title that Sarah recommends. Lately she has read children’s classics, North American history, poetry by Robert Graves and Longfellow, and Bertrand Russell’s Unpopular Essays. She borrows these items from her local public library branch, which is not far from the residence. “We put together what we call a club convoy,” she says. “A dozen of us walk the two or three blocks to the library with our canes and walkers. Sarah and one of the residence’s caregivers escort us. Sometimes we sing on the way, but we always stop singing when we reach the library. The branch librarian would not approve of Frank’s rendition of ‘Goodnight, Irene.’ Neither do I, since he gets the words wrong and can’t carry a tune. Don’t tell him I said so.” Ed, the branch librarian, is delighted to see the convoy and likes helping them select books and other items. He is especially fond of Martha, who has become a voracious reader. He shows her recent acquisitions and recommends titles that might appeal to her. “I can practice real librarianship with seniors,” says Ed. “Much of my job is pointing to the washroom or showing patrons where the Harry Potter volumes are shelved. With somebody like Martha, however, I can be a reader’s advisor in the best sense. She has tremendous curiosity and wants to try everything.”

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39.4  Bathtub risk Ed’s only concern about elderly borrowers is that they might have difficulty managing what they borrow. Sometimes they return items months late and panic when they learn how much they owe the library in fines. Occasionally they misplace items or spill food on them. They drop hardcovers and damage the bindings; they drop paperbacks in the bath. On several occasions, a club member has borrowed a book, read it, and then passed it on to friends or family members. When circulation staffers ask the elderly borrower where the book might be, he or she cannot remember, and sometimes swears that he or she never borrowed it in the first place. “That’s where I come in,” says Sarah. “I can ask residence caregivers to check the borrower’s room to see if the book is under the bed or buried under a pile of newspapers. I can check with family members to see if their mum or dad has given them a library book. If so, family members can either return the book to the library or leave it at the residence reception desk for me. And frequently the fine is cancelled. That might not be the library’s official policy, but it’s an unofficial perk for club members. I’d say that the establishment of reading clubs in seniors’ residences and community centres can be a good way to reduce losses from public library collections.” Enthusiasm for the reading club has spread from its members to their families and the residence’s owners and managers. Put simply, people want more. The residence manager has asked Sarah to expand her program, which in future will include what she calls “the History Chapter,” a reading group that focuses on works of history, travel, and biography. She is also considering the “Team Tie-in,” a group that reads a particular book and then sees its film adaptation. She believes that Tie-in members will hold lively discussions about Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and try to agree on the strengths of different versions. Sarah trusts that these smaller groups will be successful, as long as Len behaves himself.

39.5  Biblical visuals For those interested in theology and the Bible, Sarah has invited a local minister to hold monthly Bible study sessions. “What I like about the minister’s approach is that he will show the videos and still photography that he has taken during his trips to the Middle East,” says Sarah. “It turns out that he’s a dedicated amateur photographer, and quite a good one. He’ll accompany his Bible study with photos of places mentioned in different biblical books. I think that this could appeal to a wide audience. Apparently he has great shots of the churches and archaeological sites in and around Jerusalem.” Sarah admits that some reading group themes might not be successful. Frank and Len have asked her to arrange a philosophy study group that will hold discussions on the works of Plato, Descartes, and Hume. While Sarah holds these thinkers in great esteem, she does not believe that a group dedicated to discussing their works would survive for long at the residence. At least not without somebody with training in philosophy to lead the group, to provide background information on different works and to answer questions as they arise during discussions.

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“Perhaps I can ask a philosophy instructor from a local college or university to offer a three-part series on great philosophers,” says Sarah. “A graduate student could probably do the job, especially if he or she has lecturing experience. Occasionally we ask music teachers and their students to perform for us, and they usually do in order to get the experience in performance. Maybe a doctoral student writing a dissertation on Plato could join us for a few hours to discuss Socrates and the Dialogues. I don’t want to rule out the idea altogether.” As well as patience and a good sense of humor, any librarian who provides services to seniors must be able to adapt quickly to different kinds of demands and situations. Flexibility is essential, especially if one is managing a seniors’ reading group. One minute, group members are arguing about a popular novelist; the next, they want coffee, or a washroom break or a discussion of Plato. In fact, seniors are unpredictable and full of surprises. Just ask Polonius, who didn’t see it coming. (2013)

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Section E Library Technicians

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What use is a library technician? Why would you hire one? If you believe the current scuttlebutt on technicians and their training, you might think that they have little to offer. “These library techs are not librarians,” writes the editor of a public library newsletter. “They don’t have our professional mindset, and cannot complete tasks demanding qualities of leadership.” Others are even less charitable. “Not holding a proper Master’s degree in library science, a library technician is simply not fit to assume any form of management responsibility in a library,” says the author of a letter to a library chat room. “The only place for a library technician is under the strict supervision of a professional librarian. We can’t let a pack of shelvers dilute our traditional standards,” says a reference librarian in Vancouver. Despite such dour opinions, library technicians continue to find jobs. While public and academic libraries rarely allow them to fill management positions, technicians have been in charge of special and school libraries for years. They run audiovisual departments, records centers, bookstores, and off-site data vaults. They edit corporate newsletters, design brochures and web pages, manage databases, and work as project consultants at job sites worldwide. Their responsibilities are growing. Accordingly, the salaries and benefits of some technicians rival those of many librarians. Obviously, technicians are increasingly valuable to a wide range of employers. But why? The answer lies in a technician’s training, which has changed significantly over the past four decades. Two-year college programs attract a kind of student very different from the sort that registered for Library Technician Diploma courses in the 1960s and 70s. Forty years ago, the majority of student technicians were in their late teens and early twenties, having applied for admission to their programs shortly after highschool graduation. They dressed conservatively and revered their instructors, most of whom were former school and public librarians. While library schools of that era had a reputation for dull drudgery and heavy workloads, in some ways library technician programs were even more demanding and much less intellectually rewarding. Tech students were allowed to ask how to perform various tasks, but avoided asking why such tasks were important or necessary. Certain professional matters were the exclusive territory of librarians, whom many technicians thought of as paragons. These days, however, an increasing number of technicians are in their thirties and forties. Many have families, mortgages, and degrees. Some have extensive experience in libraries, and it is not unusual for a student to have a more practical and up-to-date knowledge of cataloguing, database management, and the Internet than his instructors. Mature students demand (and deserve) more respect and do not hesitate to ask Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00040-2 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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difficult questions about the purpose of library traditions and procedures. One result of a higher average age among tech students is their less reverential attitude toward librarians, who may not have fallen into disrepute, but whose pedestals are somewhat lower than before. Curricula have changed with the advent of new technology but also in response to a more experienced student group. Standard courses in cataloguing, classification, reference, and automation have undergone substantial revision, with a greater emphasis on different approaches to a single problem, and less insistence on an ultimate answer to every question. For example, during a class an instructor may describe a particular library, and then ask for comments regarding its budgetary priorities. As in real life and real libraries, a lively and sometimes heated discussion ensues. Student A suggests more funding for automated systems; student B demands more staff on the reference desk and a new series of children’s programs. The instructor breaks in to ask about budget allocations for branch maintenance, but she is cut off by student C, who reminds her that repairs and janitorial service should be the responsibility of City Hall. Then student D asks about donations and bequests. The blackboard fills with scribble and diagrams and begins to resemble a football coach’s game plan. In such a classroom, the instructor can learn as much as the students. New courses deal with the Internet, records management, and information technology. That hoary offering once called “Non-Book Materials,” which included the study of opaque projectors and bulletin boards, has become “Multimedia,” which comprises everything from website design to videopoetry. Continuing Education courses for technicians cover conservation, services to minorities, archives, and privacy legislation. Yet despite the quickly evolving curricula, student technicians want more. Course evaluations often contain requests for more advanced coverage of broader topics. One Children’s Services course is not enough, according to a recent graduating class of students in Vancouver. There should be courses in Young Adult Services Storytelling, Puppetry, and Children’s Multimedia. These ideas for new courses are reasonable, but unfortunately outside the limits of most program budgets. Employers can be equally ambitious in their recommendations for coverage of new topics. They have always expected technicians to acquire basic skills in typing (or keyboarding), equipment maintenance, and cataloguing, and they have continually emphasized the importance of good oral and written communications. Now, however, they ask for tech program graduates trained in thesaurus building, intranet management, newsletter editing, and document security. Never before has there been a stronger demand for high-quality writing skills. “The applicant will be expected to write clear and concise correspondence, bulletins, and manuals,” states one recent job announcement posted several months ago. “Samples of writing should be submitted with resumes, and experience in corporate communications [is] mandatory.” The successful applicant works in an engineering library, where she performs the usual library functions as well as grinding out a newsletter on the uses of concrete in residential construction. In light of recent legislation concerning freedom of information, electronic documentation, and privacy, employers are especially interested in technicians with training in records management. Throughout the public and private sectors, there is a growing recognition of the need for better-organized records in all media.

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Accordingly, job announcements and descriptions frequently mention the desirability of filing and forms analysis skills, a knowledge of electronic records management, and training in basic conservation techniques. During job interviews, students might be asked about data backup procedures, microfilm conversion, and confidential destruction of sensitive records. It is possible that records management could become an integral part of a technician’s education within a decade. Some employers already consider it an essential requirement for any job applicant. For the convenience of today’s tech students, programs offer expanded schedules that include night and online courses, part-time studies, and a greater variety of summer courses. Admission to many courses is not restricted to Library Technician Diploma candidates, and courses in Library History, the Internet, and Children’s Services are popular with students who wish to enhance their skills, increase their general knowledge, or simply satisfy their curiosity. Students currently employed are content to complete their diplomas over several years, as they are unwilling to reduce or compromise their incomes. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that online courses are particularly attractive to the parents of young children, who appreciate any opportunity to avoid babysitting costs. Also available in a number of programs is a prior learning (or flexible) assessment option that allows students to challenge a course and take another that they consider interesting or useful. For example, a student has worked as a cataloguer in a medical library for 15 years. She does not need an introductory cataloguing course. She can apply for prior learning assessment and prove that he has a good grasp of AACR2 and RDA. (In some cases, he might know more about them than the instructor.) On approval, she can spend her time and tuition fees on a course that she will find more useful. With so many mature students entering technician programs, prior learning assessment has become a frequently exercised option. It also demonstrates the broad experience of today’s students, which was illustrated last year by a woman who applied for an assessment so that she could skip a cataloguing course. The instructor in charge of assessments asked her if she was familiar with AACR2. “Quite honestly,” she replied, “I’ve been cataloguing for so long that I’m familiar with papyrus and clay tablets. I want to learn something new and up-to-date.” She signed up for a Children’s Services course, during which she discovered her talent for storytelling—much to the delight of her grandchildren. Practicums remain one of the best ways to give students further experience and to provide them with an idea of potential employers’ requirements. Not all practicums are successful, as students’ and practicum hosts’ expectations can be unrealistic. Occasionally students complain that their practicums consist of nothing more than tedious processing tasks (e.g., sticking library labels on items for circulation) that do not conduce to enhanced learning or skills development. The fact is, however, that all trades and professions have their dull day-to-day chores. Medical interns discover that being a physician means treating far more warts and colds than life-threatening tumors; articling lawyers learn that simple wills and conveyancing are as common as a celebrity murder defense is rare. Along with everyone else in the work force, technicians must accept their share of boredom. If a practicum teaches nothing else, it is still a useful exercise.

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Solid, job-oriented training leads to decent work and wages. Those librarians who frown on the success of technicians must realize that, like everything else, the status of groups within the information sector will change over time, and that in many cases such change is to the advantage of all. Lately there is evidence that librarians are taking technicians and their training more seriously. It is not unusual to find holders of MLIS degrees taking courses in library technician programs, especially those that offer hands-on training in information management. Is this a step down for a library school graduate? Not if she learns something that gives her an advantage in a quickly changing job market. After all, her prospective employers realize that tech training produces a lot more than a pack of shelvers. (2000)

File under tango: lifelong learning for library technicians  

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Every workday morning, Lisa turns on her fans with a song. Sometimes she sings a few bars of opera, sometimes an ABBA hit. At the sound of her voice, the air-­conditioning system in her Californian corporate library switches on. Aside from machines that pump cool air into the stacks and reference areas, there are large fans everywhere. Some point toward large work areas; others are dedicated to a server or photocopier that might overheat. Lisa’s voice activates the entire system. At the end of the day she turns it off by whispering a confidential code into her cell phone, which sends a command to the system. Instantly it shuts down. The fans stop moving and the air-­ conditioning falls silent.

41.1  Love and technology Voice activation (VA) technology isn’t new. What some people might find astonishing is that Lisa, a library technician in her late fifties, developed and installed her library’s VA system herself. She has no formal training in engineering and confesses that she barely passed her high-school science courses. Having graduated in the early 1980s from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s library technician program, she worked in Toronto for law firms, a hospital, and a medical laboratory. The laboratory’s systems analyst introduced her to VA technology. “The systems guy and I used to talk about voice tech during lunch hours and breaks,” says Lisa. “He was fanatical about it. I got really interested in the practical applications, so I started reading articles about voice activated systems in different workplaces. I also took singing lessons because I love music. Everything came together when I moved to California, and now my library has better environmental controls than any other part of the company.” Lisa’s boss was so impressed with her technical savvy that he married her. “He used to come to the library to cool down and relax,” she says. “At some point he told me that I had strong problem-solving skills, and that I should apply them in our manufacturing plant. But I refused to leave the library. Our little joke is that he married me so that he could use my brain to solve the problems that arise on the shop floor and in the mechanical department. And it’s true that we talk about technical matters all the time. He knows that I like applying what I learn to practical problems, and that learning to me is like breathing.”

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41.2  Cerebral workout People like Lisa don’t stop acquiring new knowledge and skills after they complete their library technician diplomas. Their reasons vary for becoming lifelong learners. Often they’re naturally curious, with a love of delving into different subjects. Some say that they need to exercise their brains. “I’m studying Oracle because I believe that challenging material stimulates the mind and wards off problems such as dementia and depression,” says Anne, a graduate of Langara College’s Library and Information Technician Program in Vancouver. “I find courses in database administration exhausting, but they’re a wonderful break from cataloguing. I come away from the training sessions feeling as if I’ve strengthened my grey matter. If I’m wrong, at least I’ll have picked up useful skills that I could apply in jobs outside the library, if necessary.” Jim, a recent graduate of Fraser Valley University College in Abbotsford, British Columbia, says that he takes courses in IT and Internet research to stay current. He complains that it is easy to get behind the times. “I enjoyed my library tech program,” he says. “But to be honest, it offered only a brief introduction to many areas. There was very little time to cover certain topics. I’ve spent the past couple of years increasing my knowledge of the Internet. What I find interesting—and nervous-making—is that I could spend all of my time on it, and it’s expanding at a fantastic rate. There are other areas that I should be looking into as well, but I have to do things like eat and sleep.”

41.3  Do you copy? Career enhancement motivates library technicians to continue their studies after graduation. Some say that taking additional courses can impress current and prospective employers. Others worry that a lack of such courses might make them appear complacent and out-of-date. “I think that economic downturns are inevitable,” says Linda, who studied at two Quebec colleges before earning her diploma in 1995 from Toronto’s Seneca College. “If the competition for jobs gets tough during a recession, applicants will need more than a course in DOS to look good. If you’ve done nothing more than finished your diploma, in some libraries you’ll look inexperienced at best, and unenthusiastic or unmotivated at worst, and you won’t get the job. That’s why I’ve taken continuing education courses in project management and IT security.” In Linda’s experience, there is one course that grabs the attention of employers more than any other. “I’ve got two good jobs on the basis of my training in photocopier maintenance. Once an employer finds out that you can get the library’s photocopier up and running, you have an automatic advantage over other job candidates. You know how frustrating it is when the copier crashes? You might wait a couple of days for repairs, unless the library technician just happens to know how to turn the right switch and adjust

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the paper feeder, and you’re back in business without having to call in some vendor. Most photocopier breakdowns are easy to fix, but most library employees don’t know how to do much more than load paper and push buttons on the control panel. I can catalogue, answer reference questions, run a circulation counter, and repair damaged bindings. But my job security is guaranteed by jammed and overheated photocopiers.”

41.4  First and last tango in tech services Practicality is admirable, but many library technicians pursue studies ostensibly unrelated to their jobs. For example, Arlene has taken dance lessons for almost two decades. She is possibly the only library technician in North American history to have won an award in a tango competition. “I’ve taken jazz dance and tap, but I swear by Arthur Murray. Ballroom dancing is great exercise. You meet all sorts of people. The dance contests are exciting, especially when you win a trophy. But the main advantage to me is the improvement of my posture.” Arlene started to suffer from pain in her neck and lower back as a student at Winnipeg’s Red River Community College in the late 1970s. Physiotherapy and painkillers offered temporary relief, but it wasn’t until her dance instructor insisted that she straighten up that she felt better. “My instructor used to drive his knuckle into the small of my back to get me to stand straight. He’d growl at me if I let my head droop. The workout he gave me was tougher than many aerobic programs, and made me a lot stronger. Many of the people that I work with in my public library have chronic bad backs. I’d be as miserable as they are, if it weren’t for the tango and the foxtrot. You may laugh, but ballroom dancing has vastly improved my conditioning. I haven’t taken a sick day in years, so my employer has derived benefits from Arthur Murray too.” While dancing can ease back pain, Lynne’s interior design expertise soothes sore eyes. Having graduated from Nova Scotia Community College in the mid-1990s, she worked in the United States, Britain, and Japan before settling with her family in Vancouver. She developed an interest in interior design and started taking courses. At present she works in a law firm and gets involved in design projects on the side. “The recent housing boom has offered me lots of opportunities to work in design,” she says. “I don’t have a professional designation, at least not yet. But there’s still enormous amounts of work to be done, with construction moving ahead in most neighbourhoods of Vancouver.”

41.5  Reference greens and browns Eventually Lynne would like to work on library interiors with architects and other library planners. She believes that she can offer a practical perspective on what a library interior should contain, particularly its color coordination.

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“Drab is the only way to describe many library interiors,” she says. “There are branch libraries that have colour schemes more appropriate to hospital wards, and carpeting that an undertaker would find depressing. So many librarians figure that drabness is the only option, and it’s not.” Lynne does not espouse psychedelic ornamentation or wild blasts of color for the reference area. Rather, she recommends natural shades—green, brown, yellow, and subdued red—for many interiors, along with natural lighting whenever possible. She unashamedly promotes the most comfortable furniture possible, including armchairs with soft cushions. “Functional design has its place in libraries, but it needn’t be taken to extremes,” she says. “Limited budgets don’t have to lead to interiors that have the ambience of a penitentiary. I think that we’re due for a new trend in library interior design, one that emphasizes comfort and fun as well as utility. I want to be a part of that trend.” Library technicians have no distinct stereotype and appear to be what they are only in libraries and related organizations. You can’t look at a crowd scene in a movie and identify the library technicians moonlighting as extras. But they could be there, having taken acting lessons and hired agents. Or they could tango past your window when you least expect, demonstrating perfect posture all the way. They could sing in your local opera chorus, having taken voice lessons. Or they could sing a little ABBA, and help you to chill out. It’s all a matter of lifelong learning. (2008)

Section F For the Record

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Paper crazy no more: records management for library chaos junkies

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Are you a chaos junkie? Are you addicted to the confusion, inefficiency, and waste arising from the lack of good records management (RM) in your library? If so, countless librarians share your shame. Like you, they feel guilty about their cravings for disorganized paper and mislabeled file folders. They refuse to acknowledge the depth of their dependence, even when their therapists confront them with the truth. Early in their careers, however, these unhappy individuals dedicated themselves to the highest standards of information control. They built outstanding collections and served their users with pride. But now they skulk in storage rooms, inhaling the dust from ancient document boxes. Or they loiter in Tech Services areas, their eyes bloodshot from reading the fine print on obsolete forms. Or they sit in the director’s office and fantasize about data loss. Are you one of these librarians? Take courage. There’s hope for you and your codependent colleagues. By dealing with your addiction to sloppy recordkeeping, you can restore your self-esteem and rescue your workplace from disorder. What follows is an eight-step program for chaos junkies. If you adhere to this program, you will manage your library’s records in a clean and sober fashion that will impress the most demanding addiction counselor.

