Monday, December 8, 2008
Grumpy Librarians
Why is it that research libraries seem to be a haven for cranky types? I've worked in archives and special collections in the U.S., Europe and Mexico, but my experience at the Sutro Library in San Francisco today topped them all in terms of librarian abrasiveness. I thought of you, Mike.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Do share!!!
This library has a copy of Baltasar de Vitoria's Teatro de los dioses de los gentiles, a 17th century Spanish mythological manual. After a hearty lunch with our eminent medievalist friend, I made my way there. Well, I was told that I needed to put my bag in one of the 25 cent lockers (something fairly normal in research libraries). When I asked if I could get change, the attendant turned to the (sole) librarian who said they don't make change for people who want a quarter and that I should go put my bag in my car.
I then asked The Librarian if she had received my email inquiry, to which she told me that it had arrived, but she didn't know what I wanted because it arrived without the book reference. I still don't know what that means, since it was in the body of the message. So she had me sit down and tell her the author and title, and she looked up the call numbers. She said the only version she had was from Spain. I said that was good, to which she replied "But I thought you wanted a Mexican book." She then told me to go sit at a table and wait. When I sat down at a nearby table, she told me I couldn't sit on that side of the table, but I needed to sit on the other side. I still have no idea what the difference between sides was.
The rest of the visit was fairly normal, and I don't want to make it sound worse than it was, but I still find these awkward experiences are pretty common in special collections and archives.
Good stuff. Your experience, as Mike (and other peninsularistas?) can attest, is typical I am sad to say. In Granada, I recall being forced to hand copy the entire Latin text of the Life of Homer by Pseudo-Herodotus because the librarian was not in the mood to allow me to use the photocopier, which was ten feet away from her behind the counter. Of course, after said text had been hand copied and after a librarian shift change, the new friendlier librarian freely offered use of the copier and made a wry facial gesture when I explained the uncooperative spirit of her colleague. So it goes.
In Peru you just have to pay for them to be nice to you. Specifically, photocopies (or digital images, if the source is older than 1935) are 5 soles each. The price isn't bad, but still I did end up hand copying lots of stuff. What really cracked me up was when I decided I to bite the bullet and get some digital images made. The assistant librarian, dressed in his blue smock, hauled the bound newspaper volume out to the courtyard (suitably baroque, with a fountain made of azulejos), opened it on a greasy table, climbed up on a stepladder, and snapped the exposures. His boss, in a white smock, stood to one side telling him to move this way or that to avoid shadows. Needless to say, it works differently at the Getty.
That's the one thing missing about research libraries in America: smocks. I remember in the Biblioteca Nacional in Mexico City the researchers had white smocks and the staff had blue.
Truly, a smock makes the experience. At the biblioteca nacional you feel like you've wandered into the world's most palacial pharmacy.
Berkeley does its best to recreate the European experience. There are no smocks, but entrance to the stacks requires a library card, and for folks not affiliated with Cal, acquisition of a card leads to a baroque process involving letters of introduction from one's department chair, a blood sample and dna from your first born son.
I also was quite impressed with security at the UC Berkeley stacks the one time I went there for research.
Mike - Didn't they also come by and do a background check on you? Talked to your friends and neighbors to find out what kind of guy you really were?
--Erika
Post a Comment