So I was at Duke University, enjoying my bi-monthly visit with my professor and discovering, to my Very Real Relief, that the latest excerpt of my Master’s thesis, sent to him last night, is Not Awful.
We had a great conversation, and as we sat there grinning over Thomas Mann’s text and profound genius, I remembered again why it is that I’m writing this thesis at all, why I went to grad school in the first place, what it is to truly love and analyze rich and dense and intelligent literature.
The conversation went well and, as usual, included a few more references I should peruse. Then the meeting ended. My professor went his way, I went mine.
My way was to the library.
I find the library intimidating. It’s not the books in their stacks that bothers me; it’s the computer monitors that stand between me and them: the need to know the code that will allow me to access the information I need, namely, the call numbers on the binding of the books.
Card catalogs are dinosaurs, I know. But at least I knew how to use them.
Now you have to do searches through vast databases on the library’s system. And you can’t just enter book titles and author’s names (though I do and it works), no. You are supposed to enter “key words” so that, presumably, the system can justify its existence and feel good about itself.
Problem is, it’s never cut and dried. Never. Ever. And though I try to find the information I need, it doesn’t always come to me when I call it, and I (sometimes) have to call a librarian to help me.
The librarians at Duke are Incredibly Helpful. Incredibly. And so friendly. And kind. I love this. But they are also, by and large, loud.
This should not be the case. We are in a library.
And I don’t mind loud, except that they are loud about my needing help, and there I am in a quiet library, and all the students working around and near me were born after the birth of the internet, and they know what they are doing, and they can’t for a moment imagine why anyone would need help with an electronic card catalog.
The librarians understand my problems, my confusions, my dilemmas. But they don’t understand my embarrassment. So today, when I politely and quietly asked a librarian to help me (when, it should be noted, I had already pursued finding help on my own and found, for my efforts, a Dead End), I was only a little mortified when the librarian sang out: “Oh, sure, I’ll be happy to help you. Let me just run this over there and I’ll be right back.” And she sends these words to me over her shoulder, as she’s walking away, so that she has to raise her voice to be sure that I’ll hear her.
No discretion. No lowered voice. None. Just me standing by the monitor, feeling sheepish. All in the name of scholarship.
The librarian helped me (they always do), and soon I was off to yet another library and then another (because Duke has two campuses and multiple libraries) to find my books.
I found the first one without much trouble (though I will note that it was in the sub-basement of Perkins library and also inside one of those collapsible shelves which are operated by a Certain Button (and of course the first button I pushed, the one that made sense to push, didn’t work at first because first I had to push a Different Button– but I figured this out without help, thank you very much), and when I pushed the button I did have that thought that I think anyone with any imagination at all would have: that if you’re not careful or if someone Very Diabolical were in the library, you could be compressed between the shelves (and do you suppose that if you were to knock the books off the shelves and then lie down on one of them you might be saved??) and that would Not Be Good).
Yes, I found the first book and it was two volumes (not one) and then I was off to the Divinity School library.
I already had the call numbers for this book, but I thought I would be wise just to check and be sure and confirm those numbers, so I did this on the monitor Right There.
Then I dutifully consulted the map to discover where a book with this call number might be found.
Then I asked the librarian.
And then I went looking for my book.
I Love looking for books on the shelves (collapsible shelves or no), and I wrote an essay about that once, but I won’t go into it here. I will say instead that I looked for this book that the computer told me was on the shelf, and It Was Not There.
So I went back to the librarian. What’s a girl to do?
And he checked the database and found that I was right: there was the book and there was the call number and I probably looked in the right place.
Still, he descended the stairs with me to make sure (and I wasn’t a little bit afraid that he would find it and then I would be embarrassed again), but it was not there. So I felt justified.
He showed me how to go on-line and find the special form and request that a special search be made for the book. This sounded good to me. I would request the search, because I Need This Book.
So I went once again to a monitor and found the form all on my own and then found the reference to the book and cut and pasted the information into the form and entered my name and my i.d. number and wondered how long it would take them to hunt up this book that I so desperately needed.
And when I entered my form, I got a little thank you note. It read “Thank you for reporting a missing book.”
Which made me wonder: what was the name of the form I filled out? I wasn’t trying to report a missing book; I was trying to light a fire under the librarians to find a book that I Need.
And here they are, thanking me, as if I went looking for this book and confirmed it was missing out of the goodness of my heart.
Well, Duke’s librarians are Very Helpful. Maybe they think I am, too.
