ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


670 / C & RL New s

are paid by VISA; 7 % by Mastercard/Access. Ruth 
Ann Stewart (Library of Congress) reported on the 
successful opening of L C ’s new store, which sells a 
mix of books, gift items, folk art, juvenalia, and 
stationary products.

Nigel Thorp (Glasgow University Library) re­
counted details o f the exhibition The Glory o f  the 
Page, consisting of Renaissance and illum inated 
m anuscripts from the Glasgow University Library. 
From initial planning to actual production the

exhibition took nearly five years. Thorp personally 
supervised packing and unpacking at each exhibi­
tion site, driving a truck across Canada and North 
Am erica (an adventure itself worthy of a book).

IGPL will next m eet in 1991 in Cam bridge, 
M assachusetts. The conference will be cospon­
sored by Harvard University and the M assachu­
setts Historical Society. As Jane Carr put it, “The 
issues have been raised; now solutions m ust be 
explored.” ■  ■

INNOVATIONS

Humor and creativity: Basic technology

By Norman D. Stevens

Director, The M olesworth Institute

Those among us who are intelligent, and fortu­
nate, enough to have become skilled inform ation 
professionals have dem onstrated that academ ic

Feeling funny?

Having taken leave o f my peculiar pursuit of 
library hum or for a brief period of time, I find I 
have become more irritable. Having taken leave 
of my senses, I have allowed the editor of C&RL 
N ew s, and both of the readers who have re­
sponded positively to my efforts to date, to per­
suade me to resum e my efforts to enlighten and 
amuse you by searching out and offering up 
these tales o f creativity and hum or in academic 
librarianship. For the time being my idle threat 
in the April 1989 issue to leave you to your own 
devices has been postponed. So I once again 
renew my quest for appropriate examples of 
this genre. Please send examples of your crea­
tivity, and that of your colleagues, to me at 143 
Hanks Hill Road, Storrs, CT 06268 along with—  
you guessed it— your business card, a postcard 
of your library, or any other kind o f library 
ephem era.

librarians can m aster the com plexities of a new 
inform ation age with all of its new technologies. 
CD-ROM s, OPACs, and other m ysterious firm ­
ware, hardware, software, and even vaporware don’t 
faze some of us. We can hold our own with the other 
technocrats who have come to dom inate academic 
communities.

Then there are the rest o f us. For some academ ic 
librarians technology still is, as it has always been, 
a true test of our mettle. The incredible expertise of 
our m ore know ledgeable colleagues may utterly 
baffle us as we struggle with low technology or the 
simpler aspects of high technology. Fortunately it is 
m ost often the rudim entary aspects of the librar­
ian ’s love affair with technology that provides us, 
when we are either frustrated or inspired, with our 
greatest opportunities to use hum or to put technol­
ogy and technocrats in their proper niche— the 
vacant recessed nook in the corridors of older 
libraries once reserved for the bust of Shakespeare.

Paperclips

That the challenge o f the sim pler forms o f tech­
nology is not something new is amply demonstrated 
by the little known, and seldom recalled, contro-



S e p te m b e r 1 9 8 9  / 671

versy that raged in the pages o f L ib ra ry  J o u r n a l in 
1915. That learned d isp u te began w hen John B. 
Kaiser w rote to suggest th at G em  p ap erclip s be 
used to affix stam ps enclosed w ith letters to the 
page rather than m oisten in g  a co rn e r and sticking 
them on the page. Forrest Spaulding quickly pointed 
out that Gem  clips w ere too long and often tore the 
stamps so he suggested that Ideal p ap erclip s be 
used instead. That exchange naturally lead Edm und 
Lester Pearson to jo in  the fray by inquiring if Mr. 
Spaulding was “a safe guide in those larger fields o f 
efficiency and equipm ent w hich are o f such real 
importance to the lib ra ria n .” H e offered  the Ju n io r 
Gem paperclip (23 m m . x 5 m m .) as a suitable 
alternative for the reg u la r G em  p a p e rc lip  (34 mm. 
x 8 mm.) adding, “ surely these fig u res speak fo r 
themselves.”

B arcodes

Today, even as the p rese rv atio n ists am ong us 
promote the advantages o f p lastic pap erclip s in 
preventing the kind o f dam age that M r. S paulding 
lamented, there are m any o th er sim ple aspects o f 
technology th at p lag u e us. C h ie f am ong the m inor 
nuisances o f  c ontem porary lib ra rian sh ip  m ay w ell 
be the u biquitous bar code label. R oy T ennant, o f 
the library at the University of California at Berkeley, 
pointed out the challenges o ffered  by those item s as 
the very first piece in the very first issue (M ay 1988) 
of his A u to m a te d  C ircu la tio n  N e w sle tte r. “ O nce 
again [he wrote] w e are being overrun by thousands 
of little striped creatures. T hey travel in p acks and 
have been sighted in three lib ra ries on cam pus. 
There is only one way to o vercom e this scourge: 
separate individual b arcodes from  the pack and 
apply the little  b u g g e r to the inside back  c o v e r o f a 
library item . T here are so m any o f th ese creatures 
that the library staffs o f the three afflicted libraries 
are unable to handle the epidem ic a lo n e .” S u b se ­
quent issues o f that n ew sletter have failed  to reveal 
the degree o f M r. T e n n a n t’s success in enlisting 
volunteers as e v id en ced  by the n um ber ultim ately 
awarded T -shirts “com m em orating th eir bravery in 
the face o f seem in g ly  in su rm o u n tab le o d d s .”