42.1  Step one: getting past denial Face it: the records system in your library is a mess. Your administrators’ offices are stuffed with three-ring binders, which are stuffed with...what? Budget figures from 1983, complete with memos from the former director concerning cutbacks in…what? See Appendix four. Where is Appendix four? In another three-ring binder labeled “Misc” and hidden in the office of the ex-husband of the children’s librarian. The ex-husband is a loans officer at a bank in Winnipeg. Why does he have appendix four? Because he too is addicted to bad RM and needs as much useless bumf around him as he can find. In the chaos junkie’s argot, he’s “cramming,” or filling his workplace with piles of unnecessary paper. He picked up the habit from his ex-wife, who crams her office with unproduceable puppet-show scripts, lists of illustrated books for Icelandic-speaking preteens, publishers’ newsletters containing reviews of the Newberry winner for 1963, Dewey-era organization charts, and hard copies of every email that she ever received. More bad news. The children’s librarian has organized her records more effectively than most of her colleagues. Canadian law prohibits (or should prohibit) the Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00042-6 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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detailed description of her director’s office, which contains even more unnecessary paper. From the top down, this library is addicted to chaos. Not surprisingly, electronic information systems have exacerbated the problem. Hard drives are crammed with e-trash, and librarians strive to label their computer files as ambiguously as possible. Dealing with chaos requires gumption and honesty. Of course you and your colleagues are comfortable with your current ways of handling—or not handling— records. It’s hog heaven. But you know that it’s unproductive, and that you must change. Go and look in the mirror: it’s behind that heap of three-ring binders labeled “New” and “Old” and “Ugh.” Look at yourself. Don’t you deserve more in life? Isn’t it time to reclaim your integrity as an information professional? The decision is yours. Once you’ve made it, the real struggle begins.

42.2  Step two: assigning records management responsibilities Who will be your library’s records manager? The qualifications are few and simple. First, the candidate must have the personal skills to deal with a group of high-functioning chaos junkies adept at procrastination. Second, he or she must have the will power of a tank commander and the patience of a saint. Third, he or she must be familiar with the alphabet. Finally, he or she must either have RM training or be prepared to read sundry textbooks and manuals on the topic. Should your records manager be a librarian, a library technician, or a clerical assistant? In fact, the candidate’s position in your hierarchy is irrelevant. As long as he or she has the right technical knowledge, the position is in competent hands. Remember that your records manager will be obliged to sort out your current chaos addiction problems before implementing an RM maintenance program. The process of sorting out the initial mess might take months; the maintenance program will be permanent. Be prepared to appoint your records manager to a career-length job.

42.3  Step three: compiling the records inventory The records manager’s first task will be to compile an inventory of all library records, in all media. Usually this is the most time-consuming step, without which your library will not have effective RM. Referring to an up-to-date organization chart, the records manager will list the records in every department and significant work unit. Usually records exist in series, i.e., groups of documents related to the same topic, purpose, or function. For example, your director’s office contains (or should contain) full sets of the Library Board Minutes, Budget Committee Minutes, and Executive Committee Minutes. The human resources manager’s office should keep an up-to-date series of performance review files. The accounting department will be in charge of all payroll records. These are active, vital series. Your records manager will classify other series as semiactive or inactive, archival, and nonvital.

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During the inventorying process, the records manager will note the various media in which various series exist: paper, microfilm, electronic. The inventory will include notes regarding the size of particular series (“6 m of Board Minutes”) and the dates (“Library Automation Project Reports, from the reign of Augustus Caesar to the present”). So far the inventorying process sounds straightforward, but in the world of the chaos junkie, nothing can be simple. The records manager will quickly discover that vital records are missing, or in poor condition, or incomplete. Labels will be incorrect; some files will be undateable. Alphabetically ordered files will be out of their proper order. Systems documentation will appear in stairwells, cafeterias, and boxes marked “Christmas Ornaments for Branches.” Increasingly threatened by new RM procedures, chaos junkies will act in character. Fearing the records manager’s reputation for shredding, tossing out, or otherwise ridding the library of useless paper and data, the junkies will hide those items that he or she cannot bear to be without. Precious garbage finds its way into crawl spaces and lockers and attic cubbyholes. Worthless data are transferred onto secret, unlabeled floppies. If the records manager asks why such stuff is retained, the answer is curt and noncommittal. “Don’t worry about that. We may need it at some point.” When? The chaos junkie can’t say.

42.4  Step four: retention scheduling When the records inventory is complete, the records manager assigns each series or item a retention period, or length of time that the library will keep it. Some series are permanent. For example, board minutes should be retained in perpetuity. Older board minutes (e.g., over 10 years old) can be transferred to the library’s archives; the director can keep a more current set in her office. Other records to be held in perpetuity are building plans, files concerning significant donors, and any important contracts with vendors or other library systems. Some records must be retained for periods specified by legislation. Many accounting records must be available to the library’s auditor for up to seven years after they have been created. Fortunately most records have a shorter life cycle. Those correspondence files that you’ve hoarded for years could have been safely shredded ages ago; you needn’t have kept them for more than two years. Those newsletters from various retailers could have landed in the recycling bin shortly after you received them. And most of those promotional brochures and catalogues from systems vendors could have been trashed immediately. A comprehensive records retention schedule will allow your library to avoid buildups of nonessential records. Naturally, chaos junkies will attempt to wreck the schedule through devious ploys. For the purest rubbish, they will recommend retention periods that extend into the distant future. The more useless the material, the longer it must be kept to satisfy the junkie, who hints darkly at the horrible things that might happen to the library and the records manager if that material should be destroyed. If a retention

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period is not long enough for a chaos junkie—and 300 years is barely acceptable—he or she will simply ignore it. The chaos junkie’s ability to ignore a retention schedule or any other simple set of RM procedures is extraordinary. Constant vigilance is necessary to force the recovering chaos junkie from backsliding.

42.5  Step five: establishing confidentiality levels and organizing document destruction A review of the records inventory and retention schedules will indicate those records that can be discarded immediately. In the early days of an RM project, there will come to light a plethora of records that will inundate the dumpster. But efficient document destruction involves more than simple disposal. The confidentiality of sensitive records must be respected. Human resource files, vendor proposals, and documentation regarding controversial issues should not be made available for public access. Such records should be shredded as soon as they are no longer necessary. Since chaos junkies thrive on doubt and confusion, they will be overjoyed to discover any gray areas that exist in their library’s confidentiality policy and procedures. Is this file confidential? Maybe, maybe not. Better keep it, in case it’s important. But don’t label it. That would give away the secret. And file it in a place where nobody will find it...In every corner and cranny, useless paper accumulates. The records manager is wise to establish a confidentiality classification scheme that affords the right level of protection for all of the library’s records. The most sensitive materials can be considered “classified,” for the consideration of the board, director, and others at the board’s discretion. Less sensitive materials that can be distributed to library staff can be dubbed “confidential,” i.e., not for public access. “Private” materials relate to specific individuals, who must give their permission before any paper or data of a personal nature can be disseminated without restriction. “Public” materials require no special confidentiality measures and can be disseminated freely. The more sensitive the material, the more stringent the destruction process. Some institutions employ paper and media destruction firms to do the job and to make arrangements for any necessary recycling. Usually the records manager signs off any order for destruction and keeps a record of what has been destroyed and by whom.

42.6  Step six: preventing data loss Addiction involves heavy fantasizing and endless pipe dreams. In the back of every chaos junkie’s mind is the server crash that wipes out the electronic catalogue, or the glitch that causes borrowers’ records to vanish without hope of recovery. To the junkie, the thought of such disasters is both terrifying and wonderful. What a rush! No backup, complete chaos… and not even the old card catalogue or manual system in place to save the day.

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Backing up essential data is common sense. It is also inexpensive, simple, and easy to plan. Carried out regularly, it reduces the library’s exposure to most forms of data loss. If your library fails to back up its data, losses are almost certain to occur at some point. Every day in large North American library systems, substantial losses of data occur. No backups are available. Library operations are seriously disrupted, and the cost of replacing or reconstructing the lost data soars. The board demands an explanation. Library managers and staff deny any responsibility, and the chaos junkies exult. The sun also rises.

42.7  Step seven: developing the library archives Among a library’s permanent records, there are items that contain evidence for its unique history and corporate culture. These are archives, and worth careful conservation. Essentially antihistorical, the chaos junkie works against the establishment of the archives. In fact, the library’s archives are the only items that the junkie is eager to shred or dumpsterize. Building plans, photographs, newsletters, posters, and all other glorious librariana will quickly disappear if they fall into the junkie’s hands. The records manager should attempt to save the library’s archives through proper labeling and storage of archival files. Access to the archives should be limited so that further wear and tear can be avoided. The records manager should make sure that the archives are kept away as much as possible from heat, light, dust, sticky tape, staples, rusty paper clips, small children, and chaos junkies. The library’s archives can be used for marketing and promotional purposes. Those old photos and brochures are especially useful when users and politicians need to be reminded about the popularity of the library over the years. In fiscally challenging times, archival materials can be used to defend the library against demands for cutbacks. No matter what the junkie may say, the library needs its archives.

42.8  Step eight: sustaining the records management process RM must become standard operating procedure if it is to be sustained in any institution. Many RM programs have started well and survived for a few years after which they are forgotten, ignored, or otherwise discontinued. The records manager can ensure that RM becomes a permanent feature by effective internal promotion and orientation for all staff. It is essential to let all library managers and staff know about the RM project if it is to be a success. The library newsletter is a first-class vehicle for brief articles about various aspects of the project, and for handy RM tips. RM manuals should be clear, concise, and distributed to every work unit and branch of the library. The records manager should be available to answer any questions and to assist in the organization of records and the appraisal of archives.

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Ideally RM procedures will lose their novelty and become common practice throughout your library. The life cycle of your paper and data will be determined on the basis of actual need and use, and files that are no longer necessary will be safely destroyed. Confidentiality of sensitive records will be guaranteed. Vital data will be automatically backed up. Because RM programs require months for full implementation, the chaos junkie will not have to quit bad habits cold turkey. Soon, however, he or she must go straight and be paper crazy no more.

42.9  Sources: the author’s choice While there are many RM textbooks, the most useful for the purposes of a library records manager are as follows: • Couture, Carol, and Rousseau, Jean-Yves. The life of a document: a global approach to archives and records management. Translated by David Homel. Montreal. Vehicule Press. 1987. • Schwartz, Candy, and Hernon, Peter. Records management and the library: issues and practices. Norwood, NJ. Ablex Publishing Corporation. 1993.

(NB: While out-of-date in some ways, these works still contain helpful information presented in a readable style.) (1999)

CIA for beginners: records management training for library technicians

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Sprinting to her office to pick up the phone, your head librarian trips over a box of files. She sprains her ankle. The next day, she gives you the task of developing a new RM system for your library. “I want something tidy and cost-effective,” she says. “I want you to build in security procedures for all of our records, and figure out ways to store everything properly. I don’t want to see another file box abandoned in the hallway. I’ll be satisfied with nothing less than perfection.” What now? You’re a cataloguer, or a reference specialist, or an adult services coordinator. You know nothing about RM. Nor does it interest you. But your head librarian has spoken, and you’re obliged to deliver perfection. Fortunately, the library technician in your department has studied RM. He knows how to put together a system that works. He tells you that your library’s records system should comprise a records inventory, a retention schedule to indicate the length of time you should keep different files, an archives policy, and security procedures. He would also include guidelines for document retrieval, storage, disposal, and recycling. Over the next couple of months, he creates a system that not only controls your paper records but also identifies your most vital data, brings your library into compliance with current privacy legislation, and supports your disaster plan. Even your head librarian is impressed. Where did your library technician learn to manage records? These days, many technician training programs offer courses that cover the rudiments. At Langara College in Vancouver, for example, student technicians can take an RM course as an elective. Because many new jobs for technicians involve file room duties, the course is usually full. RM training at Langara begins with a brief history of writing and documents, from Sumerian clay tablets and ancient Egyptian papyrus to the digital correspondence on your laptop. Students quickly recognize the fragility of various recordkeeping materials and the vulnerability of record groups, particularly those that exist solely in the form of electrons. This historical overview emphasizes the need for techniques to protect records from risks of all kinds. The loss of records may be inevitable, but there are ways to postpone it, sometimes for millennia. During lectures that focus on the main concepts and terminology of RM, students understand that dealing with files is not librarianship. RM depends on a different way of thinking about information, one without strong controls such as AACRII and LCSH. Where are the rules? Students must be content with traditional methods, in-house practices, and standards recommended by bodies such as the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA). As one student remarked, librarianship relies Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00043-8 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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on an automatic transmission, whereas RM comes with a stick shift and clutch. As the course progresses, students must learn to drive with both. Case studies are useful to illustrate the practical aspects of inventorying records, the process of listing the documents of a particular person or organization. Where are the paper, the files, the ledgers? For an industrial bakery on the outskirts of Toronto, they’re stored in a cupboard in the administration office. Some of the older records are held in a neighboring warehouse. The accounting department keeps electronic files on three workstations; backup disks are hidden in the glove compartment of the assistant manager’s car. Meanwhile, in an abandoned flour silo at the rear of the plant, we discover a dozen boxes of antique recipes for pastry, fancy bread, and doughnuts. An inventory contains basic descriptions of every series, with notes on condition and location. Students note that the process of compiling an inventory is time-consuming and labor-intensive. They also realize that without a comprehensive inventory, they cannot manage an organization’s records effectively. How long should that bakery keep its accounting records? What about those recipes, and the pre-Y2K computer documentation? Students learn how to write records retention schedules, which indicate the life span of different files. There are government guidelines for keeping accounting records, loosely described as the seven-year rule. The computer documentation turns out to be numerous duplicates of an obsolete manual that can be sent to a recycler without delay. As for those recipes, what joy! Here’s one for a Christmas bread with currants and ginger that made Toronto households merry in the 1890s; another tells us how to make “healthy” tarts with thick cream and raspberry paste. These recipes may have historical value, but they might also interest the bakery’s marketing manager, who’s always looking for products that attract new customers. Students are interested to learn that archival materials can be more than “a bunch of old paper,” especially when that Christmas bread becomes wildly popular in the supermarkets of Ontario suburbs. Archival matters are often the most popular topics in the Langara RM curriculum. Time constraints limit the coverage of archives administration, but students can study problems in conservation, appraisal, and the determination of provenance and original order. Classroom discussions on archives invariably lead to worries about family photograph albums, scrapbooks, and Dad’s army paybook. Can they be rescued from moisture, fading, acid paper, and neglect? Such concerns lead to lectures on basic security techniques and methods of protecting sensitive information and privacy. One useful tool is the notion of CIA, or confidentiality, integrity, and availability. With CIA in mind, you can investigate the condition of any record group in any medium. For example, consider your library’s Human Resources files, which are stored in a file cabinet in your head librarian’s office. Are they kept confidential, or can anyone peruse them when the head librarian is away? Is their integrity secure? In other words, has someone tampered with those files or removed any? And are they all available to the right people, such as the head librarian and her deputy? In an age of anxiety over hackers, viruses, identity theft, and data loss, a CIA investigation enables records managers to determine the condition and security of a record group quickly and accurately. As employers become aware of new Federal and

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Provincial privacy legislation, they are relieved to find staff members who can conduct such investigations and steer organizations along the occasionally bumpy path to compliance with the legislation. But like much current privacy legislation, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is difficult to read, even for the most experienced and hard-bitten information specialist. Student technicians do not enjoy slogging their way through the Act’s convoluted prose and complain that various sections are inadequate for the purpose of safeguarding information resources in many organizations. Nevertheless they persevere, if only because the Langara course tests students’ knowledge of the Act and its implications with a quiz. Recently a student suggested that Langara award students with campaign ribbons for sitting the quiz; another has designed a T-shirt bearing the caption Privacy Quiz Survivor. At least Langara students keep their sense of humor. Other assignments include a brief report on a topic such as personal or family records. Students examine the different kinds of documents that they or their families accumulate over time, from birth certificates and baby photos to report cards and diplomas, employment records, and health files. Some students concentrate on the conservation of such materials; others will compensate for lost records by interviewing older family members and consulting genealogical resources in public archives and libraries. Following the report, an RM portfolio is due at the end of the course. Students collect and organize a body of information on topics such as “Security for Records Stored in Handheld Technology” and “Off-Site Storage and Management of Legal Files.” Included in portfolios are photocopied articles, website data, transcripts of interviews with experts in specific fields, brochures and product information, and a five-page essay in which the student introduces the topic, comments on its importance to records managers, and summarizes recent developments related to the topic. The course ends with a final examination: a mixture of multiple choice and short-answer questions and an essay on one of several major issues in RM. Over the past six years, examination results have been solid. Students have expressed satisfaction with the course in general, although some have recommended less discussion of privacy and more coverage of paper conservation, electronic records management (ERM), and archival arrangement and description. Time, however, is limited. Instructors and students can accomplish only so much in a term, and RM deserves and sometimes demands a prolonged and intense study. But Langara students learn enough to satisfy most head librarians and to protect them from errant boxes of files. (2004)

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Records management for office managers: a special librarian’s clip ‘N share

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Your office manager doesn’t know what to do about the mountains of paper that ­accumulate in every department. Whatever happened to the paperless office? Where’s the electronic wonderland? And why do auditors have so many teeth? Special librarians are free to share this article with their office managers, who need emotional ­support as well as basic, practical advice about RM. I feel their pain and offer solutions. You manage an office in the downtown core of a large North American city. Lately business has been good, and your employees have been working hard. Despite the constant media chatter about the electronic age, they’ve been using an increasing amount of paper. In fact, although everyone in your office uses email, various departments continue to use tonnes of paper each month: letterhead, forms, and envelopes, as well as thousands of Post-it notes and miscellaneous bits and scraps. While electronic resources are available for many of your operations, your employees still rely on hard copies of maps, drawings, plans, and illustrations. Whatever is digital seems to end up on paper. Even sound recordings turn into paper, as word-processed transcripts. Moreover, every day your office receives piles of hard copy mail from customers, associates, and suppliers. Much of it can be discarded or recycled, but an increasing amount should be filed for several years. One morning a letter arrives in your in-basket from your property manager, who tells you that you’ve run out of records storage space in your building’s basement. You phone an off-site storage vendor to inquire about renting additional space. To your surprise, you discover that your office is already a client. You’ve been storing a small mountain of records in the vendor’s warehouse for a decade. What are these records? Nobody knows, but at every monthend your Accounts Payable Department sends the vendor a check. The story so far: your RM is poor. Your office produces masses of records but fails to control them. Documents go missing. Huge files are duplicated unnecessarily. Useless paper is stored indefinitely at a high cost. And recently your company’s owners have noticed that your office is not as efficient as it used to be. Auditors circle outside your door like sharks. There are questions about your effectiveness as a manager, and your CEO wants to talk to you next week about “concerns regarding our corporate information security and paper flow.” Where do you turn? To your librarian. Of course you do. After all, she’s the one who knows all about information. She has a master’s degree in Library and Information Science, whatever that is. She handles lots of data and attends conferences in California where keynote speakers talk about a New Epoch in Access Excellence. She must have ways to deal with your paper problem. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00044-X Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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You’re wrong, but not completely. Your librarian’s specialty is reference service. When you call her into your office to beg for help, she tells you that librarianship and RM are different but associated fields. She admits that she has little RM experience. It’s time for a Valium. Your librarian promises not to leave you at the mercy of the auditors, who seem to be growing extra sets of teeth. She returns the following week with an RM agenda, which lays out a course of action that makes sense. Aren’t librarians wonderful? You knew it all along, and you won’t forget it when you review her salary, will you? No.

