Oranges and Peaches

Just before I left my job this week, everyone I worked with at the new Skills@Library team was invited to a presentation, which is where your line manager gives a little speech thanking an outgoing employee for their years of service.  This is roughly what I said.  I didn't exactly give a speech, it was more like a conversation, where people were asking questions like what did I enjoy the most during my time at Leeds, etc. but this is the order I would have said things.

I’ve worked at the University of Leeds Library for more than seven years.  This is the longest I’ve worked at any library during my 12-year career starting at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies in 1999.  To commemorate this event, my husband got me the Lego librarian mini figure.  

In one hand she has a “Shhh…” coffee mug,  in the other hand a book, Oranges and Peaches.

Do you know the Oranges and Peaches story?
[Since there were co-workers in their 20s and no Americans I explained…]

It is from a peer reviewed journal article that I had to read while I was at UCLA.  Basically the article talks about how the majority of communication that happens between people is miscommunication, but that human beings have little filters in their brains that correct what we perceive as mistakes.  The following example is given in the article.  [I am clearly summarizing here and using my own words.]

A kid at an American college goes the college library, and he is very freaked out.  He has a test on Monday for his Introduction to Biology class and it is Friday afternoon.  He was told by his TA that he needs to read an entire book over the weekend to prepare for the test, but the undergraduate Library doesn’t seem to have it, so he is now in the biomedical library asking for help at the reference desk.

“The book is called Oranges and Peaches,” he says.  The librarian does a search in the catalogue by title and can’t find it.

“Who is the author?” she asks trying to be helful.  He spends five minutes looking through his notes and then says, “Charles… Charles somebody.”

“I need more information about the book. I can’t find it if you don’t even know his surname.”

Completely frustrated, the student raises his voice and says, “My TA says that there should be dozens of copies of this book in the library!  It’s supposed to be, like, the Bible of evolution.  Why don’t you have it?

“Do you mean ‘On the Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin?” the librarian asks.

“Yes, that’s it!”

The rest of the article from what I remember says that staff working on the library reference desk need to be aware that although people know what they want, they often don’t know the best way to ask for it.  Even in the age of Google, sometimes you do need human mediation to help with searching.

Now at UCLA there was another class that was a requirement for us to take.  I think it was called “Information and Society”, and we went over the history of the library profession had to participate in what seemed like endless discussions about the meaning of our profession, and whether the profession, or libraries for that matter were valued.  I thought it was completely useless at the time.  I was wrong.

Every job I’ve had since I’ve been working libraries has involved in some “justifying our existence exercise.”  This is even true at places you’d think care about research.  While I was working at my first professional job at JPL, the JPL business managers had talked about possibly closing down the JPL library as a cost-saving measure and moving everything to Caltech.  I went around talking to scientists and engineers about how they felt about that and I actually met my husband because he was one of the people I interviewed.  All of them basically said, “We want our own library.  Why should we have to drive on three different freeways to get to the Caltech Library?  Sure most of the science journals are online, but what if we need to talk to somebody?  How much money will actually be saved if the different project and research staff have to waste time and keep physically leaving the JPL campus? And the priority at Caltech’s Library are Caltech University staff and students, not JPL staff.” 

It feels like these cycles of having to justify providing good library service and maintaining good collections keep repeating themselves.  I’m here again at the end of this job which has just undergone a restructure.  A restructure that basically negates the the value of the excellent collections, and the expertise in them that only happens after spending several years working closely with the collections.

I think in a years’ time it will be good that Skills@Library will be moving into the new Laidlaw Library currently being constructed, and staff will have the chance to spend time working on general enquiries.  I was sad when it was decided that Faculty Team Librarians would stop doing that.  I think it’s good for staff from all levels of the management structure to spend some time during the month on the frontline, that way we are in contact with library users, that’s how it was when I worked at Oxford University.  And what I enjoyed most about being a librarian was one-on-one contact with students and researchers.  By helping them, I learned a lot.  Even about things I wouldn’t have been interested in asking about for myself.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about books and knowledge as well as the state of the library profession. Probably because the topic of my PhD research is “Democratising Knowledge: Chambers’s Illustrated encyclopaedias.”  Chambers’ was/is a large publisher that began 200 years ago and has been profitable selling education books cheaply to anyone who wanted to teach them self about anything.  The publishing company is still running.

Books are not just books. Books symbolize aspirations, especially at a place like this university.  You come to university to learn what is in those books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.) and you become a different person because of that knowledge—a person who can practice science; or history; or medicine; or law.  Or who can write articulately. The people who write those books aspire to share their knowledge.

“Librarian” is more than just a job title to me. A librarian is someone in the unique position to connect people with books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.).  In other words, someone who belongs to a profession that enables people to help themselves.

I’m not going to completely disappear.  After looking at COPAC records, I’ve found that many of the books I need for my research, (which overlaps with graphic design history, Victorian culture, history of science, bibliography) is found here at the University of Leeds Library.  So, if I come by, I’ll probably bother some of you to have a cup of coffee with me.