I’ve never met a librarian I didn’t like.
I’ve often wondered if it was a fun job, surrounded by books and reference materials. It sounds perfect, but I know every task has its ups and downs. I loved teaching, but I hated giving grades—and going to meetings!
Nevertheless, no matter what the internal stresses, librarians have been uniformly patient, kind, and helpful. I’ve had many a contact over the years with a multitude of the ilk and they have my complete respect.
This love affair began as a youngster at the East Orange, New Jersey public library established, as were so many others, by the philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie. Back then books had pockets on the inside back cover. When I checked one out, the librarian would stamp a card with the due date and slip it into the pocket. She (librarians almost always were women back then) would smile and remind me to be sure to get it back in time so I wouldn’t have to pay a fine.
Sometimes, though, I had to come up with a nickel, annihilating my allowance, and the same librarian, still smiling, said she hoped this wouldn’t happen again. I learned smiles accompanied most transactions with this special breed.
As I grew older the need for help increased. Not to find books to read, but to assist with obtaining materials for study and research. On any number of occasions it was a librarian who pointed me in the right direction.
This all happened at a variety of locations. My college library that gave me two degrees. Bell Telephone Laboratories’ outstanding technical library. New York University’s graduate mathematics library. The university library in which I spent many an hour during my tenure as a math professor.
Sometimes my request did not have an obvious solution. The librarian mantra seemed to be, “Let me try just one more thing.” And one more thing turned out to be the norm. This was nowhere more true than when requesting an interlibrary loan. My university has a great library, but it doesn’t contain everything. Often in my research I would come across an obscure reference I didn’t have the slightest idea how to find. The librarian would sink his or her teeth into it as the greatest challenge. Sometimes it took a while, but there never was a failure.
A few years ago I came to realize a librarian now has more concerns than when I was a child, concerns never considered then. I am terrible at foreign languages. I took three years of French in high school. That enabled me to say a sentence while in Paris, the reply to which often was a delightfully accented, “Perhaps we should speak English.” But it did allow me to pass a language requirement for my degree. I also attended a night course in Russian for a couple of years which came in handy for the second language requirement when I proved you could pass the test without any true understanding of the language.
French, and most certainly Russian, have little use in my daily living. But I believe Spanish might be helpful. So periodically I try to learn a little, allowing enough time between attempts to have forgotten everything acquired previously. Once I thought it might help if I read children’s books in Spanish, so I went to my local public library and entered the youth section. Shortly a librarian arrived and challenged my presence. I explained what I was looking for and, of course, she immediately switched to helpful mode. But she explained they had to be so careful to make sure adults weren’t preying on the kids. What a world!
I wonder how hard it has been for librarians to adapt to the changes of modern society: digital books, CDs, DVDs, computers. There was talk for a while about libraries becoming irrelevant. I think that has died down as librarians have interpreted their task in their standard way: serve the public. Now the downtrodden can find moments of peace in reading rooms, folks with no digital access can use library computers, music and movies and audio books can be checked out, eBooks can be downloaded to your device for a fixed time period. And there still is the reference assistance that hasn’t changed in goal, just techniques, over the years.
When I seek help from a librarian, I tend not to think a lot about how it was achieved. But if I look back over a long life, I realize the great benefit I’ve derived from these wonderful people.
So the next time you see one, say, “Thank you.”
I’ve often wondered if it was a fun job, surrounded by books and reference materials. It sounds perfect, but I know every task has its ups and downs. I loved teaching, but I hated giving grades—and going to meetings!
Nevertheless, no matter what the internal stresses, librarians have been uniformly patient, kind, and helpful. I’ve had many a contact over the years with a multitude of the ilk and they have my complete respect.
This love affair began as a youngster at the East Orange, New Jersey public library established, as were so many others, by the philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie. Back then books had pockets on the inside back cover. When I checked one out, the librarian would stamp a card with the due date and slip it into the pocket. She (librarians almost always were women back then) would smile and remind me to be sure to get it back in time so I wouldn’t have to pay a fine.
Sometimes, though, I had to come up with a nickel, annihilating my allowance, and the same librarian, still smiling, said she hoped this wouldn’t happen again. I learned smiles accompanied most transactions with this special breed.
As I grew older the need for help increased. Not to find books to read, but to assist with obtaining materials for study and research. On any number of occasions it was a librarian who pointed me in the right direction.
This all happened at a variety of locations. My college library that gave me two degrees. Bell Telephone Laboratories’ outstanding technical library. New York University’s graduate mathematics library. The university library in which I spent many an hour during my tenure as a math professor.
Sometimes my request did not have an obvious solution. The librarian mantra seemed to be, “Let me try just one more thing.” And one more thing turned out to be the norm. This was nowhere more true than when requesting an interlibrary loan. My university has a great library, but it doesn’t contain everything. Often in my research I would come across an obscure reference I didn’t have the slightest idea how to find. The librarian would sink his or her teeth into it as the greatest challenge. Sometimes it took a while, but there never was a failure.
A few years ago I came to realize a librarian now has more concerns than when I was a child, concerns never considered then. I am terrible at foreign languages. I took three years of French in high school. That enabled me to say a sentence while in Paris, the reply to which often was a delightfully accented, “Perhaps we should speak English.” But it did allow me to pass a language requirement for my degree. I also attended a night course in Russian for a couple of years which came in handy for the second language requirement when I proved you could pass the test without any true understanding of the language.
French, and most certainly Russian, have little use in my daily living. But I believe Spanish might be helpful. So periodically I try to learn a little, allowing enough time between attempts to have forgotten everything acquired previously. Once I thought it might help if I read children’s books in Spanish, so I went to my local public library and entered the youth section. Shortly a librarian arrived and challenged my presence. I explained what I was looking for and, of course, she immediately switched to helpful mode. But she explained they had to be so careful to make sure adults weren’t preying on the kids. What a world!
I wonder how hard it has been for librarians to adapt to the changes of modern society: digital books, CDs, DVDs, computers. There was talk for a while about libraries becoming irrelevant. I think that has died down as librarians have interpreted their task in their standard way: serve the public. Now the downtrodden can find moments of peace in reading rooms, folks with no digital access can use library computers, music and movies and audio books can be checked out, eBooks can be downloaded to your device for a fixed time period. And there still is the reference assistance that hasn’t changed in goal, just techniques, over the years.
When I seek help from a librarian, I tend not to think a lot about how it was achieved. But if I look back over a long life, I realize the great benefit I’ve derived from these wonderful people.
So the next time you see one, say, “Thank you.”
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