44.1  A list of what you have The first item on the agenda is a records inventory. The librarian has consulted a number of textbooks and talked with several records managers, and everyone agrees that your first step must be a list of all the paper that you keep. It needn’t be detailed; you don’t need a description of every piece of foolscap that your office has accumulated. Your inventory might include a list of document boxes, or a note about a certain number of linear meters of files. Some inventory compilers work at an even higher level, listing only the number of file cabinets and other large records containers in each department. And some develop multimedia inventories, which include lists of tapes and other magnetic media, portfolios of drawings and plans, photograph albums, and sound recordings. You might also start work on an electronic records inventory, which covers vital data files not only on your office network but also in any stand-alone systems. ERM sounds intimidating to many, but it relies on the same principles as paper management. Note that the compilation of your inventory is the most time-consuming and labor-intensive task. It can take weeks and sometimes months to complete an inventory. To be fair, however, it has taken you and your colleagues years to accumulate so much paper. If a comprehensive inventory takes a small fraction of that time span to compile, you shouldn’t complain. Without your inventory, you’ll have no idea of what you’re trying to control. With it, you’ll have a foundation for a solid RM program. That’s what your CEO will want to hear.

44.2  What you keep, what you shred Your inventory includes myriad kinds of files and forms and stuff. Most of the paper records that you create will be read only once, and some no one will ever bother to look at. The question is, how long must you store different records? The next item on your agenda is a records retention schedule, which indicates how long you should retain various records. Some files have legislated periods of retention. For example, auditors insist that you keep certain accounting files for seven years to satisfy the requirements of the tax department. You should keep other files indefinitely because they have a long-term operational use: building plans, advertising samples, product development files, and personnel records. But much of the paper in your office should be discarded in a year or

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less. Most of your old email cries out to be deleted. (Do you need Viagra prices from 2004? Or a request from a soi-disant Nigerian government official to reveal your bank account number for a deposit of six million imaginary dollars? Not likely.) As for those antique tapes and disks, those multiple copies of old reports, those correspondence files regarding staff picnics, all can be safely recycled, shredded, or otherwise destroyed. Your retention schedule can describe the appropriate way to store and conserve what you should retain. It should also outline the approved methods of disposing of what you no longer need.

44.3  Archival treasures Many offices maintain archives that contain materials that may be no longer operationally essential, but still interesting. Those photos from 1950 have no immediate use, but they can tell us something about your corporate culture and the history of your organization. Those old product specifications would make today’s designers laugh, but they made your company a leader in its sector: something that your colleagues and customers might like to learn about in future. Some organizations have expanded the role of their archives to include the preservation of records that must be retained for long periods. Thus we find corporate archivists converting valuable electronic data from floppy disks to microform to preserve vital data for extended periods. The data may have limited historical value, but if they must be retained for a long time, the archivist can find a way for them to survive.

44.4  Storage here, storage there Now that you’ve determined what you should keep and how long you should keep it, you should decide where you’re going to store it. Active records (i.e., those that you look at frequently) should be stored on your site if possible. Semiactive and inactive records can be stored off-site, in a location designed to hold them. Your librarian can recommend respectable off-site vendors, who run warehouses with good security features and environmental controls that retard the deterioration of paper and other media. You should also review the furniture and space in which you store records on-site. You might discover that inactive records occupy the most valuable space in your office, and that you can save money by moving those records off-site. Storage considerations remind us that much of RM depends on common sense, on making decisions that demand strong logic even more than a technical background.

44.5  Available expertise At some point, you might wish to hire an RM consultant to assist you in the development of various components of your RM program. You can bring in a consultant at the beginning or near the end of your program development project. Generally consultants

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like to be involved at the beginning, since an early start will increase their influence on the program and earn them more fees. Some organizations, however, rely on their in-house resources for as long as possible to save consulting dollars and to ensure that staff members take as much responsibility as possible for their records. And remember that your librarian—such a fine professional—is educable. She might agree to become your records manager and take the necessary courses at a local college or training institute. She might be willing to assume additional responsibilities at a higher wage. If so, you might be obliged to hire more staff for your library so that she has the support that she needs to avoid backlogs and other inconveniences. Treating your librarian with respect and big paychecks is nothing less than common sense. Remember that she saved you from the auditors, who never sleep, and can smell blood from miles away. (2005)

Section G Rare Books and Other Rubbish

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Gold in the garbage: making the most from the treasure in your trash

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A librarian walks into a bar and orders a drink. Times are tough; the drink is cheap scotch. But lining the walls are shelves crammed with books, a sight to cheer the librarian’s heart. He looks closely at a row of battered hardcovers. The bartender says that he found them at a local library sale, and that they provide excellent insulation in winter. The librarian sees old almanacs, bound volumes of National Geographic, an introduction to applied geophysics, and an item in a maroon cloth binding with black lettering. The librarian orders another scotch. Might he have a look at that maroon binding? Sure. Does the bartender realize what that binding contains? Well, sir, if the library doesn’t want it, it can’t be much. You like it, you can have it. Go ahead, take it with you. The library dumps that kind of junk all the time. Have some pretzels.

45.1  Nobody bought it Edward Arnold & Co. published E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India in 1924. Forster signed a few copies of the trade edition on the title page. One of those copies found its way to western Canada, where its owner donated it to a public library. The library already owned several bright copies of Passage in the Penguin edition, so that maroon binding ended up in the annual sale. Nobody bought it for a dollar. Eventually the bartender picked it up for nothing, just before the library’s janitor could toss it in the dumpster. A first trade edition of Passage, signed and in good condition, is worth over $6000. Do libraries dump that kind of junk all the time? No. But it’s safe to assume that occasionally they discard items for which book dealers and collectors would pay substantial amounts. Stories abound about gold in the library garbage, accounts of errant disposal that make scholars and special collection managers wince. Did you hear the one about the British public library that unwittingly used a Caxton as a doorstop? Or the college library in California that accidentally sold its Steinbeck collection to a recycler? How about the public branch in BC that put its signed special editions of Evelyn Waugh on the sale table? Those copies of Black Mischief and The Loved One sold for 25 cents each. The same items are available from reputable dealers for over $3000 per volume. To sell a rare book for a pittance is no violation of the Criminal Code; nor should librarians suffer censure for making honest mistakes. But the profession must recognize what has been lost in a system of library education that values “Studies in Leadership” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00045-1 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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and cyberspace navigation over bibliography and the history of books and publishing. These days, courses in textual criticism and rare book librarianship may sound quaint. Library school professors question the worth of such topics in the Information Age, a time when books in their traditional forms are often predicted to disappear. The fact is, however, that publishers still produce and distribute hardcopy books, and consumers still buy, read, and treasure them. At present, public and academic libraries that provide access only to electronic resources are as scarce as paperless offices and unicorns. Library schools would be prudent to offer more courses on bibliography and rare books. Otherwise, among various negative effects, more gold could flow into the discard bin, and bartenders might continue to serve important first editions along with bad booze and pretzels.

45.2  An expert eye What should librarians do to ensure that they can identify the valuable books that come their way? First, acknowledge that any library can be the owner or recipient of such items, which can arrive as gifts through the book return slot or in the mail, or in boxes left surreptitiously at the front entrance when your branch is closed. Ideally your library employs someone who is knowledgeable about books, or at least has a sense of what might be especially interesting or valuable, even if it is not an appropriate addition to your shelves. This in-house appraiser can run her eye along a set of spines and pick out that special Forster or Waugh. She can spot an early Margaret Laurence by glancing at the dust jacket and perhaps recognize Robin Blaser’s scribbled marginalia in a volume of poems by Robert Duncan. If she doesn’t know exactly what she’s examining, she knows somebody who does: a rare books librarian with whom she corresponds by email, a local dealer, an archivist who can verify the signatures of Canadian poets, a professor of English who has edited the manuscripts of various British novelists. Your appraiser will tell you that a book doesn’t have to be scarce to be interesting to a collector. Those who consider an author to be important and who collect his works diligently will acquire all of his editions, from the expensive first printing to the humble paperback reprint that appeared on the shelves of Indigo last month. Theoretically every book—no matter how common or tattered—has its potential collector or reader, but it’s not your library’s responsibility to hunt down the perfect owner for every item that you don’t need and want to dispose of. Allow collectors and desultory browsers the pleasure of finding tiny treasures of lesser monetary value on your sale table, but let your appraiser identify the books to sell for good money at auction or through a dealer’s catalogue. In the absence of an appraiser, you can investigate the prices of books through dealers’ websites, and particularly through abebooks.com, which offers current information on the stocks of more than 12,000 dealers worldwide. Through this site you can learn the prices of millions of different titles, editions, and printings. Librarians have depended on abebooks.com to locate out-of-print items that are difficult to find; they can also use it to discover dealers’ prices for almost any item.

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You needn’t immediately sell or dispose of an item that has appeared on your doorstep. Some libraries display interesting donations in imaginative ways. For example, a library in Alberta received a box of old cookbooks, Sears catalogues, and children’s fiction from the estate of an elderly rancher. None of the books were valuable or in good condition, but the librarian saw an opportunity to develop an eye-catching display that she captioned “Well-Loved: Books from a Rancher’s Household.” Front and center was the family Bible, opened in such a way as to hide the water damage to the binding and to much of the Old Testament. The book appeared to have been used as much for pressing wild flowers as for edification. There were cookbooks from the decade before the First World War, full of recipes for huge sides of beef and enormous creamy cakes. The pages were stained with the finest lard available in 1912. The children’s titles included adventure titles for boys, a cheap edition of Huck Finn, and a collection of animal stories. The Sears catalogues offered women’s fashions from almost a century ago, including high-button boots, bonnets, and undergarments to protect the wearer through the coldest winter. These books were worthless to a modern dealer but displayed as an antique household library, they were priceless.

45.3  A win–win scenario Some librarians feel uncomfortable about selling donations to dealers. Even if the original owner has signed a release form allowing the library to do what it will with the donation, there’s a sense that the library shouldn’t make serious money from the sale of a book. This is taking the nonprofit ethic too far. Remember that to sell a book for a high price is to place it—usually—in the hands of a responsible collector who will care for it, restore it if necessary, and eventually sell it to another collector or donate it to a library that can make it available for research purposes. To be a part of a private collection is an essential stage in the life cycle of many books which collectors rescue from different kinds of doom. Certainly collectors do not act against libraries or threaten public collections. Many famous rare book collections were originally the property of private collectors such as Folger, Huntington, and Pierpont Morgan. And then there’s the money. Think of all the new books that you could buy with the proceeds from the sale of that signed first edition of Forster’s Passage. As for our lucky friend the barfly, he kept his copy. After all, to read a first edition is always a joy, and by now he’s used to the taste of mass-market scotch. (2004)

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One for the books: lectures on collecting from coast to coast

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Of making many books there is no end, but there are collectors for every volume that appears, no matter how dull, dingy, or obscure it may be. Experienced collectors attend book auctions and browse in antiquarian bookshops. Others frequent thrift stores and rummage sales, looking for signed copies and scarce editions of works famous or forgotten. Novice collectors expand their knowledge by studying dealers’ catalogues and reviewing their websites, by reading up on their particular author or topic area, and by listening to other collectors. They might also show up at one of my public lectures. Over the past 35 years, I have scheduled these events in church basements, clubs, seniors’ residences, community centers, and countless libraries across North America. I have described the early editions of Dickens to a hotel ballroom crammed with publishers and stressed the importance of proper conservation techniques to a seniors’ book club whose membership included a trio of centenarians.

46.1  The bard’s Rotarians Traveling from coast to coast, I have outlined Gutenberg’s achievements for doctors, lawyers, Native Band leaders, physics teachers, nannies, and a Bible study group in a Federal penitentiary. In the public library of a small town in British Columbia’s interior, I discussed the printing of Shakespeare’s 1623 Folio with the region’s Rotarians. Why would 30 middle-aged businessmen leave their homes on a dark and stormy night to hear about an old book? Because that book is worth millions; because its contents continue to attract large audiences; and because, in the words of one of rural BC’s more distinguished Rotarians, “Hamlet’s confused and Othello’s jealous and Macbeth’s just no damn good.” Moreover the story of Shakespeare’s printed plays contains everything from plagues and pirates to censorship, mysterious portraits, and wild success. But even an unknown writer’s humblest volume has a story with some sort of cultural background and human interest; no book can be dismissed altogether, since there is always a collector who wants it. Informal and open to all, my lectures offer a brief history of printing, publishing, and bookselling in the Western world. I describe the growth of literacy and the development of various genres for different kinds of readers. To hold the audience’s attention, I treat reading as a personal experience, and note the influence of readers’ needs on book design and production. A modern example that aging Baby Boomers appreciate: the popularity of bigger type. In the 1960s, university students read novels and other textbooks with smaller type that didn’t strain young eyes. Decades later, as Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00046-3 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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reading glasses become almost permanent fixtures on midlife faces, the demand for more “comfortable” type has increased. Thus the little Penguin has given way to larger softcovers with space for bigger type.

46.2  Tribes While every collector has unique interests, there are enough similarities between them that one can discern certain kinds of collectors: what I think of as “tribes.” There is the Science Fiction Tribe, which includes Star Trek fanatics, classicists (“I focus on editions of H.G. Wells”), and the ultra-specialists who collect nothing but paperback dystopian fiction written by Californian women in the 1980s. There are the mystery collectors who hunt for one or more of the standard whodunit producers in the current market: Ian Rankin, James Lee Burke, T. Jefferson Parker, and the eternal Agatha Christie. There are children’s specialists who will spend large amounts for books illustrated by Arthur Rackham, or any of Enid Blyton’s breathless adventure stories. Of all of the tribes, however, the largest is interested in fiction in English. For me, these subdivide into “Canadianists” who prefer Atwood, Robertson Davies, and their contemporaries; collectors of current English writers such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Nick Hornby; people who wanted to develop a representative collection of American novelists, but who find their shelves crammed with nothing but first editions of John Updike; and the indefatigable souls who dedicate years of their lives in the search for the works of a second- or third-tier writer who they believe deserves far more attention than he or she receives from critics, scriptwriters, publishers, and readers. The best examples might be Ronald Firbank and Patrick Hamilton, although inevitably one evening in Halifax or Kitchener or Saskatoon, an elderly woman will appear before the lecture in the events room of the library branch and swear that the only writer of the past century worth collecting is Henry Williamson or John Buchan. She might have a point.

46.3  High spots, high prices Occasionally a more experienced—and richer—collector will attend a lecture out of curiosity. He or she is accustomed to conferring with dealers about his interests and rarely spends time with collectors from lesser tribes. But loneliness can set in; after all, collectors are human, and even the most solitary will sometimes feel the need to see how others live. Talk of “high spots” gets everyone’s attention, but particularly that of a collector who can afford them. High spots are the more famous and usually more expensive items that only the better heeled can buy. While some high spots are out of the reach of everyone aside from billionaires and their bankers, everyone likes to hear about them. Printed in 1455, the Gutenberg Bible is the best example. Even a battered page from a broken-up copy is worth many thousands of dollars. If ever a complete Gutenberg in good condition were to reach the market, its price would be in

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the hundreds of millions. An example such as this is enough to inspire awe in the most distinguished collector. Other more modern high spots include the signed first edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), currently worth more than $250,000; the first edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), which sold recently at Sotheby’s for approximately $175,000; and the first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), in the earliest dust jacket. The latter feature increases the value of this book to around $175,000.

46.4  Mississauga romantic Impressed as they may be with high spots, not all experienced collectors want them. In fact some of the savviest spend years tracking down items that highbrow persons might view with contempt. What do you make of the Vancouver surgeon who has spent thousands of dollars on complete sets of Mad or Playboy? Or the Toronto investment banker who owns every Harlequin romance and disappears weekly to buy the latest from a supermarket in Mississauga, where he is less likely to be recognized? Or the Chicago art dealer who sneaks across the border to buy any adventure story that features Mounties. He may provide his clientele with Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, but his personal preferences involve the red serge, bandits, booze, and the occasional Mad Trapper. Of course not everyone who attends these lectures is a collector. Some might be curious about the topic and have nothing better to do. Others have books that belonged to a long-dead aunt in Winnipeg; might these be valuable? In most instances, no. That aunt might have been a splendid person, but her copies of Baroness Orczy’s lesser-known novels are worthless in the current market. Nevertheless, monetary value is only one aspect of a book’s real worth. It might have cultural value, as an erstwhile bestseller that delighted entire generations. It can also have sentimental value for a particular person, who was fond of that aunt. I encourage audiences to consider the different reasons for treasuring any book, whose worth can vary from decade to decade.

46.5  Restoration costs Sentimental value inspires people to appear in the library events room clutching battered family Bibles, ancient cookbooks, and children’s books held together by the slenderest binding thread. Can these precious items be restored? Yes, but at a high cost. Do you have $1500 to rebind that Bible, or $275 to repair the boards of that ordinary edition of The Wind in the Willows? A restorer can remove the stains from the pages of that old Betty Crocker item, for no more than $600. Restoring books—not just repairing them—is costly, and while there are competent restorers in most provinces, few of us are willing to pay their prices.

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The next best course of action is to protect the book from further harm. I advise audiences to keep their battered treasures away from moisture, excessive heat and light, insects, recalcitrant children, and people who use books as coasters for coffee mugs. Only one form of book abuse is tolerable and is evident mostly in old Bibles. Pressing wild flowers in the scriptures is a tradition, particularly on the Prairies. As a librarian, I deplore this practice, since it can stain pages permanently. But I won’t thunder against those delicate, dried out blossoms, which a young man gave his fiancée a century ago in a small town outside Regina. I advise the owner of the Bible to leave those artifacts of affection where they are, and to imagine how they might have ended up in the middle of Ecclesiastes.

