ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


172 /  C&RL News

On electric e ra se rs and 
oth er notable even ts

By N orm an  Stevens

W hat C & R L  N e w s  h a s  m issed ov er 
the p a s t  3 0  y e a r s

A s invaluable as C&RL News has been in covering the day-to-day minutia o f aca­
demic and research libraries over the past thirty 
years, it has sometimes missed the boat. It has, 
perhaps too often, failed to note the truly im­
portant events o f the time. A thoughtful edito­
rial process invariably involves the careful se­
lection o f material to be included. In the case 
o f journals devoted largely to “new s” events 
deemed by the editors to be o f particular inter­
est to their readership, the selection process is 
apt to be idiosyncratic. Some libraries and li­
brarians are, after all, experts at self-promotion 
while others quietly go about their work not 
drawing attention to the equally important 
things that they are doing. 
Most librarians seem  to be 
in te r e s te d  p rim arily in 
finding out what everyone 
else is doing and emulat­
ing that rather than follow­
ing th eir ow n in stin cts 
d o w n  truly in n o v a tiv e 
paths.

F or fa r lo n g e r  th an  
C&RL News has been in ex­
istence as a separate en­
tity, the Molesworth Insti­
tu te has b e e n  track in g  
certain unusual or unique 
library events relevant to 
its mission and, at times, Claude J . Bookstack was h onored  for his 

record  o f n ever having served on  any 
local, state, regional, national, o r  inter­
national library association com m ittee.

generating its own version 
o f the real news o f the 
day. E x cep t for a b rie f

period (March 1988 to November 1990) when 
the then editor was foolish enough to allow 
the director o f the Molesworth Institute to write 
an irregular column called “Innovations: Hu­
mor and Creativity” for C&RL News, our ver­
sion o f the academic and research library news 
o f the day has largely been ignored by the main­
stream library press. In an effort to right that 
wrong, we are taking this opportunity to present 
a small but representative selection o f items 
that have not b een  adequately covered in the 
first 30 years o f this esteemed journal, as well 
as some brief guidelines for future editors in 
the hope that in the next 30 years they will 
offer a truer picture o f the “real” events o f the 
work o f the academic side o f Our Profession.

P e rso n n e l
Nouleigh Rhee Furbished was appointed as 
NELINET’s Preservation Officer in 1971. Her 

appointm ent was noted, 
much to the chagrin o f the 
editor, by Library Jo u rn a l. 
Until her recent retirement, 
Ms. Furbished spent much 
o f  h er tim e v isitin g  
NELINET member libraries 
where she polished leather 
bindings with shoe polish.

Claude J . ( “B o o k e r”) 
Bookstack retired as direc­
tor o f the Beesly Univer­
sity Library in Baxter, Mas­
sachusetts, in 1991 after 
75 years in that position. 
He w as th e  a u th o r o f  
B a b y  ’s First B o o k  o f  Library 
a n d  In fo r m a tio n  S c ie n c e  
(Slumberland Press, 1978). 
He was often nominated,

Norman Stevens is director o f  the Molesworth Institute; e-mail: hbladm3@uconnvm.uconn.edu

mailto:hbladm3@uconnvm.uconn.edu


M arch 1 9 9 7  /  173

but never designated, as ACRĽs Academic/Re­
search Librarian o f the Y ear but did receive 
the Edmund Lester Pearson Award in 1990 for 
his record o f never having served on any lo­
cal, state, regional, national, or international 
library association committee.

C ollectio n s
In 1977 the Southwest Northeast Southern East­
ern State Teachers Normal College Library ac­
quired the Robert Louis Stevenson collection 
o f m ore than 15,000 books, articles, manu­
scripts, and ephemera relating to umbrellas and 
parasols. The acquisition o f that collection led, 
in addition to the creation o f U m brella Abstracts, 
to the SNSESTNC Library’s admission to the Re­
search Library Group (RLG) in 1980.

T e c h n o lo g y
The Library o f Congress, in 1994, officially re­
tired and turned over to the Smithsonian Insti­
tution the last known electric eraser in use in 
an academic or research library. That was added 
to the Smithsonian’s collection o f obsolete li­
brary technology that includes: a card platen 
for an electric typewriter; a container from the 
late, but not lamented, automated book retrieval 
system at the Health Sciences Library at Ohio 
State University; a Projected Books reader; and 
a half-size catalog card unit.

The ambitious plans for the full-scale auto­
mation o f the library at Florida Atlantic Univer­
sity, which had been  widely publicized at the 
time o f its founding in 1961, cam e to a quiet 
end sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

In n o v a tio n
The East Machias branch o f the University o f 
Maine system opened its library in a former 
Wal-Mart store in 1989. The large one-story 
building was left essentially as it had been lead­
ing to the use o f the checkout counters as cir­
culation points and the adaptation o f the cash 
registers as circulation terminals. Users quickly 
found the greeters at the front door, as well as 
the drive-through reserve service, w elcom e in­
novations although it was no easier to find 
books than it had been to find goods.

Academic libraries, including the University 
o f Michigan Library, began to change their dress 
codes in the early 1970s by allowing women 
staff members to wear pants to work provided, 
initially, that they were part o f a matching pants 
suit outfit. That marked a major step forward in 
dealing with the broad issue o f dress for women

in libraries. Some o f us, for example, can re­
mem ber a time as late as the mid-1950s when 
no woman in shorts or pants was allowed even 
to enter som e major academic libraries (e.g., 
Rutgers University). Now, o f course, almost any­
thing is considered appropriate attire for women 
or men librarians, library staff, and library us­
ers.

For the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 at 
least one academic library’s program featured 
a mobile constructed o f condom s and other 
contraceptive devices that was hung in the main 
circulation hall. That, and similar activities, 
marked the first intrusion o f the real world into 
the interiors o f many academic and research 
libraries.

