ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ July/August 2000 / 603 THE WAY I SEE IT Library research as a transgressive activity The changing role of the librarian by Jeffrey G arrett T here was a time— and it w asn’t all that long ago—w h en being a librarian m eant living as priest in a tem ple of order, an ord that was to be preserved and defended, in which gaps were detected and filled, a system that reflected the orderliness of the universe and the subtle but recognized hierarchy of the sciences. Assisting students and scholars am ounted to guiding them along a twisted but ultimately clear and unequivocal path from the reference desk, from a question, from an identified re­ search need to the right shelf, the right an­ swer, the right book. With the collapse of a consensual system o f th e sc ie n c e s , th is ro le h a s ra d ic a lly changed. Library searches do not lead any­ m ore from Point A (the catalog, the refer­ ence desk) to Point B (the book, the answer, the truth), but instead invite com puter-liter­ ate library users to explore on their ow n or with a librarian’s help the m any recesses of a multicursal maze, placing them again and again in decision situations, at forks or nodes w here m ultiple paths run crisscross through and over and around the hierarchies of su b ­ ject headings, on their way to w hat may or may not be a useful or even existing d ocu­ m ent— perhaps to nothing but an em pty spot er on the shelf waiting for an answ er that only the questioner can provide. Through the extraordinary versatility of key­ w ord and Boolean searching, the m odern li­ brary environment has come to resemble what Umberto Eco calls a rhizome labyrinth, where if pushed, none of the walls will hold firm, in which “every path can be connected with ev­ ery other one.”1 In effect, the library user cre­ ates with every search his or her ow n ad hoc library of five, fifty, or five thousand book and journal citations, cut out from that great virtual library that is the universe of all accessible books, all stored information. The library, no longer a lawgiver, has b e ­ come in the words of Debra A. Castillo a “trans­ gressive space,” preserving “all the most p o ­ tentially disruptive forms, all the most poten­ tially explosive energies as yet unharnessed by society. ”2 Journey to the unknown Being a co-investigator and co-transgressor rather than priest at the altar of a fixed order is an exciting role shift for academic librarians. W hen our community seeks our help, we no longer know just what is going to walk in through our door and w here these investiga­ tions may take us. About the author Jeffrey G arrett is bibliographer fo r Western Languages and Literatures a t Northwestern University, e-mail: jgarrett@northwestern.edu 604 / C&RL News ■ July/August 2000 The danger today is not th at our patrons w ill leave empty-handed, but instead m ay end up choking on the glut of inform ation they call forth, . . . Several w eeks ago, a student was referred to me by her professor with a question, whether Buddhism might have had an influence on thought and art in fi n-de-siècle Vienna. We spent an hour in my office as mazetreaders in th e r e c e s s e s o f th e lib r a r y , n o t o n ly Northwestern’s, but everyone else’s, too, and by the end, w e had discovered bibliographic evidence that even before Jung, there were profound influences o f Eastern thinking in Vienna. My guest and co-explorer left with a list o f references. I ran into her later at interli­ brary loan, for no library is an island, now less than ever. The point o f this example is that the inspiration to this exploration was hers, nei­ ther o f us knew what would com e o f it, and I was grateful to b e taken along for the journey. Graduate student research especially is to­ day almost defined by its transgressive qual­ ity— by pushing against the walls not to see if they give way, but until they do. Here are som e o f the topics that w e have worked on with humanities students over the past year: “Violence and Erotic Literature”; “Brit­ ish Writings on the Eucharist, 1 5 0 0 -1 6 9 9 ”; “Temperance, Alcoholism, and Homosexual­ ity in U.S. History”; “Victorian Britain and Re­ naissance Florence”; “A Literary Review o f Eigh­ teenth-Century Legal Handbooks”; “Contagious Disease Acts”; “The Politics o f German Ortho­ graphic Reform”; and “The Sexualization o f Co­ lonialism in 18th Century West European Lit­ erature.” Just this week, a student came to us trying to link the semiotics o f silence with the policy o f covert operations under Eisenhower. (Where will this take us? I can only imagine.) Tools for the trip It clearly helps us that the tools w e have these days support and even invite this kind o f trans­ gressive exploration. Many o f our online bib­ liographic databases can be searched individu­ ally or altogether, allowing our users to check for co-occurrence, say, o f the words “gender” and “dominance” in MLA, the linguistics data­ base LLBA, Sociological Abstracts, and the Philosopher’s Index— all at once. T he hundred or so electron ic journals available through Project Muse on campus or at hom e can b e searched for nam es like Foucault or Büchner or Mishima one at a time or sim ultaneously, alm ost gu aranteeing a multidisciplinary retrieval set. Then, o f course, there is end-user access to WorldCat, op en­ ing up the monographic holdings o f thousands o f research libraries with a single search. The danger today is not that our patrons will leave empty-handed, but instead may end up choking on the glut o f information they call forth, or losing their nerve or even their minds— like the library users in Borges’s sto­ ries. Librarians must be there to help, for in this age, winnowing is just as