46.6  Biblio-survival Increasingly, people come to my lectures for reassurance. In an age of podcasts and webinars, laptops, and a constant stream of email, many people long for traditional forms of entertainment. As attached as they are to the latest technology, they want to know that books are still a vital part of our culture, and that, despite the predictions of futurists, the book is not on the verge of dying out. So they show up at the Events Room door with assorted Bibles and cookbooks, and perhaps a spouse or companion. I believe that they always will. As long as Rotarians worry about the state of Macbeth’s morality, there will always be an interest in books and book collecting. (2007)

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Librarian’s London: visiting the city of readers  

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Each of us visits a different London. You spend time in the newer galleries and prefer a certain wine bar to the ubiquitous pubs. Or you arrive at your carrel in the British Library and stay there for a week or a month or a lifetime, depending on your research schedule. Unbeknownst to your family in Toronto, you’re what tourism authorities call a burial bore, a traveler who enjoys discovering the graves of famous persons in numerous churches and churchyards and cemeteries. A Halifax reference librarian slips the surly bonds of her information desk every October to wander through London’s military museums. A Montreal cataloguer and father of three teenagers takes them to the series of “youth-friendly” festivals and markets that are increasingly popular in Notting Hill and Chelsea. Desperate for architecture that is older and more dignified than her Vancouver condo development, a law librarian makes annual pilgrimages to Wren churches. I concentrate on what I think of as the City of Readers. My schedule never varies: over the North Pole to Heathrow, via the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station, out the main entrance and across Praed Street to Norfolk Square, which contains rows of tiny inexpensive hotels and a gem of a park that is usually free of tourists. I walk up the steps of the Tudor Court Hotel, built in the 1850s as a residence for a single family and two or three servants. The current management has turned it into my personal refuge. I greet Witold, a Polish émigré who stands with great dignity behind the front desk. He hands me the key to my room, formerly a Victorian family’s front parlor, with a bay window and a fireplace. Witold knows my movements. “You go to the park now?” “Yes.” “You say hello to Albert for me.” “I will.” “He looks good now.” “I hope so.” In fact Prince Albert looks better than ever. I stroll through Kensington Gardens to see him perched on his Memorial, an enormous mass of granite erected after his death in 1862. Recently, he has undergone restoration and looks splendid. What is he holding? That’s no laptop. It’s the Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, an event intended to demonstrate the British Empire’s superiority in all endeavors. The statues of many Great Persons wave swords or make commanding gestures to long-defunct armies. Albert, however, sits proudly yet benignly with his book, a posture that strengthens my notion of London as the City of Readers and inspires me to go in search of more evidence for its status as the traditional center of reading in the English-speaking world. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00047-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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I never tire of the standard historical sites. In Westminster Abbey, I find myself in Poet’s Corner, usually surrounded by a group of elderly couples from Florida. “We stand before the tomb of Chaucer, England’s first great poet,” says the guide. “He’s the guy who wrote Lord of the Rings,” says one elderly gentleman. “No he didn’t, Arthur,” says his wife. “He wrote a bunch of tales. Toll-Keen wrote Lord of the Rings.” Arthur is undaunted. “Did they plant Toll-Keen here?” “No,” says the guide, a tall Oxbridge man who doesn’t flinch. “He’s buried in Oxford.” “I wouldn’t mind seeing his tomb,” says Arthur, who shows signs of becoming a burial bore. “I liked his stuff, and wouldn’t mind paying my respects.” “You do that,” says the guide. Writers’ graves constitute only one neighborhood in the City of Readers. I spend most of my time with the living, many of whom are book dealers. In an age of rising rents and online selling, independent bookshops are not as common or as well stocked as they were a decade ago. Large chains such as Waterstones and Borders have attracted a large portion of the book-buying market. But Hatchard’s continues to do good business in Piccadilly, and Foyle’s still thrives in Charing Cross Road. Many used and antiquarian bookshops have moved outside London to towns with lower rents. Used book buyers include electronic customers from all over the world, drop-in tourists, and locals looking for relief from new book sticker-shock. A noteworthy used bookshop that remains in its original location is Nigel Williams Rare Books

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in Cecil Court, just off Charing Cross. On the shelves is a fine selection of fiction, children’s books, and miscellaneous items, all at decent prices. The proprietor is a respected book-hunter who sends catalogues all over the world and works hard to keep his stock interesting. British book prices are generally high. London’s libraries are constantly challenged to acquire new and expensive items that are often read to pieces in a few weeks. “Take your Atwood,” says Alice, a circulation clerk at a public library near Trafalgar Square. “You order a dozen copies of her latest, then she goes and gets short-listed for the Booker. So now you have to bring in another pile of copies, and they’re dear. But the people who read them don’t look after them as they should, and inevitably the bindings fall apart.” The City of Readers contains two of Librarianship’s shrines. The British Museum and British Library are separate organizations, but the former still houses the famous Reading Room in the recently restored Great Court. Who among London’s intelligentsia did not rely on the Reading Room after it opened in 1857? “Karl Marx probably sat over there,” says a Museum guide. “I don’t know where Charles Dickens sat. But then he was a frenetic sort of person, and he probably moved around to different spots. George Bernard Shaw? I think he sat over there, but I can’t imagine his sitting quietly. I don’t envy the librarian who had to tell him to stop chatting.” Within walking distance of the Museum is the new British Library at St. Pancras. On the way, one item reminds you that London moves with the times: a Bloomsbury restaurant’s neon sign advertising “Virginia Woolf Burgers and Pizza.” Can you picture Virginia, Leonard, and their friends sharing an all-dressed? And who would pick up the tab? At the British Library, the first destination for many visitors is the John Ritblat Gallery, which displays over 200 manuscripts and books that you’ve heard about many times, but never seen. Until you walk into Ritblat, and there before you is a Gutenberg Bible, the oldest copy of Beowulf, and the Magna Carta. The security guard is accustomed to visitors’ reactions. “I’ve heard exclamations of joy and wonder in dozens of languages,” he says. “Americans move along the display cases chanting ‘Wow!’ while Germans have a dekko at the manuscript of Handel’s Messiah and start singing the tune, usually off key. Then there’s an old Japanese lady who comes every year. She goes over to the manuscript of George Eliot’s Middlemarch and bursts into tears. I’m not sure whether she likes it or not.” The British Library leaves any librarian exhausted, even after a brief visit. There are too many things to look at and think about and remember, and bibliographic overstimulation is bound to set in unless one makes an exit and obtains refreshment. Everyone has a favorite London pub; some of us have several. Returning by bus or tube to Paddington, I often end up at the Fountains Abbey, which Sir Alexander Fleming once frequented. From my table by the door, I can see the window of his laboratory. Some believe that spores from this pub floated across the street and through that window, contaminating Fleming’s Petri dishes and forcing him to discover penicillin. According to the woman behind the bar, this piece of medical history proves that ale has saved millions of lives, including those of teetotalers.

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On warm evenings, a picnic makes an inexpensive dinner. One source of nosh is Paddington Station, which contains everything from grocery stores and a sushi bar to a WH Smith book outlet that sells the latest novels and nonfiction, and a fine selection of beverages, sandwiches, and desserts. A Paddington picnic costs much less than a meal at a local restaurant, and usually tastes better. A short walk takes you into the heart of Kensington Gardens, where you can dine by the statue of Peter Pan. The City of Readers builds statues to its fictional characters as well as its popular princes, since to book lovers the former can be even more important in a person’s imagination than the latter. Although Witold has more respect for Albert. “You see Albert?” “Yes.” “You see lots of books today too.” “Yes.” “Too many books.” “Probably.” “You be smart like Albert and carry around just one book. Less trouble when you go through customs.” “That depends on the book, Witold.” “This is true. But one good book is not hard to find!” Especially in the City of Readers. (2005)

Under the bridge with Margaret and Charles: browsing in London’s South Bank Book Market

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Defeated, Napoleon died in exile. Victorious, the British named countless roads, edifices, squares, and other public works after the battle that ended Napoleon’s career. The most famous commemorative structure is London’s Waterloo Bridge, which spans the Thames between Somerset House on the Victoria Embankment and the National Theatre and the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. While the bridge is utilitarian, neighboring sites offer entertainment and frivolity; aside from the theatre and hall, there are galleries, gardens, museums, pubs, and the London Eye, the western world’s most notorious Ferris wheel. Every weekend for the past 25 years, a compromise between the practical and the playful springs up under the bridge on the south side: the South Bank Book Market, a series of stalls that contain a splendid mishmash of used books, magazines, prints, and ephemera. Organized by a group of local used book dealers, the Market serves two purposes. First, it makes money from the sale of items that might remain on bookshop shelves indefinitely. Secondly, it helps to reduce duplicate stock—for example, the piles of erstwhile bestsellers that accumulate on bedside tables until their owners decide to make space for new bestsellers. How many copies of J. K. Rowling’s titles do you need? You’ll find them all at the Market, along with any number of the latest works of John Mortimer, Ali Smith, Margaret Atwood, and everyone else who has appeared on last year’s Book of the Week lists. The Market’s stalls are arranged in rows that form an eddy in the flow of humanity walking by the Festival Hall. Who stops to browse? Tourists are common. They look for souvenirs among the prints and hope to find something especially English, perhaps an image of Lady Diana or Buckingham Palace. Sometimes they hunt for blockbusters to read on the flight home. Also present are students from every British university, from Edinburgh to Oxbridge to different London campuses. Like students everywhere, they’re eager to save money by purchasing a novel on their reading list for a fraction of the price that they’d pay at Waterstones or Blackwell’s.

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Then there are the book people, those who make a living from writing, publishing, reviewing, or the information professions. They look for items that they’ve sought at countless fairs and rummage sales across Europe: obscure novels, volumes of poetry by acquaintances, old textbooks, biographies of forgotten actors, etiquette manuals, and anything with “Hornblower” in the title. By the way, standing over there is one of the English-speaking world’s most famous playwrights. With obvious affection he reads the blurb of one of Richmal Crompton’s William books, which could be his for the equivalent of $3.00. He wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. He looks exactly like a famous playwright trying to avoid being recognized. Will he buy that volume of William? The temptation is great. While the summer months bring thousands of tourists to the Market, fall and winter are seasons for Londoners to reclaim their territory and enjoy the variety of activities that the South Bank offers. Aside from New York, no city is home to more buskers, jugglers, leafleteers, sellers of knickknacks, speechmakers, and skateboard acrobats than London, and no neighborhood of London provides a better stage or market for them than the South Bank. Much of the experience of London involves looking at other people and enjoying the spectacle—intentional or otherwise—that they present in public places. But the Market is an exception, since its browsers look at books, not the young woman with the dragon tattoos who has just performed a back flip on a skateboard. Small piles of old Penguin and Pan editions accumulate under arms, as residents of Clerkenwell and Lambeth reach into their pockets for the chunky pound coins that will buy lots of fiction or poetry, or analyses of East Bloc economies during the Cold War. Much of the Market’s trade depends on serendipity. A librarian from Yorkshire wasn’t expecting to discover Volume Two of an old edition of Anthony Trollope’s The Three Clerks, but there it is for 50 pence. And look: it contains a silk bookmark with a picture of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Evidently the last reader of Trollope’s novel only got halfway through the novel before trading it in to a used bookseller. That volume might have sat on a shelf for decades. The evidence? The picture of St. Paul’s on the bookmark also shows buildings that disappeared in 1940 during the Blitz. A lifetime later, book and bookmark will travel to the north of England. They’ll end up as part of a library display entitled “What your grandparents liked to read.”

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Meanwhile, the author of plays that changed British theatre forever continues to mull over the purchase of that William title. There are other things to worry about at present, including that dreadful Russian translation of his early works, the film script that’s almost finished, and the New York production of his latest play; but he must reach a decision about William, a series that meant so much to him and his chums a couple of years before the Luftwaffe leveled the neighborhood surrounding St. Paul’s. Why should he spend his time reading a book that he had to hide from his parents? He recalls that they believed it encouraged bad behavior. That’s precisely why he should buy the book and reread it. But he really should pay attention to that film script. If the Elephant’s Graveyard is a myth, the Market is an actual place where what were unwanted books go to resume their desirability. In a city of markets, it’s the most optimistic marketplace, where no item is unsalable, no matter how loose the binding or yellowed the pages. Or how embarrassing the inscription. Pick up a paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice, and there on the flyleaf is memorable expression of affection, or perhaps not: Margaret, I’ll take you over Jane Austen any day, but she’s running a close second. Love, Charles Cambridge, 1978 You wonder about Margaret and Charles, and whether Jane fell far enough behind for Charles to set aside literature and wow Cambridge with a society wedding. Buying the book seems like intruding on somebody’s private life, so you put it back, and 20 min later a student from Birkbeck College buys it to read for a course on the 19th-century novel. Among the least sentimental customers at the Market are local public and school librarians. They want to spend as little as possible on books that will fill their carousels and Popular Reading shelves: nothing that requires anything more than a barcode label and a bit of tape along the spine. Why not pay a few pounds for another set of Tolkien that will circulate a dozen times before falling apart? That’s better than wiping out the budget on new copies that won’t last much longer. And what’s wrong with these travel posters from France and Italy at two pounds each? They’ll look good on the wall beside the foreign language section, and the head of the French department will be delighted. Almost nobody will notice that the people in these posters are dressed in fashions of the 1950s, or that the cars they drive are now vintage models. Children’s books are available in plenty. Librarians compete with parents for Caldecott winners with jam stains on the title pages. But will young readers care? And what about the piles of Young Adult fiction with phone numbers scribbled on the covers and mustaches added to the faces in every illustration? Shocking, but the books are bargains. And the readers of Gossip Girl aren’t worried about a previous reader’s contact information or additional artwork. Now our playwright has figured out why he must buy that William book. Funny that it didn’t strike him before. The title character must have been a role model for the Angry Young Men. John Osborne and Kingsley Amis probably lapped this stuff up. Influenced by naughty William, they defied convention and reshaped modern English

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literature. What’s on sale here is a piece of history: too good to miss. Besides, it’ll be a joy to read on the Tube back to the West End. Another book he’ll buy on a whim is Christopher Hibbert’s biography of Wellington, who whipped Napoleon on a field outside Brussels and gave the bridge above us its name. Not that the bitterness of that war lingers. After all, an elderly French gentleman has just found a copy of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. Paying the bookseller, he declares that he must return to his hotel at once and read the novel from cover to cover. Like so many other browsers who have found a personal favorite, he’s ecstatic. All sides are winners at this Waterloo. (2006)

Spirited business: styles of bookselling in Piccadilly

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London’s oldest bookshop coexists with the biggest bookstore in Europe. Hatchards is a tradition; Waterstones is a monster. Why do they get along so well? And who was that shadowy character on the staircase? London’s ghosts are legendary. Every street is haunted; some buildings have more than one ghost available to terrify occupants. The older the building, the greater the probability that it is haunted. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that Hatchards, a bookshop established in 1792, contains at least one ghost. The question is, whose? Hatchards is renowned, not only for its age, profitability, and customer service but also for its cachet. Located in Piccadilly, near the even more famous Circus, the six-floor shop is subtly but unabashedly patrician. It holds the Royal Warrants (“By Appointment to…”) of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prince of Wales. Its employees speak with the diction, brevity, and accent that distinguish what is left of the English upper class. The customers are a mixture of the right sort of people, darling, and various others including jet-lagged folk from Oklahoma and Ottawa who want to buy tourist maps, of which there is an excellent selection. Ordinary Londoners are as welcome as anyone else, although these days many are inclined to shop at the huge Waterstones down the block.

49.1  Park your steed outside If the Hatchards ghost is a deceased customer, perhaps it is that of a politician such as Benjamin Disraeli or William Ewart Gladstone, or the Duke of Wellington, victor at Waterloo, who used to ride from his nearby residence to buy his books at the shop. A literary ghost is even more likely, since thousands of authors have been regular customers, among them Byron, Wilde, Chesterton, Kipling, and Somerset Maugham. Tourist ghosts could include any book-loving North American or Asian who has visited London, from Hemingway and Pierre Trudeau to Gandhi and Nehru. “Everyone knows Hatchards,” says John Powell, a corporate librarian in the City, London’s business core. From his regular table at 5th View, a bar on the top floor of the neighboring Waterstones, Powell holds forth on bookselling as it is and should be. He has various notions concerning the identity of the Hatchards ghost, especially after his fourth pint of bitter. “It doesn’t have to be anyone particularly famous, you know. It could be some fellow from Cambridge who couldn’t pay his book bill or his gambling debts, and threw himself into the Thames. But I imagine that whoever the ghost may be, it probably haunts a particular nook, because Hatchards is one nook after another. It’s the coziest bookshop in the English-speaking world. People feel comfortable there, at least Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00049-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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people who like to read and who prefer a well-chosen stock of titles, and who are drawn to specific subject areas in a particular nook.” As to the effect of a ghost on a shop’s coziness level, Powell has a logical explanation. “If you’re going to haunt a bookshop such as Hatchards, you’ll eventually discover that examining the stock is far more interesting than scaring customers, so you’ll spend the time reading rather than appearing as a spectral presence and all that rot. The fun involved in frightening the living would wear off quickly, whereas the pleasure of the latest fiction would be a constant joy. So I wouldn’t expect to find a ghost going ‘Boo’ in Hatchards. There simply too much to read.”

49.2  Grave matters of privacy A Hatchards employee in the fiction section refuses to identify the resident ghost because “it could involve a former customer’s privacy, you know.” But he jumps at the chance to recommend several volumes of ghost stories, from a collection of M.R. James’s short stories to Susan Hill’s recent novella, The Man in the Picture, which concerns a haunted painting. “It would probably help our sales to have a ghost around the place,” says the woman behind the counter in the large gardening section. “It would bring in the tourists, who love that sort of thing. They flock to the dreariest places to enjoy the dismal atmosphere. They pay for the privilege. Perhaps we could raise our prices if some old horror like Henry James started making appearances on the staircase. Perhaps I should speak to the marketing people.” A few doors down Piccadilly is the largest bookstore in Europe, an erstwhile department store that has become Waterstones. Its shelves stretch for what seem like miles and hold a huge selection of any current topic or author. It is always busy. Its sales are enormous. But it’s no biblio-Walmart; its interior is tasteful and its employees polite, if not as genteel as those at Hatchards. On the fifth floor, John Powell orders another pint and suggests that London needs its chain stores, and especially big box outlets like Waterstones, to satisfy the needs of Londoners.

49.3  Aboveground marketing and sales “London may be built on a thousand graveyards, and accommodate a million ghosts,” he says. “Nevertheless we need big modern stores of all sorts to serve the living. That includes bookstores. London is a big publishing centre where many titles enter the marketplace for the first time. The first reviews of many titles appear in London newspapers and journals. Greater numbers of new titles are published every year, and we need more retail outlets to handle them. Say what you will about Internet sales, but people still want to spend money in bookstores.” Powell also suggests that ghosts might not like the Waterstones in Piccadilly because “it’s too bright, too loud, and full of skeptics who don’t believe in ghosts and

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want to read Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. If you were a ghost, would you want to share space with people who refused to acknowledge your existence? No. You’d go somewhere with a more considerate staff and clientele, like Hatchards, where you could float around in peace.”