On/Off Switches

T hose w ho have fin a lly  m aste re d  the trick s o f 
barcoding m ost lik ely  w ork in a library w here 
com puter term inals have com e to dom in ate the 
scene. E ven in the sm allest con tem p o rary  a c a ­
demic library there m ay be a dazzlin g  array o f 
com puter term inals p rese n tin g  us w ith y et an o th er 
basic challenge that b rings out the b e st in us. All o f 
the instru ctio n s, m anuals, and train in g  sessions 
that w e receiv e too often o v e rlo o k  w h at w e really 
need to know : how  to turn the c o m p u te r term inal 
on and off. In its A pril 1,1985, issue, Torn Sheet, the

a ltern ativ e sta ff n e w sletter o f the U niversity o f 
W yom ing L ibrary, tackles that im portant issue in a 
creativ e story that consum es alm ost a full page.

T here the H ead o f M achinery offers a careful 
and thou g h tfu l exp lan atio n  o f  the sp ecific on and 
o ff pro ced u re for each o f the fo u r d iffe re n t kinds o f 
term inals found in that library (om itting the BDS 
term inals used only by highly train ed  specialists). 
D esig n ed  for novices, th e e x p lan atio n  b eg in s by 
p o inting out that “ o n /o ff sw itches m ay be on the 
front, on the back, on the left, on the right, o r on the 
bottom  [but that] the library does n o t cu rrently 
have any term in als w ith the sw itches on the to p .” 
D e tailed  in stru ctio n s— “push the sw itch tow ard 
you if you are standing in front o f  it”— and ap p ro ­
priate cautions— “never turn this terminal off”— 
are given. T he p iece co ncludes w ith the o b se rv a ­
tion th a t even the H ead o f  M achinery has not yet 
m aste re d  the way in w hich a p a rticu la r m ic ro co m ­
pu ter is turned on b u t she offers to try to learn how  
to do so before revising her paper. Alas, those badly 
needed added instructions, to the b est o f my k n o w l­
edge, n e v e r appeared; but a fo llo w -u p  in the S e p ­
tem b er 2 0 ,1 9 8 5 , issue o f  T o rn  S h e e t does o ffe r an 
update fo r the latest B rodart term inal w hich re ­
m ains on at all tim es and, therefo re, has no o n /o ff 
sw itch. T he in genuity o f the U niversity o f W y o ­
m ing L ibrary s ta ff is m atched only by m y ow n staff 
in the tech n ical services area o f the U niversity o f 
C o n n ecticu t L ibrary w hich, fo r a tim e, posted 
w ritten in stru ctio n s fo r start-up p rocedures next to 
ea ch  o f  several m icro co m p u ters.

Since we had sug g ested  that those m ach in es be 
locked at night fo r security reasons, the first in ­
stru ctio n  sim ply in d icated  w here the key was to be 
found w hich w as u sually in an unlocked d raw er o f 
the desk on w hich the term in al sat.

Pencil sharpeners

O f all item s o f tech n o lo g y — low , m edium , or 
high— to be found in academ ic lib raries, none 
offers us a g rea ter challenge, or a greater in sp ira­
tion, than the u b iquitous pencil sharpener, be it 
m anual, e le c tric, o r electronic. S urely in alm ost 
every academ ic library pen cil sharpeners still o u t­
n um ber c o m p u te r term in als, alth o u g h  the day m ay 
yet com e w hen the p e n c il sharpener, like the ty p e ­
w riter, is rele g ate d  to a dusty attic, b asem ent, or 
closet. W hile they still p red o m in ate, they o ffe r us 
am ple o p p o rtu n ity  fo r c re a tiv ity  a n d  hum or.