important a sur­ vival skill as finding. At Northwestern, our reference department offers what they call the Research Consulta­ tion Program. A user completes a form, it is analyzed by a subject-specialist reference li­ brarian, and then there is a physical meeting at which the student or faculty mem ber re­ ceives a map o f reference materials that might help. Maybe the patron will b e referred to one o f the bibliographers like myself. We try to teach our users w here the hills and the valleys are, and then send them on their way. We all have names, faces, telephones, and e-mail ad­ dresses so that w e exist both really and virtu­ ally. Another form o f transgression taking place today is across what librarians know as “for­ m ats.” We increasingly do not distinguish b e ­ tween paper formats and electronic formats— OPAC provides access equally to both, and to other formats, as well. They are all indis­ pensable for humanists and social scientists and merge to form a single continuum o f re­ sources. Indeed, the administrative divide that has separated so-called b o o k people from so-called tech people is being eroded as we watch. This fall, a number o f librarians like myself will b e moving to new quarters in the univer­ sity library that w e will be sharing with hu­ manities computing specialists and teaching technologists. We are excited by this merge, for in prin­ ciple and in deed, it reflects where the library is going, and w e practitioners want to b e there ( c o n t in u e d o n p a g e 6 2 4 ) C&RL News ■ July/August 2000 / 605 624 / C&RL News ■ JulyAugust 2000 and catalog librarian and taught cataloging and classification. She began her career at Stanford as a generalist and a cataloger of German lit­ erature, but soon moved to the History Unit, of which she become the head. Keshkekian moved rapidly from her initial appointment as Library I to Librarian VI in 1975, and in a few more years was promoted to senior li­ brarian. Keshkekian has also made contribu­ tions to the NACO and BIBCO programs (in­ ternational, cooperative cataloging projects). Gail Ronnermann has retired from her po­ sition as life sciences librarian at Queens College, CUNY, after a 25-year career. Laura Gutiérrez-Witt, head of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the Uni­ versity of Texas at Austin (UT), has retired from this position. Harold Billings, director o f Gen­ eral Libraries at UT, said, “Prior to her appoint­ ment as head librarian in 1975, Laura spent ten years as Nettie Lee Benson’s right hand and was, in fact, the chief operating officer of the world-class collection during that time.” Gutiérrez-Witt is serving as executive secre­ tary o f the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials— an international consortium for the promotion of Latin Ameri­ can acquisitions, bibliography, and resource sharing. She is a lecturer in the UT Austin Graduate School of Library and Information Science, a regular participant in international programs relating to Latin American studies, and a frequent contributor to the literature of the field. She received a Certificate in Modem Archives Administration from the National Ar­ chives/American University and was an NEH Fellow in Spanish Archival Sciences at the Newberry Library in Chicago. D e a t h s Darwyn Jo n Batway, former director of the Ashland University Library in Ashland, Ohio, died on December 20, 1999- He served on the staff of libraries in Ohio and Washington and directed the Ashland University Library from 1986 to 1991. Errett Weir McDiarmid, 90, ALA President (1948-49), died on April 27, 2000. After teach­ ing at the University o f Illinois, he came to the University of Minnesota in 1943 as a librarian and director o f the Division o f Library In­ struction (as the Graduate Library School was then known). In 1951, he became dean of the College o f Science, Literature and the Arts, the predecessor to the College o f Liberal Arts. He held that position for 12 years and then served as dean of the Graduate School Fel­ lowship Office and taught in the Graduate School and the Library School until he re­ tired in 1978. Memorials can be sent to the Sherlock Holmes Collection (which he was instrumental in developing) c/o Special Col­ lections & Rare Books, 466 Wilson Library, 309 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455. A contribution will be sent on behalf o f the ALA Executive Board. Joyce McLeod Quinsey, 82, died Jun e 3, 2000, in Eureka, California, following several years o f illness with Alzheimer’s. In 1935, Quinsey entered Dana College, and for sev­ eral years thereafter she alternated teaching positions in the Nebraska public schools, from two-room country school to high school, with returns to college. From 1948 to 1950, she worked as a reference librarian at the Uni­ versity of Omaha, then accepted a position as head o f the reference department at the University of Kansas Libraries in Lawrence, where she remained until 1961. In 1962, Quinsey moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where she was employed at the University of Ne­ braska, and later at the Nebraska State His­ torical Society. In 1964, she accepted a posi­ tion at Humboldt State University in Areata, California, as a humanities reference librar­ ian, continuing in that position until her re­ tirement in 1983. ■ ( “Library research . . . ” cont. from p ag e 604) and working and helping our communities when it arrives at this destination. N o te s 1. Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Nam e o f th e R ose (N ew Y ork: H arcou rt B ra c e Jovanovich, 1984): 57. 2. Debra A. Castillo, The Translated World: A Postm odern Tour o f Libraries in Literature (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1985): 16. ■