49.4  Parenting Back in Hatchards, a sales representative in the Children’s section arranges a shelf crammed with Biggles titles. She notes that in Piccadilly, Waterstones and Hatchards complement each other. There is no risk that one will put the other out of business because serious readers enjoy visiting both. In fact, they’re owned by the same parent company. “With the same parent, one business doesn’t lord it over the other,” she says. “Really, we’re in cahoots with each other. We keep each informed about things like sales and author signings. We work together, and so far everybody’s happy.” Cahooting with a monster such as Waterstones could be in Hatchards’ best interest since London became a major hub of the fashion industry. While it has been an important financial center for centuries, its fashion designers languished for years until recently. “Fashion design and retail attract massive numbers of consumers,” says Norman Carlyle, a business analyst and consultant at Canary Wharf. “Let Kate Moss sell her line of clothes at Topshop, and believe it or not, retail book sales will increase. That’s because bigger numbers of consumers increase sales in all kinds of retail outlets. I don’t remember a new bookstore going bankrupt in London. The antiquarian shops might have moved to smaller centres where they’ll pay lower overhead, but current sales in stores that sell new books are going up.” Carlyle suggests that the proximity of Hatchards to Waterstones provides mutual benefits. An author-signing event at one location will bring potential customers to the area of the other, and book lovers would be inclined to visit both. They can have Peter Ackroyd sign his most recent novel at Hatchards, then stroll down Piccadilly to Waterstones to browse in the nonfiction areas and have lunch and a drink in 5th View. It’s a pleasant day out for anyone interested in books, and that block of Piccadilly has become what Carlyle refers to as “destination shopping zone.”

49.5  The sound of popping corks Hatchards will never be able to carry a stock the size of its neighbor’s, but then its neighbor will never have the Hatchards snob value. If you’re a budding British author, you dream of the day when you can tell your friends that you saw your book for sale in the Hatchards front window. But you also want to see stacks of your books selling at Waterstones. Essentially, you want Hatchards to increase your reputation, while you need Waterstones to sell your product and earn you money. Then you can afford to switch from bitter to Bollinger in 5th View.

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Between Waterstones and Hatchards sits St. James Piccadilly, a church designed by Christopher Wren and arguably one of his finer surviving buildings. Here in December 1757, William Blake was baptized. Piccadilly became one his regular haunts, and it is pleasant to assume that he browsed in Hatchards. These days the poetry shelves contain his works in different editions, and he is considered to be England’s great visionary poet and painter, in equal parts a genius and an eccentric. Could he be the Hatchards ghost? “It’s possible, although Blake might not approve of some of the illustrations in the coffee table books,” says John Powell. “He’d love the Gardening section, which is the best in London. It would make him think of Eden, and he was always big on Adam and Eve.” But might Blake’s ghost be tempted to haunt Waterstones? Certainly he loved the sort of common people who crowd into Waterstones, and he’d enjoy the sight of his books selling at a much higher volume than they ever did when he was alive. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. He could drift back and forth between locations and know that he was being faithful to both. After all, they’re in cahoots, a successful blend of history and modern marketing. (2007)

Here be dragons: continuing education in library history

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Hereford offers students an overview of historical and current librarianship that contains mythical creatures, chained books, and members of Britain’s Special Air Services. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Very tempting. Those posters appear on academic bulletin boards across the continent, advertising educational travel. Would you like to study art history in Florence? Classical mythology in Athens? Or perhaps ancient Egyptian politics and culture: a month-long course that includes a cruise down the Nile and a tour of a freshly excavated tomb. Bring your own pith helmet; earn academic credit; eat, drink, and party endlessly and return home knowledgeable and sunburned. The price is reasonable. Why not go? Perhaps you’re tired of Florentine perfection, of randy Greek deities and dead Pharaohs. Being bookish, you’d prefer to study library history. What kinds of learning opportunities in this field exist outside the classroom? You can imagine a trip to some exotic place such as Newark, New Jersey, where John Cotton Dana made his name long before the city turned into an urban nightmare. If Newark doesn’t beckon, then how about Albany, New York, where Mel Dewey established his library school? Or Washington, DC where you can spend long, sweltering afternoons at the Library of Congress? There must be some place more appealing and less stressful. There is. In the west of England, near the Welsh border, Hereford is a small city with a long history and, in the precincts of its Cathedral, what might be considered a museum of early librarianship. Three weeks in Hereford will give you a fresh perspective on the history of things that you take for granted: shelving and storage, security, reference materials, and bibliographic control. You can move at a relaxed pace and recover from the inevitably horrible experience of reclaiming your luggage at a British airport. You won’t see as much sunshine as you would in Florence or Athens, and you needn’t worry about the muggers of Newark and Washington.

50.1  On the road Leaving London’s Paddington Station, your train heads west through Oxford, where dozens of undergraduates tuck their iPads into their backpacks and disembark. You might find yourself alone until the conductor arrives to tell you that Hereford is at the end of the line. At least that’s what you think he said. His Welsh accent is sonorous and incomprehensible. But at least he’s friendly. Everything seems older and quieter in Hereford. You arrive at the Green Dragon Hotel, which was built at some point between the Saxon invasion and the 18th century. Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00050-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Your room contains a Georgian four-poster bed, an Edwardian dressing table, and what could be Norman plumbing. Nevertheless, it’s the most comfortable room you’ve ever slept in. You will sleep until the bells of the Cathedral wake you the next morning. Or until the Front Desk phones to remind you that your tour of the Cathedral’s New Library Building begins in an hour.

50.2  Age is relative The New Library Building is actually new, which might surprise those familiar with British usage of the term. After all, Oxford University’s New College was founded in 1379. But the Queen opened the New Library in 1996, and it boasts all of the features of a modern rare book facility, such as a state-of-the-art security and fire retardant systems, and well-designed environmental controls. Despite this advanced technology, the New Library looks appropriately ancient and doesn’t look out of place beside the Cathedral. The Cathedral is a block from the Green Dragon. You must walk through the Cathedral to reach the New Library, and now you must deal with the sensation called Time Shock: the feeling that you’ve entered a time warp and gone back hundreds of years to Medieval England. (Europeans experience Time Shock of an opposite sort when they arrive in Toronto or Vancouver. Everything is so new, so unspoiled and clean.) While not as esthetically pleasing as the cathedrals in Winchester and Salisbury, and not as architecturally interesting as many other British buildings, Hereford Cathedral makes you aware its great age as soon as you walk into its nave. Constructed between the 12th and the 14th centuries, its walls seem to echo the voices of priests and choristers from a time when Europe knew nothing of America, and Jerusalem was still considered the center of the world. “You’re here for the Mappa Mundi, aren’t you?” says a woman with a Herefordshire accent who must be as old as the masonry. “You must make your way through the Gift Shop, and you’ll find the Mappa Mundi.”

50.3  Calfskin cartography If ever a university agrees to conduct a library history course in Hereford, and groups of students arrive at the Cathedral with their Tour Leader, it’s likely that the first thing they’ll want to see is the Mappa Mundi, which is always spoken of as such. Nobody refers to “the Mappa” or “the M.M.” It’s a matter of respect for an artifact that must be seen in the flesh to be appreciated, since it serves as a vehicle for a way of thinking that is entirely different from ours and yet entirely human. To look at the Mappa Mundi is to experience the medieval worldview in all of its adventurous devoutness. The flesh of the Mappa Mundi is a gable-shaped piece of calfskin, 1.59 m tall and 1.34 m wide. Its ultra-secure, environmentally controlled case is faced with the most durable limestone and positioned in its own room in the New Library Building.

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At first, the Mappa Mundi doesn’t look like much more than a hunk of antique skin on which somebody has drawn an odd-looking diagram. But then the details start to work their magic. Even in the subdued light, the Mappa Mundi offers a superabundance of what to a medieval person were essential data. Jerusalem is at the center; at the apex is Christ. Around the physical world is a border labeled MORS (death), which reminds us that everything on Earth will eventually come to an end. The geography is inaccurate by modern standards, but one gets the sense that accuracy of the kind that we expect from GPS is not the purpose of the Mappa Mundi. Rather, it’s the presence of items and their relative positions that count most of all.

50.4  Medieval zoology The Mappa Mundi’s author was Richard of Haldingham or Lafford, who was probably a cleric from Lincolnshire. Almost nothing is known about him. He conceptualized but did not necessarily draw the Mappa Mundi around 1300. Richard included what he assumed were factual data about the known world. Hence, the area representing India features an elephant; Scandinavia offers a tired-looking bear; and the Mediterranean contains one of the more charming mermaids in medieval art. Other imaginary creatures that appear on the Mappa Mundi include the manticora, or man-headed lion, dragons, a satyr, a griffin, and a tribe called the Essendones, who ate the corpses of their parents. Understandably many visitors are relieved to move on to the Chained Library, which comprises a collection of the Cathedral’s manuscripts and printed books. The oldest manuscript is the Hereford Gospels, made in the eighth century. While many of the manuscripts were locally produced, others were donated to the Cathedral after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the redistribution of their library collections in the 1530s. While many of Hereford’s manuscripts concern theology, there are also a number of volumes on civil and canon law. The latter contain miniature illustrations— often highly detailed—of baptism, marriage, deathbed scenes, ships at sea, hunting, murder, and execution.

50.5  Textual meditation “You can’t just flip through books like these,” says an elderly attendant in the Chained Library room. “You see that old script and those illustrations, and you become fascinated, and it’s as if you fall into the text. You can stare at those pages for hours at a time, and some researchers do just that. It can be hard to get anything done when your mind floats back several hundred years. But it’s relaxing. I think it’s good for people’s blood pressure.” What might cause hypertension in the calmest bibliophile is the selection of early printed books. The oldest is a commentary by Donatus on the Roman dramatist

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Terence, printed in Strassburg in 1473. Later volumes include works on British history and geography, dictionaries of Arabic and Hebrew, and a fine first edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1611. Such books deserve the best possible security, which Hereford Cathedral offers. It is not, however, the modern computerized system that interests library historians. It’s those chains, which attach the covers of each book to its shelf. Chained books can be consulted, but they’re difficult to remove or steal—like the terminals in modern public libraries that are attached to tables with strong cables. The installation of a chain or cable can deter even the most skillful thief, in some cases more effectively than the most sophisticated Tattle-Tape system. Every book in the Chained Library has its own shelf mark, which indicates its position on a shelf. Each shelf mark contains a letter representing a specific bay, followed by a number for a shelf, followed by a number for the exact position on the shelf relative to the other positions. This system worked for centuries, and continues to function effectively today. “You couldn’t run our modern city library with shelfmarks,” says the attendant. “People would stand for it, especially the younger ones. But our purpose in the Cathedral is different. We don’t have to be up-to-the-moment, thanks very much.”

50.6  Special patrons The modern public library in Hereford provides a contrast to the sights and services offered in the Cathedral. In fact the public library looks as if it could be easily transplanted to Nanaimo or Medicine Hat or Kitchener. It contains the same sorts of furniture and workspace and ambience. But some of the patrons are found only in Hereford. For example, the two men seated at a table near the reference area are looking at illustrations of aircraft in a history of the Second World War. One man is huge and immensely powerful. The other is small, wiry, and in command. They keep their voices down. “Local military,” says the librarian at the reference desk with a wink. This means that they are probably members of the Special Air Services (SAS), which has its headquarters in the area. There are no security problems in Hereford’s public library when the local military shows up. They look as if they belong on the Mappa Mundi beside the man-headed lion. Of course scary patrons have been a part of library history since Jerusalem was the center of the world. (2007)

Finding Mr. Perfect: WH Smith in Paddington Station

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Hell must be like this: a great gray chamber in which huge hissing demons swallow and disgorge travelers, who are always dashing somewhere, everywhere, day and night. This is London’s Paddington Station, the world’s most famous railway terminus. Everyone seems to be here, from the Ethiopian immigrant on her way to Oxford for a session with her tutor, to the Canadian tourist who boards the wrong train and ends up in Wales, to the Chinese surgeon who is eager to go to Hay-on-Wye, where he will spend a week browsing in bookshops. Before the surgeon boards his train, however, he visits a bookshop that has attracted more customers over the years than any in Hay-on-Wye. Beside the entrance to the station, he will find a WH Smith outlet. A crowd of smokers stands nearby, enjoying a last puff before boarding nonsmoking coaches. Hence, the air in what station employees call “the Smith” is not as pure as it could be. But nobody complains because the next train leaves in 3 min, and the dean of an Oxford college has just enough time to grab a newspaper, a bag of crisps, and the latest Ruth Rendell, pay for them, and run down the platform to the train that will take him home. For many travelers, there’s no time to worry about air quality.

51.1  Impulse The surgeon has read everything by Ruth Rendell but is pleased to find a novel by Ian McEwan that he might enjoy. He also discovers a large rack of Mr. Men children’s books, which feature characters such as Mr. Muddle and Mr. Lazy. In fact, Muddle reminds the surgeon of one of his medical colleagues. The surgeon decides to buy the book for his granddaughter. “Most of the books we sell are impulse buys,” says Jerry, who works at the Smith as an assistant manager. “People come in for a newspaper, and leave with a stack of books that they didn’t know they wanted.” Smith’s retail specialists are adept at determining which titles are most likely to sell. Among a title’s more important characteristics are its popularity and potential audience, cover design, pricing, and other physical properties best summed up as “feel and smell.” “It’s amazing how many customers smell a book before they buy it,” says Jerry. “If a paperback has a fresh scent to it, and a new, unopened feel, then people are more likely to choose it. Some books don’t sell because they’ve been handled too often. Their spines are cracked and nobody wants them. In a busy shop like this, you lose a lot to wear and tear. On the other hand, some customers are in such a hurry that they don’t notice a bit of damage. They’ll take any copy of the new Grisham, and if the spine’s cracked it won’t spoil their reading experience.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00051-7 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Even though Paddington is the main station for travelers to and from Oxford, the Smith’s stock is mostly unscholarly. Or is it? Michael Dennison is a scientist working in an Oxford laboratory on an industrial chemistry project. He suggests that the Smith provides exactly what scholars want to read when they travel: intelligent, light fiction, popular history and biographies, and a large selection of newspapers and magazines. He notes that the fiction shelves contain titles that appeal to students: for example, recent works by Irvine Welsh, Iain Banks, and Nick Hornby.

51.2  Oxford men “And you can’t underestimate the popularity of Harry Potter, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, which went down well in Oxford,” says Dennison. “Of course Pullman’s an Oxford man, so students and faculty members were curious about his work. Most of us will never produce anything even vaguely interesting to the general public, so we want to see what it takes to write a bestseller.” Dennison notes that today’s popular fiction could be tomorrow’s Great Literature, to be taken seriously by professors and authors of dissertations and scholarly articles. He mentions C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, both Oxford scholars who wrote wildly popular works that are now considered part of the essential corpus of English literature. The Smith has stocked Lewis and Tolkien for decades, along with other items that appeal to academics. They gravitate toward the rear of the shop, which is quieter than anywhere else in Paddington Station. Safe from the chaos, they browse in the history and biography section, or the large selection of travel books and guides. Many of the history titles are respectable enough for any scholar to peruse, and if they tire of an overview of the Reformation or a description of London’s churches, they can join the surgeon by the Mr. Men rack. What is it about these little books that adults find so fascinating? The surgeon is absorbed in Mr. Perfect and doesn’t notice the hand reaching over his shoulder to grab Mr. Clever. The hand belongs to an engineer from Montreal who wants a gift for her son.

51.3  Diverting material Presently the engineer will board the Heathrow Express, which will take her to the notorious Terminal 2, where she will catch an Air Canada flight to Montréal-Trudeau Airport. She knows from long experience that no airport bookshop can rival the Smith, so she shops there in hopes that what she selects will inspire her son to follow in her footsteps and become an engineer, perhaps as brilliant as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who designed Paddington Station between 1836 and the early 1850s. Because the Heathrow Express takes travelers to and from one of the busiest airports in the world, the Smith’s clientele is international. Flights can be long and dull, and travelers beginning their journeys to Cape Town and Tokyo want diverting

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material, which the Smith offers in abundance. There are numerous romantic novels and a shelf of soft-core pornography, which does not appear to be nearly as popular as Mr. Nonsense and Mr. Noisy. Several times a day Mr. Noisy seems to appear in the flesh. Crashing his heavily laden cart across the threshold, he delivers loads of newspapers from all over Britain, Europe, and the United States. These form a small mountain near the shop’s entrance. Within minutes, swarms of buyers reduce the mountain to a small heap; the queue at the cash register is long but orderly, as customers start reading their purchases immediately. What was the Prime Minster thinking? Why did the dollar fall against the euro? And what about that earthquake in Japan? British newspapers are deeply in debt, and some may go bankrupt. In the Smith, however, one would think that large numbers of British citizens care for nothing more than their daily installments of news, be it good, bad, or scandalous.

51.4  One-stop shopping As customers start buying their copies of the Guardian and the Telegraph, the surgeon pays for his Mr. Men titles and walks across the station to his train, which will take him to Hay-on-Wye and its bookshops, which are more famous than the Smith, but no busier. Many people complete their day’s shopping in Paddington, which contains numerous small stores: Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer for groceries, Boots for toiletries, numerous clothing outlets, and the Smith, which attracts more customers than many of the station’s shops owing to its position near the entrance. Michael Dennison decides to have dinner in London and makes his way down a side street to the Victoria, arguably one of London’s finest pubs. Dickens is reputed to have written parts of Our Mutual Friend there, and upstairs one can eat, drink, and read in an elegant room called The Library, which is popular with local librarians and lined with shelves containing very old, very bad sensational fiction—stereotypical villains, innocent victims, and rediscovered wills. “It’s not unusual to see people reading in pubs,” says Dennison. “In fact, many of the papers and books you see in the Victoria probably came from the Paddington Smith. I can’t imagine a British railway station without a Smith shop. They’ve existed together since 1848, when a WH Smith opened at Euston Station, between Regent’s Park and the site of the new British Library.”

