Opinion | Columnists
Ssshhh! Silence please!
Libraries normally are sanctuaries that offer a break from the sound and fury of the workaday world. That's one reason I spend most of my vacation days hiding in libraries, researching one arcane topic after another, hiding from society.
- Cox News Service
- Published: 00:04 November 24, 2008
Libraries normally are sanctuaries that offer a break from the sound and fury of the workaday world. That's one reason I spend most of my vacation days hiding in libraries, researching one arcane topic after another, hiding from society.
Then there's the fact that I'm a nerd. Libraries are a second home to me, particularly research facilities. I love holing up for a day or two in a building filled with hidden treasures, dusty papers and grainy photographs. One simply has to request those gems squirrelled away in mysterious places, wait patiently until the materials are produced, sign lots of forms, then peruse the stuff under the unstinting gaze of a research librarian just waiting for you to err by, say, creasing a page too tightly in order to keep it from flipping back.
This happened to me recently. The librarian on duty brought me a stained cloth sack filled with sand. "Use this to weigh down the page, please, so you don't crease it," he gently commanded.
I thanked him, though I didn't much like handling the sack. It appeared germ-covered. But here is my credo: Never, ever, get on the bad side of research librarians. Your requested documents might never appear, lost in an archival limbo. Life will become infinitely more complicated.
In truth, my experience during more than a quarter-century of looking stuff up in research libraries has been overwhelmingly positive. Research librarians relish a good search. They are invariably willing to help one ferret out those hidden gems. So I show up, humbly and fully at their mercy. The librarians take pity on me and go out of their way to help me find what I'm seeking. In response, I'm embarrassingly - though sincerely - obsequious.
It works, largely. I've spent joyful hours in the National Archives and the Library of Congress in our nation's capital. I am rather proud of the ID cards from both places with my mug shot and the title, "Researcher" printed below. As I said, there's a strong streak of nerd running through me.
Lately, I've been chasing down a story that I am hopeful will become another book hardly anyone reads - which is my niche. I've spent several dozen hours in front of a microfilm reader at the local library, printing out articles published in this newspaper nearly 50 years ago. These days, one can access a number of metropolitan papers online and use search engines to find articles, which saves untold hours. So that's helped, though our paper is too small to be scanned - thus it's microfilm, turned one page at a time.
This latest investigation also requires perusing original government files now held in my two favourite libraries - Texas State Library (TSL) and Archives, and the Centre for American History at the University of Texas. At both places, I'm known by sight if not by name, after a few decades of showing up several times a year. I've burned lots of vacation days heading to Austin, camping out at my buddy Frank's house to save money, and then heading to the libraries during rush hour.
I didn't realise, when starting this project a month or so ago, that both libraries are undergoing major renovation projects. In particular, the Texas State Library, frozen in 1960's decor, is being gutted and rebuilt. That makes it a rather noisy place these days.
I spent a day at TSL, gingerly negotiating a maze of temporary plywood walls to get to the elevator and rise to the third floor. Much of the archival material is temporarily stored off-site, which means you have to plan ahead to get what you're requesting. Sometimes the floor trembled as workers used power tools. I asked a TSL employee how long the renovation was going to take. Two more years, he said wearily.
I felt like walking over to the fellows with jackhammers and giving them a librarian's "Ssshhh!" But they were all bigger than me. I'll just go back another day, when things are a bit quieter.
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