Joyful Noise

Preliminary Matters

First, I would first like to thank the good librarians of Illinois (and any from neighboring states who have sneaked in) for allowing me the privilege of speaking before you all. As I've been indoctrinated into our common profession over the last six years I've learned that there exist two Meccas of librarianship, Hennepin County in Minnesota (solely due to the efforts of radical cataloger Sanford Berman, I sometimes think) and the entire state of Illinois. Who knows why, but there you have it.

Second, I will come across a bit brash and with much ego. My ego is large, but it's filled up all the space it can (there's no room left for more), thus, no matter how well, or poorly, I do before you, it will remain the same size. Also, having been raised for most of my life in Los Angeles, what I call "Los Angelefied," I now find myself an evolving midwesterner, learning from scratch how to be taciturn and respectful, calm and quiet, reasoned and gentle (all good things). My Californian traits of gregariousness, brashness, leftist political leanings (which have always been a lie for the state as a whole), and free-speaking will still make cameo appearances.

This anecdote illustrates the cultural differences twixt librarians who are City Mice and those who are Country Mice. One of my colleagues, Anne Taylor, worked for several years at New York Public Library in Manhattan. We used to get in "my library experience is more disgusting than your library experience" contests wherein Anne would tell me of patrons from hell requiring assistance from burly security guards and I would counter with tales from UCLA's University Research Library of the "Mad Defecator (this is a euphemism for what he was REALLY called)" who used to deposit souvenirs in texts, then replace them on the shelves. Woe be to the junior member of the shelving crew tasked to retrieve the offending tome!

We were continually amazed at the polite demeanor, lack of theft, and general low-key circumstances in which we found ourselves at the University of Missouri-St. Louis' Thomas Jefferson Library. The upshot is that we were both behaviorally conditioned for the worst behavior from the extremest of patrons of libraries in Los Angeles and New York, while working in an environment at the other end of a spectrum.

One day, an elderly gentleman in ragged attire entered the library, came to the reference desk, and asked for some information about some local charity organization. How to put this ... he stank, reeked, and smelled downright unpleasant. By chance, Anne and I were at the desk together. Our reflexes in serving this person were actually quite noble in that one learns quickly in LA and New York that people like this gentleman are served as quickly and efficiently as possible with no rudeness. These people get the BEST service because the sooner they are served the sooner they leave (and the sooner one can breathe through one's nose again). In fact, how we served him was a reflex honed by several years of similar situations. We didn't even give the encounter a second thought.

Meantime, of course, the rest of the library staff was aghast (this situation was highly unusual for our library - we just didn't know that). We were probably the only two people in the entire building who didn't see this person urinate in the garbage can across from the Reference Desk.

We have both since evolved somewhat into Country Mice and are now much more aware of where we are!

One of the lessons of the new technologies of which the Internet is currently paramount, is that since there are no geographic barriers, Country Mice can easily find themselves in the Big City, hob nobbing with the extremes of humanity, and City Mice can find themselves in peaceful and gentle surroundings, at odds with their physical universe.

A man has his distinctive personal scent which his wife, his children and his dog can recognize. A crowd has a generalized stink. The public is odorless.

W. H. Auden (1907–73), Anglo-American poet. The Dyer’s Hand, pt. 2, “The Poet and the City” (1962).

Third, and the final point in these preliminary matters, is an unabashed confession at the joy I hold in being a member of my profession, that of librarian. This joy borders on arrogance, which often must be tempered. Luckily, I can always fall back on those things which brought me to the profession in the first place: books (and books can be defined by more than words on paper bound together). It is with this that I present to you a poem that speaks to me of what our profession is all about.

(At this point, the speaker turns on a portable stereo and inserts a tape which speaks one of the two voices from the poem 'Water Striders" from Paul Fleischman's 1989 Newberry Award winning Joyful Noise. The other voice is spoken by the presenter.)

Copyright © 1995 by R. Muns

Title:	
  Joyful Noise: Present and Future Librarians 
  Sing the Internet (Preliminary Matters)
Author:
  R. Muns
Date/Version:
  October 10, 1995 / 1.0
URL:
  http://www.umsl.edu/~muns/proddir/joynoise/joyful1.htm