51.5  Profit from reading But will the relationship between rail and reading matter continue? It’s difficult to see how anything could end it. After all, WH Smith has survived two world wars, the unraveling of the Empire, and numerous economic downturns including the Great Depression. Even in 2008, when the global economy deteriorated at an alarming rate, WH Smith reported a profit of £76 million. Sales at the railway station outlets rose 3%

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during the first three-quarters of the year. Obviously the firm has remarkable powers of survival, especially with outlets in key locations such as Paddington Station. Back in the murk at the station’s front entrance, the Smith is closing for the night. It will reopen early the next morning to supply Oxford students with magazines, novels, and the paper they need to produce the drafts of the essays that they owe their tutors. The Smith will sell maps to tourists and detective fiction to university lecturers and a history of British cathedrals to a Catholic bishop who adores Gothic architecture. Mr. Muddle and Mr. Perfect have departed for Hay-on-Wye, whereas Mr. Clever flies to Montreal. But Mr. Impossible must remain behind with Mr. Jelly and Mr. Daydream. They don’t mind. The Smith is a fine place to wait for buyers. For those buyers, readers en route, the Smith is a little bit of heaven in a busy part of hell. (2009)

Visiting Oxford: lifelong memories from one day on the move

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You arrive by morning train from London. You dash along the platform to the exit with hundreds of students, tourists, office workers, and teachers, all in a hurry to reach their destinations in Britain’s oldest university town. Most walk or ride bicycles that they have left in the big racks outside the station. The students chatter in numerous languages, dialects, and accents, but sound like their counterparts all over the world. They tell each other that the concert in London was fantastic, that Chaucer is better in modern translation, and that Lady Gaga should become Prime Minister as soon as she finds the right outfit. Following the flow of pedestrians, you wander along Beaumont Street until you reach the Ashmolean Museum. It is smaller than you might expect, and older than any North American museum, having opened in 1683. But its collections are superb, from the Pre-Raphaelite paintings to the artifacts from Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Over the past three centuries, however, the most prized and famous item on display has been the Alfred Jewel. This tiny object was made in the late ninth century and rediscovered in Somerset in 1693. Its Anglo-Saxon inscription—AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN—means “Alfred ordered me to be made”: hence the name and the royal connection. But the function of the Jewel is uncertain. “It might have been attached to the end of a stick and used as a book pointer,” says the guide, an elderly woman in a twin set. “A reader would slide it along the text and thus prevent fingers from soiling the pages. The Jews employ similar pointers called yads to read the Torah. But we’re still not entirely convinced that the Alfred Jewel was used in that way. Nevertheless visiting librarians and archivists are always happy to hear that its possible purpose was related to reading.” Meanwhile, a group of Americans have arrived to see what is assumed to be the ceremonial cloak of Chief Powhatan, who ruled in Virginia during the early 17th century. “I fear that the cloak’s connection to the Indian chief is uncertain,” says the guide, as if she were personally responsible for a gap in the historical record. “You cannot expect Powhatan’s mother to have sewn a name-tag in a corner of the cloak, although that’s always a good idea, don’t you think?” Yes, it is always wise to add a name somewhere, although that does not solve every mystery, as the Alfred Jewel proves. What you remember about Powhatan’s Cloak is that it is one of the earliest surviving Native American artifacts outside the United States and Canada. Time stops for no tourist, and since you have only one day, you must leave the Ashmolean and use all of your inner strength to avoid Blackwell’s, the huge bookshop in Broad Street. You intend to take a tour of the Old Bodleian Library, but you left your inner strength in your London hotel room, and Blackwell’s beckons. It seems to Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00052-9 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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contain every book you ever wanted or needed; its Norrington Room appears to stretch into the horizon, although in fact it simply extends under neighboring Trinity College, and contains a mere 160,000 titles on approximately three miles of shelves. Since you’re there, you might as well browse, but be careful not to buy too many books. After all, you are probably on a budget, and you will have to carry your purchases around for the rest of the day. Perhaps it is prudent to buy nothing, and to promise yourself a full day in Blackwell’s during your next visit to Oxford. The areas of the Old Bodleian Library that most people tour include the Divinity School and Duke Humfrey’s Library, located in Broad Street. In fact, the Bodleian Libraries system, what Oxford scholars and students call “Bodley,” fills many university rooms and buildings, as well as underground storage areas and a former salt mine in Cheshire. The Bodleian provides a signal example of what happens when libraries run out of space. Staff members say that the lack of storage for collections has been a serious problem for decades. “The British Library is bigger than we are, but they have lots of storage options and better funding,” says a Bodleian staff member who asked to remain anonymous. “The government expects us to store every new book published in Britain, but doesn’t provide the money we need to do the job well. And now there has been talk of building an office tower for storage purposes. So much for our lovely skyline. But with any luck they’ll find another salt mine for our books.” One advantage of a salt mine is that it probably will not be used as a movie set by the producers of the Harry Potter series. “Of course the movie people couldn’t resist the Divinity School and Duke Humfrey’s,” says the anonymous staff member, whose cynicism is profound. “And now we are plagued with inquiries about Hogwarts. The Divinity School features one of the most intricately carved vaulted ceilings in the world, but these days the first question tourists ask the hapless guides is something about young wizards-in-training, and where Harry Potter found some wretched book of spells or other nonsense. We long for Harry to vanish into oblivion, but that’s unlikely to happen in the near future.” But it is possible that when Harry is finally forgotten along with so many other bestsellers and blockbusters, the Divinity School will survive and continue to attract users and visitors. Essentially a 15th-century lecture hall and meeting room, it is 87 ft in length and 31 ft wide: not big enough to accommodate the huge classes of a modern university, but adequate for the purposes of King Charles I’s Parliament, which convened there during the English Civil War. The 455 carved bosses on the Gothic ceiling bear the initials of donors and illustrious citizens, coats-of-arms, words and phrases in English, French, and Latin, and representations of saints, animals, plants, and sundry other items. Nowadays the Divinity School is used for special occasions; otherwise it fills with people from New York and Toronto who strain their necks to discern the carvings above them. Eventually they tire of straining and squinting and guides shepherd them upstairs to Duke Humfrey’s Library. The younger brother of Henry V, Duke Humfrey of Gloucester donated a collection of valuable manuscripts to the university. To house them, the university built Duke Humfrey’s Library, which opened above the Divinity School in 1488. The Library’s early history is uncertain owing to the loss of historical records. But university

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historians agree that the management and security of the Library became inadequate, and by the middle of the 16th century it was little more than an empty room. Even the furniture had been sold off. Fortunately, Thomas Bodley, an academic and diplomat, married a rich widow. Volunteering to restore the Library, he used her money to restore the collections and facilities. The Library reopened in 1602. From this time to the present, it was constantly short of space for new acquisitions. Arguably, while the collections developed owing to the librarians’ desire to serve scholarship, the facilities expanded out of desperation. Nowadays Duke Humfrey’s contains rare books and special collections, codicology, bibliography, and local history. You will not see large crowds of users scanning the shelves; with more modern collections, the New Bodleian Library, the Radcliffe Camera, and the numerous college libraries and reading rooms are more heavily used. But Duke Humfrey’s remains the heart of the Bodleian system. You should not leave Oxford without seeing it. Nor should you return to London without wandering through the grounds of some of the colleges. There are good reasons to visit any Oxford college, but some are more welcoming than others. Christ Church, known as “the House” and the location of Oxford’s cathedral, makes the best effort to make visitors feel comfortable. Cardinal Wolsey founded it in 1525. While students stroll across Tom Quad, the largest quadrangle in Oxford, visitors stand around the edges taking photos of Tom Tower, built by Christopher Wren in 1681–82. It contains Great Tom, a seven-ton bell that, every night at 9:05, peals 101 times in memory of the original members of the college.

“Many illustrious people have been students at the House,” says the elderly guide. One was W.H. Auden, the famous poet. In the 1950s he became Professor of Poetry and grew rather eccentric. He smoked constantly and used to wander around in bedroom slippers. The quality of his work declined over the years, although that probably was no fault of the House. “Perhaps you’ve heard of John Locke, the philosopher. He was expelled for sedition. He fled to Holland, where he lived in exile for years. People complain that

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modern academics are badly behaved, but in the 17th Century there were those who were equally dreadful. Mind you, John Locke did well in the end. That’s reassuring. Just because a fellow is occasionally rotten doesn’t mean that he can’t make a contribution to society. Have you read Locke? He’s really rather clever.” By now, you are ready for refreshment. Oxford’s eateries include the usual international fare—Indian, Italian, French, Middle Eastern—but you might prefer to try one of the pubs, where for centuries scholars have downed pints and discussed the abstruse matters of theology, philosophy, and football. (Do not refer to the latter as “soccer,” or you might be shunned.) You decide to visit the Eagle & Child in St. Giles Street. There J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis enjoyed evenings of beer, tobacco, and conversations that covered a lot more than the habits of elves and hobbits. Unfortunately what Tolkien and Lewis called “The Bird & Baby” draws large numbers of tourists eager to see where their favorite writers used to meet. The staff have grown tired of endless questioning about The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia and can be terse and unfriendly. Moreover the food, mostly standard British “pub grub,” is bland. A better choice is the Chequers in the High Street. This little pub was established in 1607. The selection of beer is excellent, and the service is good. The menu is limited, but it is better than those in other local pubs. The Chequers attracts few tourists but is especially popular with dog owners, who are allowed to bring their corgis and spaniels into the pub. The dogs are obedient and polite and rarely beg for scraps. They are quieter than their owners, particularly when somebody mentions a certain technical school in East Anglia that you know as Cambridge. Oxford residents take offense when you mention “the other place,” so it is best to talk about something else. Acceptable topics include the weather, trends in library storage, and John Locke’s Second treatise of government. You have time to visit one more college before your train leaves for London. You have heard of Balliol College, of course. Everyone has heard of Balliol. Established in 1263, it is still a matrix of scholarship and political power. Mr. David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, studied philosophy, political science, and economics (the PPE degree course) at Balliol. The alumni include numerous other politicians, writers, and scholars. The grounds seem to vibrate with history and intellect; this is obviously the setting of much important thinking. But you are tired and prefer somewhere less intense. Magdalen College is your choice. It is not that Magdalen is silent and subdued. In the 1870s, its cloisters echoed the laughter and witticisms of Oscar Wilde, who graduated with a double first and won the Newdigate Prize for his poetry. In the 20th century, C.S. Lewis demonstrated his skills as a tutor and popular lecturer to generations of students, who were occasionally unnerved by his boisterous character. They could retreat to Magdalen’s gardens, which are the finest in Oxford, and the most peaceful. As you walk along the paths, you sense that while history is replete with destruction and pain, here it is settled and under control; it will leave you alone for a time. You may gather your wits before you dash back to the station to catch your train. One day in Oxford is not enough. As there is so much more to see and hear in those ancient streets and quads, you must return. Plan for it and make your way back to the Ashmolean and Bodley before Lady Gaga succeeds David Cameron.

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Further reading If you want to learn more about Oxford’s history, people, libraries, and social scene, the following works are recommended:

  

  

Batey, Mavis. Alice’s adventures in Oxford. Pitkin Pictorials Ltd. 1980. Cartwright, Justin. This secret garden: Oxford revisited. Bloomsbury. 2008. Gillan, Stanley. The Divinity School and Duke Humfrey’s Library at Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1988. Morris, Jan. Oxford. OUP. 1978. Morris, Jan. The Oxford Book of Oxford/chosen and edited by Jan Morris. OUP. 2002. Ovenell, R.F. The Ashmolean Museum 1683–1894. Clarendon Press. 1986. Rogers, David. The Bodleian Library and its treasures 1320–1700. Aiden Ellis. 1991.

 

(2010)

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Perfect for your wall or shelf: shopping at London’s popular tourist attractions

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From the mid-1960s to the present, you can depend on any student residence in North America to reek of pizza. There’s also at least one young man who doesn’t know how to play the guitar, but who strums it awkwardly for hours, reinforcing the evidence for his lack of musicality by singing Gordon Lightfoot’s greatest hits off-key. There are parties with oceans of beer and cheap wine. Piles of laundry accumulate everywhere. There are discussions of Marx and Simone de Beauvoir. Future accountants and dentists write poetry, but fail to submit their English papers on time. And on countless walls, you find prints of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings, which contain images among the most famous in Western art. Student days come to an end. Eventually in serene adulthood you visit London, and your first stop is Trafalgar Square. A visit to the National Gallery is de rigueur. It might be the only great gallery you’ll ever see. Wandering through its vast rooms, you find one marvelous surprise after another: paintings by Leonardo, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and, on one well-lit wall, Van Gogh’s Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers.

53.1  Office decoration made easy This painting is one of a series of seven known as the Arles Sunflowers. Van Gogh produced them between August 1888 and January 1889. Others grace gallery walls in Amsterdam, Munich, Philadelphia, and Tokyo. Fire destroyed one in Yokohama during the Second World War. That which hangs in the National Gallery is arguably the best known and most frequently reproduced in prints and posters and postcards. Should you want a reproduction for your office wall if only to bring back memories of your time at university—you’ll find one in the National Gallery shop. You’ll also find piles of tourist dreck—souvenirs bearing the National Gallery’s logo: coffee mugs, coasters, pens, pencils, erasers, “artsy” berets, jigsaw puzzles of famous paintings, dolls resembling famous painters, fridge magnets, and games. “We sell an enormous amount of these things,” says a young woman who works behind the counter. “Years ago some gallery patrons didn’t like the idea of our selling tat, but in the end they stopped complaining. Admission to most local galleries is free. We need the money. If a punter from New York wants to pay 10 quid for a beret, I don’t mind. He’s paying for the upkeep of the finest art collection in the English-speaking world. He’s also paying my salary.” Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00053-0 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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53.2  The real thing Some punters want to spend their quids on books, which line the walls and compete for space with the postcard racks. The selection of titles is excellent, from catalogues and general surveys of art to works on specific artists whose paintings the National Gallery exhibits. Why do visitors buy books here? First, they encounter a painting reproduced in hundreds of textbooks. They’ve seen that painting on cable TV specials; their art history instructors droned on about the painter’s brush strokes and use of color. Now before them hangs the real thing. It’s wonderful. In fact, the original canvas is superior to any reproduction. It seems to reach out and thrill anyone who looks at it. No one can remain indifferent to that image. Secondly, they might consider the moment when they first saw that original canvas to be a signal moment in their lives. This is no exaggeration. In the National Gallery you’ll often hear people exclaim with unwonted passion that they’ve always wanted to see Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage or Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors. Tremendous excitement; a peak experience! How to commemorate the moment? By purchasing the best available reproduction. A poster beckons, but it won’t fit in a suitcase for the flight home to Tulsa or Toronto, at least not without harmful folding. Happily, there are books that contain that image among others: big folios, smaller coffee-table volumes, slender octavos, all with informative texts, and easier to pack. Well, why not? A book on Holbein is something to keep a lot longer than those wretched Dumbo placemats from Disneyland. Thirdly, the National Gallery’s books are reasonably priced, and occasionally on sale. The purchase is straightforward. Unlike many British sales clerks, those in the National Gallery’s shop are friendly and helpful. They’ll bag the books and direct you to the restaurant, where you’ll eat smoked salmon sandwiches and think about the next gallery you should visit. This might be the Tate Britain, which offers London’s best stock of new books on fine arts.

53.3  A matter of taste If they were honest, many people would admit that they enjoy the food in the Tate’s restaurant as much as they like the paintings, which include British art from Tudor portraits to modern abstract works. Some visitors arrive at the Millbank building determined to view the entire J.M.W. Turner collection in a single afternoon. This is impossible, and any attempt to do so is exhausting. Turner devotees find themselves resting tired eyes and feet in the restaurant, where the pork pie goes down so well with just a splash of Beaujolais. After that, they stroll into the shop. “You can order many Tate publications online,” says Carol Harris, a librarian visiting from California. “In fact, many colleges and universities acquire the Tate exhibition catalogues that way. There are numerous catalogues, and humanities departments value them for reference purposes. But the Tate shop is a browser’s dream, especially if the browser manages a library collection of works on modern painting and sculpture. There’s a good argument for buying at least one copy of every item, especially for larger university collections.”

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53.4  Ophelia Harris notes that the Tate Britain’s collection of 19th-century paintings attracts teachers of literature. The room containing William Blake’s work is the primary destination for some. Others head for the Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Rossetti, Millais, and Burne-Jones, who captured the Victorian interest in medieval subjects and images from outstanding literary works. One of the best known is Millais’s Ophelia, a depiction of a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet who drowns herself. Millais painted her floating beside a riverbank. This painting inspires large sales of the Tate shop’s books on Millais and thousands of Ophelia cards and postcards. Sometimes the connections between the Tate’s paintings and the books for sale in its shop seem tenuous. For example, why would visitors buy Dickens’s novels? “There’s a strong connection between Dickens and William Powell Frith, who painted The Derby Day” says a sales clerk at the counter. “They were good friends, and both loved crowds. With his wife and his mistress, Frith sired 19 children, a remarkable total even by Victorian standards. And his most famous paintings include multitudes of people from different classes and occupations. He had much in common with Dickens, who also had hordes children and a mistress, and whose novels contain long lists of remarkable characters from all levels of society. In a way, their careers complement each other, one being visual, the other verbal.”

53.5  Making the connection Hence, on seeing the Tate’s version of The Derby Day, readers of Dickens might want to buy a new copy of Bleak House or Little Dorrit from the Tate shop. Or they might prefer a novel by a current British writer. Even if there were no connection between a work of fiction and the Tate’s paintings, such is the traffic that eventually someone will buy the book. Nevertheless, the mainstays of the stock are the catalogues and books concerning the oeuvres of various painters. The British Library attracts almost as many shoppers as London’s galleries, and occasionally there are inquiries about buying one of its treasures. There are rich persons in Texas and Tokyo who would spend 50 or 60 million dollars—perhaps a little more—for the Library’s Gutenberg Bible or the Lindisfarne Gospels, either of which would look delightful in a display case anchored in the lobby of an office tower. But the Library won’t part with such items. Instead, it directs people to its shop, where for less than a quid they can buy postcards of many of the Library’s unique manuscripts and books. On the shelves there’s a fine selection of books on books, biographies, and history monographs that librarians and other bibliophiles buy in quantities. “The problem people have in the Library shop is the serious temptation to buy too much,” says Paul Everett, a vacationing Australian archivist. “Books are heavier than you’d expect, especially when you pack them together in your suitcase. But you can’t resist those booklets with colour illustrations of the Beowulf manuscript and the Luttrell Psalter, and you walk away with a stack of them. Then you break your back dragging your luggage to the airport.”

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53.6  Rosetta Stone Equally tempting is the stock in the British Museum’s shop, which offers books on all aspects of the Museum’s collections. The shop is located in the center of the Great Court, which also houses the legendary Reading Room. Stacked high on tables are booklets concerning ancient artifacts such as the Rosetta Stone and the Flood Tablet, which contains part of the text of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Official museum guidebooks are available in various languages, and despite high prices, most sell quickly. No other British shop sells more postcards, not even the one in the Tower of London. “We see a lot of foreign teachers in here,” says Alan, a clerk responsible for replenishing the tables and shelves. “They want to take home instructional materials on the Museum’s collections, especially the newer DVDs. But the books and postcards are still popular. 1 think teachers ask their schools to pay for some of our products, and fair enough. They’re great resources for any classroom. That’s how I got interested in working for the Museum. My teachers used to pass around postcards of the Egyptian and Assyrian artifacts and the Elgin Marbles, and I was hooked. I won’t work here forever, but I’ll have a fascinating time for as long as I do. A regular visit to the Mummy Room is one of the perks of the job.” Alan notes that Museum shoppers buy large quantities of books, posters, and postcards in multiple copies for gifts. He suspects that many of the latter are shipped home by post. “People could add several kilograms to their luggage, and cause themselves grief during customs inspections back in America. Instead they’ll spend money in one of our local post offices, and avoid the aggravation. I think that we could bring in a good deal of revenue by offering more extensive gift-wrapping and packaging services on our shop floor, but then there’s the issue of space. There’s never enough in a museum, and museum shops are usually a lot smaller than they could be. Certainly ours is. You could double the space for the books, artifact replicas and jewelry, and you still wouldn’t have quite enough room. Our visitors leave with heavy loads.”