Virtually every academ ic library o f any size 
underwent a major staff reorganization o f one 
kind or another although, from observations to 
date, there is little evidence that such reorgani­
zations have resulted in increased efficiency, 
p r o d u c tiv ity , o r u s e r  s a t is f a c t io n . T h e  
Molesworth Institute continues its search for 
any co llege library w hose organization still 
consists o f a director and four or five depart­
ments and any university library whose organi­
zation still consists o f a director, two or three 
associate directors, and six or seven depart­
ments.

By 1995 most academic and research librar­
ies had abandoned the traditional practice o f 
turning each day to the next colored plate in 
the reference department copies o f unabridged 
dictionaries in favor o f glitzy hom epages on 
the World Wide W eb. Preliminary research in­
dicates that in the typical academic library ap­
proximately 25% more users look at the hom e­
page than had looked at the dictionary plate 
while it costs approximately 500% more to de­
velop and maintain the homepage than to have 
the newest professional librarian turn to the 
next colored plate. At least one major academic 
library has, in apparent contravention o f the 
copyright law, incorporated a w eekly change 
o f a colored plate from an unabridged dictio­
nary into its homepage. A daily change was 
r e je c t e d  as b e in g  to o  c o s t ly  an d  tim e
consuming.

Statistics
The first (January 1, 1989) and second (April 1, 
1990) issues o f the N ot th e A sso ciatio n  o f  R e­
s e a r c h  L ib r arie s N ew sletter reported on efforts 
to establish a formula, or index, that would 
correlate the standing o f academic libraries in



174 /  C&RL News

the Association o f Research Li­
braries (ARL) with the standing 
o f the basketball and/or foot­
ball teams in those same insti­
tutions as measured by pub­
lished polls. As Kendon Stubbs, 
who undertook much o f the 
research, noted, “better basket­
ball teams make better librar­
ies,” which led him to conclude 
that “if you want a winning li­
brary, transfer funds from the 
library to the basketball team.”

O th e r even ts
The now famous Festschrift Re­
tirement Home (FRH) for ARL 
directors was established in the 

Still found in m any libraries, 
the library Desk rem ains a 
symbol o f authority that serves 
to separate, and p rotect, li­
brarians from  patrons. Inten­
tionally massive, the Desk is a 
mask for the inferiority co m ­
p lex o f the librarian w ho co n ­
trols it.

mid-1970s. Funding for the FRH 
comes largely from the institu­
tions from which the directors 
have been removed, retired, or 
otherwise encouraged to de­
part. The Lorena Garloch wing 
for women, which was opened 
in 1990, and anticipates a sub­
stantial influx of inhabitants in the next decade.

P u b lica tio n s
In addition to the two issues o f the Not th e As
s o c ia tio n  o f  R esearch  L ibraries Newsletter, other 
notable publications o f the past thirty years in­
cluded a new issue (Volume 5, Number 5) in 
March 1980 o f the L ib r a r ia n ’s R e co r d  that in­
cluded the first publication o f “The Umbrella 
Paper,” which reported on the disappearance, 
exchange, and loss rate o f umbrellas in aca­
demic libraries in 1976– 77.

The University o f Connecticut Library’s Li­
brary Ephemera series included as Portfolio 1, 
Number 2 (1974) a reprinting of William Fitch 
Smyth’s Little Lyrics f o r  L ibrarian s. Featured in 
that slim volume is the poem “A Librarian’s Life:”

“A Librarian’s life is the life for me/ For there’s 
nothing at all to do, you see/ But to sit at a 
desk and read new books/ And admire your­
self, and think o f your looks./To question­
ing souls one can tartly say:/’I can ’t be both­
ered with y o u  to-day,/For I haven’t finished 
this novel. See?’/A librarian’s life is the life 
for m e.”

T h e revised version  m ight w ell b egin: “A 
librarian’s life is the life for me/For there’s noth­

ing at all to do, you see/But to 
sit at a computer and surf the 
Net/ … ”

Numerous real or spurious 
editions o f acad em ic library 
newsletters were issued over of 
the course o f the past thirty 
years on or about April 1, and 
som etim es O cto b er 31, that 
shed a great deal more light on 
the inner workings o f those li­
braries than did the more tradi­
tional newsletters issued during 
the remainder of the year.

Throu ghout m uch o f the 
early years o f OCLC a recipe 
for apple cake kept mysteri­
ously appearing as a biblio­
graphic record in its database 
despite continued efforts by 
OCLC to purge that record each 
time it was discovered. That 
record is probably still buried 
in the OCLC database som e­
where but today it is quicker to 
locate such important informa­

tion out on the Net.
Finally, o f course, the re-creation o f The 

Bibliosmiles: A Rally of Librarians Who Are Nev­
ertheless Human in the early 1990s offered a 
new opportunity for all librarians, but esp e­
cially those in academic and research libraries, 
to help “formulate a permanent protest against 
undue solemnity in the profession.” Although 
its total membership still numbers less than 100 
hardy librarians, it offers our last best hope for 
the future.

G u id e lin e s  fo r the fu ture
How can future editors of, and contributors to, 
C&RL News manage to avoid the blunders of 
the past and provide more adequate coverage 
o f the hidden aspect o f academic and research 
librarianship? A few suggestions are in order. 
Look for electronic, photocopied, faxed, and 
printed materials that lie beyond the normal 
horizon o f journal editors including, in particu­
lar, items with limited distribution, or that b e ­
com e known largely through word-of-mouth. 
Read every conceivable academic and research 
library newsletter— real and imaginary (with 
special attention to those issued on or around 

pril 1)— with an eye for the odd and unusual 
happening. If all else fails, create your own 
news. ■

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