T he e a rlie st p rin te d  reference yet id en tified  to 
the p lace o f  th ese essen tial tools in lib raries is in a 
short 1972 series in The L a n te r n ’s C ore from  the 
N o rthw estern U n iv ersity  L ib raries. T here several 
d iffe re n t s ta ff m em bers d escrib ed  in co ncise detail 
the p recise k in d  (“ G ia n t A psco S h a rp en e r” ) and 
exact locatio n  (“ the n o rth  side o f th e reference 
room  n e x t to the o u t-o f-to w n  tele p h o n e  d irecto-



672 / C & R L  N e w s

rie s ”) o f pencil sharpeners to be found in various 
parts o f the library although they all som ehow  
neglected to adequately describe how  to locate the 
proper place to insert the p e n c il. As cited in slightly 
m ore detail in my earlier piece on the p e c u liar 
nature o f m usic librarians, Stephen Fry, o f the 
M usic L ibrary, concluded that three-part series 
w ith a longer than usual description o f one gray 
A psco “ G ia n t” type III-A  sharpener there that, in 
the usual perverse fashion o f m usic librarians, had 
been installed in such a way that it is especially 
handy fo r left-handed people w ho w ere invited 
there ju st for that purpose.

A  favorite sport of some law librarians, follow ing 
an exam ple set by one o f the deans o f th eir p ro fes­
sion, is to offer law faculty and, especially, students 
the opportunity to ask w ritten questions on any 
m atter that strikes their fancy in a public notebook 
to w hich the law librarian him self, or h e rse lf as the 
case m ay be, subsequently responds in w riting for 
all to read and be en tertained by. In his notebooks 
R obert B erring, law librarian at the U niversity of 
C alifornia, Berkeley, w ho started the w hole thing, 
found tw o item s relating to the im portant question 
o f pencil sharpeners. O ne student asked w hat those 
“little bits o f disgusting pencil shavings” th at he 
finds on desks are and w hy people d o n ’t have the 
courtesy to clean up a fte r them selves. Zeb, fo r so 
the respondent styles him self, p o inted out that 
those are not, in fact, pencil shavings but “ tiny bits 
o f the ou ter lay e r o f the brain stem ” that “m ost first 
year law students shed...as a part o f the first year 
process o f a c cu ltu ra tio n .” T hose chips, w hich are 
highly toxic and not to be ingested, are collected 
and sold for reprocessing into m em ory chips for 
super com puters. A nother user asked Zeb if the 
fact that the electric pencil sharpeners alw ays break 
is a plot. Zeb replied that it indeed was a plot that 
is part o f a long-term  clinical psychological study in 
frustration levels and that, actually, m ost o f those 
sharpeners never actually w orked at all.

E m ily G reenberg, one o f B e rrin g ’s im itators, o f 
the U niversity o f Baltim ore Law Library, was asked 
by a student: “Is it possible to have a pencil shar­
pener installed on the fourth flo o r? ” In her rather 
lengthy answ er M s. G reenberg analyzes the usual 
b u reaucratic delays involved in the purchase p ro c­
ess— even for som ething as sim ple as a pencil 
sharpener— and the several difficult problem s faced 
in the selection o f the ideal location: noise (“that 
old -fash io n ed  non -electrić hand-crank m achine is 
going to upset som e patro n s”); eyes, ears, and other 
body parts (“you have to m ount the m achine at a 
height w here even short p eople can reach it”); and 
aesthetics (“ it grieves m e to think o f sullying the 
horizon w ith a little m etal p ro tu b eran ce”). Ms. 
G reenberg u ltim ately concedes that a pencil sh a r­
pener will eventually be installed on the fourth 
floor.

The m ost intriguing library anecdote involving 
pen cil sharpeners, w hich com es— alas— from  a 
public library setting, is a b rie f tale recounted by 
A nita G regory w ho now  w orks at the O ccidental 
C ollege Library. In her earlier life as a public 
lib rarian  M s. G regory once e ncountered a patron 
w ho cam e to the C irculation D esk and asked for the 
location o fth e  m e n ’s room . “He was inform ed [Ms. 
G regory w rites] that it w as kept locked, for his 
safety, and that the key w as m issing. H e blinked, 
and w ithout m issing a beat, asked, ‘W ell then, do 
you have a pencil sharpener? ’ ”

Conclusion

Surely if librarians can keep a straight face when 
faced w ith such im probable relationships, we can 
m aster any form  o f technology. The h igher form s 
m ay broaden o ur horizons, expand o u r services, 
and offer our patrons entry into new  form s of 
know ledge. T he low er form s continue to lim it our 
capabilities, restrict o ur services, and offer us entry 
into new  form s o f  am usem ent.

Telephone information service

By Edward A. Riedinger

S chool o f  L ib ra ry a n d  In fo rm a tio n  S tudies 
U niversity o f  C alifornia, B erkeley

The literature on telephone inform ation or ref­
erence service has concen trated  on this activity 
p rim arily as it is conducted in public library set­
tings. Such research has been ap pearing for over 
h a lf a century. H ow ever, telecom m unication

changes now  occurring in academ ic libraries, from  
ju n io r and com m unity colleges to m ajor research 
u niversities, w ill h eighten the im portance o f tele­
phone inform ation service in them .

O nline collectio n  catalogs are now  com m on-