53.7  The Abbey Heavy purchasing is not as frequent in the shops of London’s notable churches. At Westminster Abbey, enormous crowds surge outside the entrance, and people wait for hours to gain admission. The Abbey shop, however, is small. Its stock consists mainly of postcards and booklets, with a selection of CDs and knickknacks. The Abbey is among Britain’s major tourist attractions, along with Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London; and yet the Abbey shop attracts a moderate number of shoppers. “Most people who come to the Abbey are too busy snapping pictures of the building’s exterior to visit the shop,” says Richard. He admits that while he has lived in London for over 40 years, he has visited the Abbey only once before. The crowds have always discouraged him.

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“But I teach biology at a local school, and I felt the desire to visit Darwin’s grave, which is in the north aisle of the nave. It doesn’t have much of a slab, really, considering his importance as a scientist. But then Shakespeare’s grave in Stratford isn’t impressive, either. I suppose I’d get much more from reading their books. And I wouldn’t have to put up with so many tourists.”

53.8  The grave matter of lunch Londoners are more comfortable with less crowded churches, particularly those that offer choral performances and other concerts, such as the Brompton Oratory and St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The latter is on the edge of Trafalgar Square and underwent restoration in 2008. It features the Café in the Crypt, an elegant cafeteria where in the past hundreds of burials took place. The bodies have been removed, but many grave slabs remain in the floor. After you enjoy a savory vol-au-vent and a glass of Chablis, you can slip into the St. Martin shop to browse in the selection of guidebooks, historical monographs, and works of popular theology. “We get a lot of musical tourists at St. Martin,” says Nancy, a retired sales manager who lives nearby and describes herself as a parishioner. “They’re much quieter than the mob that roars through the Abbey and the museums. And they buy lots of CDs from the St. Martin shop. I wish that visitors to the Abbey would keep their voices down and turn off their mobile phones. No, I don’t want to sound like a librarian, but the noise levels in London can be dreadful. And some of our street musicians don’t even know how to play their instruments.” At least Trafalgar Square doesn’t reek of pizza. (2012)

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Section I Corporate Concerns

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Confidentiality at risk: how the info-thief threatens your corporate information

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You look important, like somebody with a lot of power. A manager at a major bank? A big insurance broker? Perhaps an actuary, or a senior corporate lawyer, or a purchasing agent with big responsibilities? Let me buy you a drink. I’d love to hear more about your business. But first, let me tell you about mine. I’m a data scammer, an info-thief, a distributor of what I call “corporate intelligence.” I collect big chunks of confidential data from one organization, and sell it to another. Not everything that I do is dishonest or illegal, but often I operate on the margins of acceptable practice, and sometimes I commit fraud and other crimes to achieve my goals. I can’t help being smug. After all, I’ll probably never get caught. Despite the complexity of the Information Age, my work is straightforward. At a substantial cost, your company develops databases and directories and hard copy lists of data concerning everything from clients, products, and personnel to market projections, advertising, and specialized research. You may take these resources for granted. Years ago your V-P wrote a corporate confidentiality policy that was intended to protect them, but over time that policy has been forgotten, lost, or progressively ignored. At present that database of client names, addresses, telephone numbers, and policy information is largely unprotected. It resides on a shelf in the storage room, or in the corporate network, or in a workstation beside your office. It is rarely backed up. It would be easy for somebody to make a copy of it and give or sell it to me, and you would never find out. Once I have that precious data in my hands, I can sell it to numerous different buyers. Any outfit attempting to develop a mailing list for marketing purposes could be interested in a comprehensive data package regarding real estate in New York, London, and Los Angeles. I have it, up-to-date and accurate, including postal codes and email addresses. Why would a company spend 50 grand on a smaller package when they can get it from me at half that price or less? Of course insurers’ data are especially attractive. The insurance industry does a magnificent job of collecting, organizing, and updating the data without which it would be out of business. That’s why I’m always interesting in establishing contact— so to speak—with you. We’ve heard a lot about Internet fraud and electronic invasions of corporate systems by hackers, and with justification. But while insurers may now maintain sophisticated computer security systems to protect valuable data, they continue to overlook old-fashioned theft and fraud techniques that can potentially cause even greater problems than a hacker. Consider your office security procedures. You’ve spent money on a top-notch alarm system to foil burglars. You have security card access to all sensitive areas. You change Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00054-2 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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your electronic passwords regularly—at least you think you do. Your receptionist is constantly on the lookout for intruders. I commend you for making these efforts, but they won’t necessarily stop me. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, your company is a soft target. Let’s review your more obvious exposures. First, your corporate confidentiality policy is worthless. Almost nobody knows about it, and besides, it’s out-of-date. Your systems staff may have security procedures for their operations rooms, and they may have the latest firewalls and antivirus software. Outside the systems area, however, there is virtually no protection. Secondly, there are highly confidential and valuable materials scattered all over desks, in open shelves and file cabinets, and in unlocked file rooms. The recycling bins and wastepaper baskets are full of gold, as are the dumpsters by the back door. Thirdly, your company lacks procedures for confidential document destruction. Some of your departments have shredders, but not all. I don’t have to break into your office to get what I want. I can bribe an employee of the contract janitorial company that cleans your office after hours. He or she would be happy to accept a crisp $50 bill for every diskette or tape removed from your customer service and claims departments. Certainly I’m always happy to examine the contents of those big green garbage bags that he or she can bring me, and if I find something interesting, I can be very generous. Your contract staff are bonded? It sounds good, but bonding will not necessarily protect your confidential information. My crisp bills are tempting, and as I tell that young janitor, all I’m looking for is a small quantity of discarded paper, or a few diskettes. And you have so much paper, so many diskettes. Years ago in Toronto, an info-thief convinced a cleaning woman that he was doing an insurer a favor by getting her to trade his new diskettes and tapes for the company’s old ones. She’d give him the heavily used ones from the insurer’s systems and marketing departments, and he’d give her an envelope of cash and new diskettes or tapes to serve as replacements. She thought that she was doing everyone a favor. At least that’s what she told the police. She lost her job, poor thing. But they never caught the info-thief. They rarely do. Numerous outsiders have access to your confidential information. Lawyers, systems vendors and other salespeople, consultants, and external auditors walk in and out of your office every day. You can ask them to sign nondisclosure forms, or you can rely on their notions of client confidentiality or old-fashioned honor. You think that’s wise? Quite right. After all, who ever heard of a crooked lawyer, or a cash-strapped consultant, or a salesperson who needed cash? Urban legends, every one. Give everyone an identity badge and access to your network and confidential paper. Allow them to wander through your offices unchallenged, even after hours. Do you store records off-site? You do. I know this because your receptionist told me so. She assumes that the name and location of the firm that stores the backup copies of your electronic mailing list are public knowledge. Anyway, I can see the off-site storage vendor’s truck parked in the receiving bay, every afternoon. I can also recognize the driver, who for a small fee will show me what you’re shipping to the warehouse. He’ll even let me make copies of your materials en route to the warehouse. There are also employees who work in the warehouse who will show me any documents I need. There’s a photocopier in the warehouse office. There’s a fax machine.

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A corrupt warehouse contact has even emailed information to me. It has all been done before, many times. It may be difficult for you to admit, but your company might employ a permanent staff member who is willing to sell your information. We worry about crime among senior managers who are well placed to commit big-time fraud. But even a junior clerk in the mailroom has access to classified files and can find ways to obtain the keys to the locked cabinet or closet. Everybody can use extra cash, from the programmer who has reached his Mastercard limit, to the adjuster who likes to visit the casino too often for her own good, to the underwriter who’s having trouble paying off that student loan. In fact, anyone your company employs is a potential source of ill-gotten information. But I don’t want you to think that your company is a haven for crooks. You can trust almost every employee, most of the time. I must pick my contacts carefully, I assure you. And when I can’t rely on greed and dishonesty, I can depend on human folly to supply me with much of what I need. One of the advantages of computers is their ability to store large amounts of data in a very small space. A single laptop can contain your company’s three-year marketing plan, your executive salary files, and your quarterly claims report. You shouldn’t leave your laptop in a plane or cab, but lots of people forget what they’re carrying as they make a dash for the baggage carousel or rifle through their pockets for the appropriate tip. The stewardess or the cabbie ends up with your laptop. Whoops! I’ve been known to pick up your laptop or briefcase before anyone noticed, and I’ve made it look as if I’m running to return it to you. Occasionally I appear at lost-and-found counters looking desperate for my (actually your) data-laden property: “Yes ma’am, it’s a computer. A laptop. It’s an IBM product, and…Yes, that’s it. Thank heavens you kept it for me.” I know a slightly bent journalist who can make good use of those salary files, and the marketing plan will interest a number of competitors. Info-thieves have created a new and exciting computer game that only they are eager to play. Humans can also demonstrate their folly by talking too much in the wrong place. What I overhear in planes, subways, restaurants, and bars can be as valuable as the tapes that I can steal from your office. People assume that I’m not listening, but I am. People want to impress me with their important positions in cutting-edge companies, and as long as they’re talking, I’ll encourage them, buy them liquor, flatter them, ask searching questions in confidential whispers, and appear constantly impressed with them. Their companies have no confidentiality policies, and nobody has warned them about people like me. My apologies. I’ve been hogging the conversation. Let me buy you another drink, and then you can tell me all about yourself, and your company, and your business operations. I’m all ears. (2000)

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E-pest alert

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People are deluged with email and other electronic communications. How can they control the flood? Every August, one of the more powerful CEOs in the US insurance sector stops shaving. He packs a knapsack with beachcombing gear and flies to Vancouver. There he catches a ferry to one of the Gulf Islands. He rents a shack by the water and counts eagles and killer whales for a month. Sometimes he carves figurines out of driftwood. He paints watercolors and goes fishing. But no matter what he does, he has one goal on that island: to avoid all electronic communications. Imagine: no telephone, pager, voice mail, palm-pilot, or email. No demands for return calls, no spam, no faxed advertisements for another seminar on Excellence. Our CEO watches the tide come in and go out, and doesn’t need to respond to anything more than a jerk on his line—that’s a fish, not a difficult client. This is paradise. Meanwhile, back at the office, everybody is communicating with everybody else. Constantly. There are so many ways to contact everybody, from the most junior clerk to the most senior manager. Nowadays business cards contain more data on a person’s telecommunications access than anything else. Customers are finding it easier to discuss products with suppliers, who can answer questions and solve problems faster than ever before. Over the past decade, however, the volume of electronic communications has grown exponentially and forced everyone to deal with e-pests. Characterized by insidiousness and the ability to complicate office operations in a few nanoseconds, some e-pests have hit the front page. For example, viruses have disrupted websites and caused insurers’ networks to lose data. Electronic denial of service attacks has caused panic and worldwide problems. Every day, hackers discover new ways to break into systems and disrupt online services. Other e-pests are mundane, and we tend to ignore them even when they waste large amounts of staff time and energy. Email overload can be the most challenging e-pest for insurers. Every morning we arrive at the office to find 20 or more emails from different sources. How many are important? Today in your electronic mailbox you find four messages from adjusters who need information regarding current claims. Another is from your Computer Services department, asking you to back up all essential data on the corporate network. Two are from managers who need to know your holiday schedule. All of these deserve prompt attention. But three emails offer you condos in Florida. Another promises fantastic returns on an investment that sounds questionable. Two are “Hey, how’s it going?” messages from colleagues in branch offices. The rest concern a charity golf tournament, photos from last year’s departmental Christmas party, descriptions of weight loss programs, and corny jokes from an old high school chum. Reading emails and deciding if and how to answer them can take hours. Some might include lengthy attachments. Others have been written in haste, and lack clarity or essential Front-Line Librarianship. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102729-5.00055-4 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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information. One muddled message can force its author and receiver to ping-pong follow-up messages back and forth for days, as they try to sort out who meant what and why. In fact, many of these email loops can be untangled by a brief telephone conversation. But we depend on voice-mail systems to catch all incoming calls, and voice-mail boxes are often full. In some offices, voice mail has become as time-consuming and irritating an e-pest as email. Keeping up with messages from these technologies can occupy most of a staff member’s time and turn a proactive job into unending backlog management. New electronic communications products offer numerous opportunities for interconnections. You can retrieve your email on your cell phone, and use your laptop to deliver voice mail. It is reasonable to assume that email and voice-mail volumes will continue to increase. These technologies cannot guarantee continually improving productivity, however, and if users become even more frustrated with e-pests, many kinds of interconnections could prove counterproductive. Ironically, one consequence of electronic interconnections has been a greater dependence on paper. Whereas in the 1970s we anticipated the paperless office, now we see that technologies such as email lead to a greater demand for paper. If you’re not sure what to do with that email from your VP, you can print it and put it in your in-basket for future consideration. If the email could be included in an existing paper file, you can print and file it. You can also forward it electronically to various colleagues, who can print and file and forward it to other colleagues. Paper salespersons are aware of the practice and know how to benefit from it. First, they find out which companies have the most advanced electronic operations. Then they make sure that the purchasers of those companies receive the right brochures, catalogues, and order forms. Not surprisingly, paper mills and printers adore paper-dependent businesses. How can we maintain high productivity levels and avoid falling prey to e-pests? In many cases, the most effective solutions are the simplest. You can hire consultants to investigate the problem, and they will deliver three-ring binders crammed with policies and procedures for electronic communicators. How long will it take to implement those policies throughout your company? Months, possibly years. What you need is a brief series of guidelines that you can distribute to every staff member. These guidelines will control e-pests while helping to maintain corporate security and efficiency. Your staff will welcome the first guideline, which sets a limit to the amount of time that they spend dealing with email and voice mail each working day. Parkinson’s Law states that a task expands to fill time: allow yourself 5 h to deal with the day’s email, and you will use those hours to read and answer (or download and file) those messages. But cut that time allowance to 90 min, and you will find yourself making the necessary decisions and taking the necessary shortcuts to complete the task quickly. You delete all spam immediately and answer your more important email as concisely as possible. You handle emails with chatty friends diplomatically, with suggestions of a get-together after work or an off-hours phone call. You explain that face-to-face meetings are more enjoyable and more private than any electronic dialogue. Time limits on electronic communications also reduce stress and burnout. It’s hard to relax while you stare at a screen and pound a keyboard. It’s also likely that many carpal tunnel cases have been aggravated by the long hours that computer users spend replying to email. Emphasize the importance of taking a break from the keyboard, and remember to set a good example.

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The second guideline is to download email to paper only when absolutely necessary. Don’t use paper to procrastinate. Deal with email electronically and try to avoid cramming already stuffed in-baskets and file folders with hard copy emails. Ironically, some people download emails to paper, then scanning paper email messages for imaging systems. Parkinson would have loved it. Less popular at first is the third guideline, which recommends that computer users avoid electronic temptations during working hours. In other words, no recreational browsing or shopping online for household goods at the office. Moreover, access to electronic games should be strictly limited, so that staff members can take longer breaks from their screens and keyboards. This guideline can also enhance computer security by reducing the corporate network’s exposure to viruses that lie in wait for unsuspecting surfers. While staff members might miss their electronic entertainment when this guideline is introduced, eventually they will appreciate the opportunities to get up and stretch, visit the cafeteria, and relax those tired eyes. If you can solve a problem in 2 min by phone, why spend half an hour composing an email? That’s the gist of the fourth guideline: dial and discuss, rather than keyboard and complicate. Often a brief phone call will accomplish all that’s necessary, and you won’t be tempted to download another email onto paper. Time management skills are essential in the electronic world. As TM specialists have recommended for a century, you should respond to important messages at once. This is true for email, voice mail, and snail mail. The fifth guideline warns you not to let incoming correspondence in any form build up. If you must postpone your answer owing to volume and other commitments, schedule a reasonable time to reply. Or you can delegate the responsibility to an assistant. But don’t ignore messages or abandon them in your in-basket. Finally, delete unnecessary messages whenever possible. If you need to mull over an attachment concerning annual claims or business growth, you have a reason to keep it. As soon as you’re sure that you no longer need it, however, hit that delete key. Don’t transmit obsolete information to colleagues as a way to get it off your desk and avoid using the corporate network as an electronic data dump. Electronic communications will always be with us, so it’s wise to implement guidelines to deal with the e-pests that can infest any office. Deleting spam will never be as enjoyable as counting eagles and killer whales, but it must be done. And perhaps on your next vacation you can leave cyberspace behind and find an island paradise of your own. Guidelines to control e-pests • Set time limits on daily email handling. • Avoid downloading email onto paper. • Avoid electronic temptations: recreational browsing, shopping for household goods, etc. • Use the telephone if possible rather than compose lengthy email messages. • Don’t let incoming email or other correspondence pile up. Deal with it promptly. • Delete, delete, delete. Don’t save obsolete messages.

  

 

(2001)

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Settle into your seat and let the aircraft whisk you into the sky. Relax with a mystery novel or newspaper and sip your drink. Your flight should be smooth. There’s just one problem, which you might not discover until you reach your destination. It’s your mobile phone. You left it in the airport lounge. You were checking some market data on your laptop and working on notes for tomorrow’s meeting, and somehow that phone hid behind your cocktail glass. You didn’t see it as you packed up your briefcase. Now it’s gone. You tell yourself that it’s only a hunk of plastic and wires, that you can replace it easily. Then you realize that it’s not the hardware that’s important. It’s the new promotional campaign plan in the phone’s memory. That unreleased plan is strictly confidential. At least it was until I found your phone and pocketed it for resale to your competitors. I’ll check out the electronic files that it contains for any useful information later. Let’s say that I’m in competitive intelligence. That’s a nice way of saying that I hang out in public places and wait for people like you to lose your luggage and other belongings. I know about the valuable information that realtors carry in their laptops, mobile phones, and digital cameras. Sometimes I scoop items that travelers inadvertently leave behind. Sometimes I make phony claims at the Lost-and-Found counter: it’s amazing how willing the clerk is to hand me other people’s property. And occasionally I steal items, such as the laptop that senior manager left in the restaurant when he visited the washroom, or the flash drive that the CFO left in her pocket when she hung her Burberry on the coatrack by the hotel’s front door. What strikes me is the amount of data that you can carry in such a small piece of hardware. Not long ago, people carried electronic address books along with a laptop that held a limited number of files. Now they can carry comparatively enormous amounts of data. That humble address book has become a full corporate directory and key client index. The laptop that once held a series of memos now contains copies of proposals, contracts, letters, emails, and sales files, with highly confidential comments regarding a big client’s financial status. Into the smallest mobile phone you can input thousands of files, including your company’s complete customer directory. What once was a single-purpose tool is now capable of doing a number of jobs. The TV built into the cell phone is no longer science fiction; these days you take such functionality for granted. Most mobile phones contain digital cameras. A digital camera can be connected to the Internet and allow people to perform various office functions from the field. Interconnectivity offers numerous options but also increases the risk of data loss and fraud to you and your company.

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To protect corporate travelers and the information they carry, many companies are instituting electronic “loose lips” guidelines. These cover almost every situation that an office manager or agent will face while traveling: Be site-sensitive. Remember that thieves prefer those public places frequented by tourists and business travelers: airports, train and bus stations, hotels, restaurants, and famous sites. And don’t think that your hometown is the only honest place on earth. Your local airport has probably seen a number of thefts. Never leave hardware of any size unattended. Before leaving your table to visit the washroom, put your mobile phone in your pocket. It may be inconvenient to take your laptop with you into that tiny cubicle at Heathrow or Gatwick, but to lose it and its data could cause a serious breach in corporate security. Never underestimate the value of data that you carry with you. What seems trivial to you is pure gold to a corporate intelligence scammer. Be discreet. Don’t flaunt your technology. Don’t offer the person beside you on the plane a demonstration of your handheld computer’s capabilities. If you must use a laptop in a public place, make sure that no one can peer over your shoulder at the screen. If you discuss business over a mobile phone, beware of eavesdroppers. Telling your VP that you’re tired of lugging around a briefcase crammed with negotiable paper is not acceptable over a cell phone from an airport—unless you want to lose that load. Don’t travel with technology that you don’t need. It’s one thing to pack an extra pair of socks. It’s another to carry your entire client database. In fact we tend to carry far too much data, most of which we’ll never need. Take what you need on a business trip, but don’t take your entire IT department. And if you’re traveling to Mexico or Florida for a holiday, do you really need your laptop? If you’re not using it, lock it away. Most reputable hotels have vaults or secure storage areas for valuable items including pocket-sized IT. Remember that thieves love hotels, and that despite increased security, theft from rooms and poolside lockers is still common. Pickpockets are drawn to sightseeing tours, so hand over that portable device to the concierge before you leave the hotel. Back up valuable data at the office. Before you leave town, ensure that your draft of that speech to the AGM is backed up in your office. If you lose your laptop on the road, you’ll still have a draft. Some travelers back up working papers and other data by simply emailing it to their office address. You don’t want to gain an appreciation for an electronic document by suffering the consequences of its loss. Record any serial numbers or identifying marks. Two mobile phones are turned in to an airport Lost and Found. They’re the same brand. One’s yours, the other isn’t. If you have a tiny label with your initials glued to your phone, it will be much easier to identify. If there are no identifying marks, the counter clerk might refuse to hand it over. The same applies to laptops. You can boot up the machine that you know is yours and make it obvious that those underwriting data are yours, but the clerk is not obliged to accept your word. In some parts of the world, the bureaucracy around a lost-and-found claim is so complicated that travelers will sometimes walk away without an item that definitely belongs to them. Filling out the forms might cause you to miss your flight. But identifying marks or a hard copy record of a serial number often

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persuade the clerk to release your machine. After all, how many thieves have your initials, or keep a record of that serial number? Hide the logo. Don’t look like an attractive target. Thieves have excellent taste in luggage. They try to steal only the best, which often contains the most interesting IT. If you’re carrying something valuable, don’t pack it in Gucci. Avoid carrying cases that announce name brands. And avoid using your business card as a bag label. Why would you tell a thief or potential kidnapper that you’re a senior manager or a gold medal winner? Some companies also recommend that traveling employees dress informally when not conducting business. If an item goes missing, inform the police. Don’t wait until you’re home to report a stolen laptop. You’ll get a more effective reaction from local authorities if you contact them quickly, and from the site of the theft. The police can be not only helpful but also adept in hunting down thieves. It’s possible that the police know whom to question, since the suspect has been one many times before. There have been numerous cases in which foreign police catch the thief, recover the stolen item, and ship it to the owner at no charge. If an item is permanently lost, inform your company. If your missing IT hardware contains data regarding security codes or network access, or any sensitive information, it’s best to let your company know about the loss as soon as possible. Then your corporate security unit and IT department can change codes and protect in-house data. Of course admitting that you lost your laptop in an airport is embarrassing, but not as much as an accusation of covering up a serious mistake. Besides, most managers are sympathetic toward those who report an IT loss quickly. Who hasn’t lost something valuable at some point? If you follow these guidelines, you’ll frustrate most criminals on the road. You can cruise five miles high, and the only thing you’ll leave behind is the cocktail server’s tip. (2002)

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Index Note: ‘Page numbers followed by “f” indicate figures, “t” indicate tables.’ A Accounts Payable Department, 215 Adult Christmas reading, 136 Adult classics shelves, 32–33 Adult Services, 48 Aging population, service demand, 45 Air Wonder Stories, 13 Alberta public library, 11 Alternative librarianship, 43, 45 Antiquarian bookshops, 232–233 Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA), 211–212 Athletes’ biographies, 19 A Time of Gifts, 23–24 Atlases, 22 Auction records, 44 Audiobooks, 177–178 Autobiographies, 17 B Baby Boomers, 225–226 Balanced reading diet, 6 Barchester Towers, 31 Barometer rising, 129 Beard-free approach, 137 Beowulf, 25 Bibles, 228 Bibliographies, 44 Biggles book, 39 Biography collections, 17–20 Big Prediction, 72 Book circulations effects, 11 Bookselling styles, 239–242 Books of Blood, 28 Boredom electronic guidelines, 56 firm’s corporate culture, 56–57 incidence, social settings, 55 library manuals, 57 long-term effects, 55 manual authors guideline, 56

Modern Library edition, Lassitudo, 55 qualities of, 55–56 British library cutbacks cookery books, 75 debt, post-secondary education, 78 facility maintenance standards, 76 media campaigns, 79 National Health Service (NHS), 76 perseverance, 79 rebellious spirit, 77, 77f staffing levels, 76 technical material, 76 textbooks cost, 78 Trafalgar Square, 75 British Museum and British Library, 233 Bronzino’s paintings, 105–106 Bug-eyed monsters (BEMs), 13–14 C Calfskin cartography, 244–245 Cambridge School of Horror, The, 26–27 Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), 213 Canadian librarians, 127 travel and site-seeing schedules, 128 Card catalogues, 37 Cat care programs Events Room, 157, 160 fame, 161–162 health problems, 157–158 nutrition, 158–159 Pet Care display, 157 PowerPoint presentations, 158 vaccinations, 158 Wildlife Officer, 160 Cellular conversations, 47 Childhood books, 35 Children’s Literature and Young Adult Services, 175 Christmas Carol, 185

278

Christmas programs adult Christmas reading, 136 beard-free approach, 137 Christmas Carol, 185 Christmas tree, 135–136 circulation counters, 135–136 cookery books, 136 Crafts Drop-In program, 186 craft workshops, 136 Easter eggs, 184 facilities management, 137–138 limited seating, 186 plastic Halloween pumpkins, 184 programming budget, 185–186 reading shelf, 136 seasonal decorations, 135–136 Singing Librarian, 183 storytime, 184 twinkling tree, 184 Zimmer frames, 184 Christmas tree, 135–136 Circulation counter service Bronzino’s paintings, 105–106 damage responsibility, 106 division of labour, 107 library policies, 107 qualifications, 107–108 returning water-damaged items, 107 security, 108–109 City of Readers, 232 Club talk, 176–177 Codex form book, 95 Collier’s Encyclopedia, 83 Colombo, 10 Competitive intelligence, 273 Concise Oxford Dictionary, 93 Confessions, library Santa arts and crafts session, 146 Christmas programs, 145 circulation desk staffers, 146 Grinch-like facial expression, 147–148 library’s Polaroid camera, 148 library-wide ornaments, 145–146 reference desk, 146 Santa assignment, 147 Cookery books, 75, 136, 228 Cookery events backup components, 123 conclusion, 125

Index

date selection, 122 learning opportunities, 121 with lectures and audiovisual presentations, 122 microphone, 123 planning and preparations, 121 preregistration, 123 promotion, 122–123 set up and test, 124 signage, 123–124 troubleshooting, 124 Corporate gifts children’s books, 114 gift-giving occasions, 115 healthy lifestyle books, 114 image-conscious corporation, 113 International Book Day, 114 quality books, 114 Corporate information, confidentiality computer security systems, 265 cutting-edge companies, 267 electronic passwords, 265–266 Information Age, 265 insurance industry, 265 lost-and-found counters, 267 marketing departments, 266 sign nondisclosure forms, 266 Corporate intranet management, 43 Corporate travelers and information protection back up data, 274 hide the logo, 275 item theft, police compliant, 275 serial numbers/identifying marks record, 274–275 site-sensitive, 274 unattended hardware, 274 Crafts Drop-In program, 186 Crime fiction, 9–12 Culture, 22–23 Cyberpunk novels, 14 D Dealers’ catalogues, 44 Death by demand, 9–10 Death on the Nile, 10 Destination shopping zone, 241 Detective novels, 11 Dewey-era organization charts, 205

Index

Dickensian alternatives, 4–5 Disney publications, 36 Domestic libraries, love and disorder Collier’s Encyclopedia, 83 e-book reader, 81 hard copy books, 81 neurosis, 84–85 serendipity, 82 Swedish equipment, 82–83 Dracula, 26–27 Dress codes and styles comfort and safety, 103 hair style, 100–101 high-altitude footwear, 101–102 informal clothes, 102 Ontario public library code, 100 political correctness, 100 ‘respectful’ trimming, facial hair, 100 shirtless men, 100 slob alert, 99–100 “suitable footwear”, 102 in summer season, 102–103 in winter season, 102 E Eastern Approaches, 5 Electronic address books, 273 Electronic communications products, 270 Electronic resources, 215 Electronic vs. paper resources, 22 English horror, 25–26 Enterprise risk management (ERM), 64 E-pest alert, 269–272 Events Room, cat care programs, 157, 160 Exercise manuals, 5 F Frankenstein, 26–27 Future of Information, The, 71 G Gothic problem patron, 14 Graham’s public library branch, 180 Guidebooks, 21–22 H Halifax reference librarian slips, 231 Halloween, 139f

279

adult fiction, 141 costumes, 142 events, 143 ghost stories, 141 information science, 139 literature search, 139 paranormal entities, 139 plastic bats, 139–140 Republicanism, 142 Scary Storytime, 140 school libraries, 143 Handmaid’s Tale, The, 14 Hard times survival balanced perspective, 63 bargains, 65 economic downturns, 65 enterprise risk management (ERM), 64 fund-raising, 66 layoffs, 66 management models, 64 part-time job, 66 periodical subscriptions, 65 purchase and implementation, new technology, 64 recovery, 66 reduced budgets, 66 Statement of Library Goals, 64 stock markets, 63 Vision Statement, 64 Hardy Boys series, 38 Harry Potter books, Rowling power, 15–16 Hawthorne’s tales, 4–5 High-quality television/movie production, 26 High spots, 209, 226–227 Hill Street Blues, 10 Historical personage/celebrity, biography, 18 Hobbit, The, 35–36 Horror fiction, 25–28 Household improvement books, 5 Hugo Award, 13 I I can be a librarian, children’s nonfiction, 37 Information Age, 265 Information-based job, 43 International Book Day, 114

280

J Jacksonville Public Library, 59 Jack the Ripper, 6 Job-oriented training, 198 K Kandahar Province, 149 Keynoting appearance, 72–73 Big Prediction, 72 Future of Information, The, 71 information sector, 71 mingling, 74 PowerPoint presentations, 73 question periods, 74 staff room conversations, 71 truth moment, 74 winning smile, 72 L Learning assessment, 197 Left Hand of Darkness, The, 13 Librarian appearances, 61 Librarian’s London antiquarian bookshops, 232–233 British Museum and British Library, 233 circulation clerk, 233 City of Readers, 232 English-speaking world, 231 Halifax reference librarian slips, 231 historical sites, 232 WH Smith book outlet, 234 Library and Information Science, 215 Library and Information Technician Program, 60 Library conference, 44 Library education history academic bulletin boards, 243 Calfskin cartography, 244–245 medieval zoology, 245 modern public library, 246 New Library Building, 244 Special Air Services (SAS), 246 textual meditation, 245–246 Time Shock, 244 Library garbage cookbooks, 223 Criminal Code, 221–222

Index

negative effects, 222 out-of-print items, 222 Passage, Penguin edition, 221 win–win scenario, 223 Library science training, 44 Library’s neighbors British Columbia’s Interior, 90 garlic atmosphere, 88 mall management, 90 municipal authorities, 87–88 National Geographic, 87 nonprofit organization, 87 Toronto investment firm, 91 unhappy hour, 89–90 Library technician automated systems, 196 budgetary priorities, 196 Children’s Services, 196 conservation techniques, 196–197 electronic records management, 196–197 job-oriented training, 198 learning assessment, 197 Non-Book Materials, 196 practicums, 197 public and private sectors, 196–197 salaries and benefits, 195 students demand, 195–196 Lifelong learning air-conditioning system, 199 career enhancement, 200 cerebral workout, 200 job candidates, 200–201 problem-solving skills, 199 reference greens and browns, 201–202 tech services, 201 voice activation (VA) technology, 199 Lifelong memories, oxford visit Divinity School features, 252 English Civil War, 252 Native American artifacts, 251 Old Bodleian Library, 251–252 Pre-Raphaelite paintings, 251 “The Bird & Baby”, 254 work quality, 253 Literacy growth, 225–226 London’s south bank book market book dealers, 235 children’s books, 237

Index

East Bloc economies, 236 Festival Hall, 235 Popular Reading shelves, 237 Pride and Prejudice, 237 Razor’s Edge, The, 238 William books, 236 London’s tourist attractions Abbey shop, 260–261 Library shop, 259 National Gallery, 258 office decoration, 257 Ophelia cards and postcards, 259 Rosetta Stone, 260 Tate publications online, 258 titles selection, 258 Lost-and-founds, 267 emotional response, 155 handguns, 156 library staff members, 156 lottery winner, 154–155 National Geographic, 153 nonfolding models, 153 orthodontic paraphernalia, 154 plastic duck, 156 prescription data, 156 reference desk, 153 wandering wallet, 154 M Magic kingdom, 36–37 Map collections, 21–22 Marketing and sales, 240–241 Medieval zoology, 245 Memoirs, 17 Military biographies, 17 Mississauga supermarket, 227 Modern Library edition, Lassitudo, 55 Moonlight sonata, librarians hard work debt management and fitness, 51 exercise programs, 51 food processing and distribution firms, 52–53 for fun and profit, 53–54 piano skills, adult amateurs, 53 retirement savings, 52 Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The, 10 My Family and Other Animals, 23–24 Mystery madness, 9–12 Mystery Writers of America, 10

281

N National Health Service (NHS), 76 New Library Building, 244 No-cell policy, 49 Non-Book Materials, 196 Novice collectors, 225 O Ontario public library code, 100 Ottawa Public Library, 128 P Paper-dependent business, 270 Paper management, 216 Penguin Complete Ghost Stories, The, 26 Personal passion, workplace, 38–39, 38f Pet Care display, 157 Poe’s short stories, 4–5 Police procedurals, 9 Politicians biographies, 17 Print resources, 21 Public lectures, 225 Public libraries, 5 Barchester Towers, 31 classic shelves, 32 decision-making, 32 global warming, 29 Green Eggs and Ham, 29 librarian deals, 43 middle-aged university graduates, 30 shelving politics, 32–33 wisdom literature, 31 Published diaries and journals, 17 R Reading club, science fiction, 16 Reading preferences, 7 Records management (RM) Canadian law, 205–206 chaos junkies, 205 CIA, 211–214 compilation, 206–207 confidentiality levels, 208 data loss prevention, 208–209 Dewey-era organization charts, 205 document destruction, 208 hard drives, 205–206 library archives, 209

282

Records management (Continued) life cycle, 210 office managers Accounts Payable Department, 215 archival treasures, 217 components, 217–218 electronic resources, 215 Library and Information Science, 215 multimedia inventories, 216 paper management, 216 Post-it notes, 215 responsibilities, 218 security features and environmental controls, 217 tax department, 216–217 responsibilities, 206 retention scheduling, 207–208 sources, 210 standard operating procedure, 209 Tech Services, 205 Remembrance Day, 59 graphic photographs, 150 Kandahar Province, 149 Lancaster bomber pilot’s leather helmet, 150 Legion blazers and berets, 149–150 library policy, 152 snipers, 152 war-related materials, 151 year-round circulation, 151–152 Renaissance designs, 59 Republicanism, 142 Restoration costs, 227–228 Rome-based mysteries, 11 S Safe spots, wheelchair patrons, 117 Safeway neuromancer, 15 Science fiction, 13–16 Science Wonder Quarterly, 13 Science Wonder Stories, 13 Sears Catalogue, 36–37 Seasonal change, 3 Seasonal selection pattern, 3 Secondhand book shops, 12 Selection tools, 10–11 Seniors anecdotal evidence, 172 audiobooks, 177–178

Index

Children’s Literature and Young Adult Services, 175 children’s programs, 172–173 Christmas programs. See Christmas programs club talk, 176–177 e-books, 177–178 financial concerns, 181–182 Graham’s public library branch, 180 health, 180 interest, 181 library architects, 172 Library School, 175 pet care, 181 reading club, 187–192 romance and children’s treasures, 177 service improvement, 173 Storytime sessions in, 178 TV tie-ins, 176 Vancouver Public Library, 171 Vancouver’s Stanley Park, 179 Western Canadian wildlife, 179 wisdom/humanitarian, 182 Shelving politics, 32–33 Singing Librarian, 183 Social anthropology, 5 Solitary serving detective mysteries and science fiction, 165 “in-reach”, 164–165 pet-related concerns, 164 Post-It note, 164 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 163 reference desk, 166 reference interview, 164 self-checkout systems, 163 service experience, 166 shiny brogues, 166–167 social media, 163 Special Air Services (SAS), 246 Special visitors, library tour building’s orientation are landscaping, 132 facilities and furniture, 133 library’s architect selection process, 131 location, 132 professional import, 134 public space layout, 133

Index

shelving, 133–134 sign design and placement, 132 staff workspace, 132–133 vision, 131–132 Spirited business, 239–242 Star power, 61–62 Statement of Library Goals, 64 T Tech Services, 205 Textual meditation, 245–246 Time Machine, The, 36 Time management skills, 271 Tolkien-induced fantasy book, 35–36 Toronto Reference Library, 127 Tourist phrase books, 21–22 Travel collections, 21–24 Travel literature, 21 early, 22–23 modern, 23 Trekkies, 14 Tribes, 226 U University of British Columbia School of Librarianship, 43–44 Urban poor, 67–70 Used copies, purchase, 12 V Vancouver Public’s Central Library, 67 Voice-mail systems, 270 W War of the Worlds, The, 36 Wheelchair patrons attitudes, 118, 118f BC public library, 117

283

independence on wheels, 119 individual respect, 120 library policies and practices, 119 safe spots, 117 While the Clock Ticked, 38 Whispering Statue, The, 38 WH Smith outlet, 234 air quality, 247 global economy, 249–250 Heathrow Express, 248–249 impulse, 247–248 one-stop shopping, 249 Oxford students, 250 Oxford tutors, 248 Wireless communications cell-free zone, 48–49 cellular conversations, 47 kids and parents, 47–48 World Science Fiction Society, 13 Worldwide weeding books with paper pages, 94 codex form book, 95 Concise Oxford Dictionary, 93 digital culture, 94 disposal manner, 93–94 electronic gadgetry, 95 garbage bag, 93 hard copy books, 96–97 residential design, 96 technical service departments, 96 Z Zimmer frames, 184

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