Librarian: idol, star, hero, etc.

Twice this semester I inspired awe, the positive kind, which usually isn’t. I felt like an idol. A fraction perhaps of how idols all over the world felt but I must say it was uncomfortable.

As it has been impressed on me time and time again by some librarians and by other people that my being a librarian and a reader and a lover of books do not make me special, that a well-trained librarian could do what I am able to do just a well. I never say I am exceptional, only that my being a reader and a lover of books make my job as a librarian all that much easier. I’d rather everyone; students mostly go on taking my particular and personal help for granted, something that I do because I am trained to do it. But some people are more impressionable than most.

When students come to us asking about particular authors and titles, our standard answer is “have you consulted the card catalog?” Our next action depends on the answer. But what if you are pre-empted by the statement, “I have checked in the card catalog but have not found what I am looking for”. Sometimes we searched the card catalog ourselves to make certain at other times we say “if it’s not represented in the catalog then the library does not have it”. But what usually do we do when confronted with: “I am looking for this chemistry book whose author I do not remember but its cover is blue”. I am sure any librarian would have launch into a lecture regarding the merits of remembering a book by its cover, shape and size alone.

This was somewhat how the cases of hero-worshiping came about.

One student was looking for Machiavelli’s The Prince. He said he had searched the card catalog but had not found both author and title. I know. So I did not have to consult the catalog thinking he might have gotten the spelling of the author’s name wrong especially since he pronounced it as “me-tsa-veli”. But I know too that we have this set called “Great Books” by Britannica. It is a 60-volume collection. I directed the student to it. Individual authors and titles in the collection which includes more than fifty authors and their works are not represented in the card catalog but I had read some of them and I was certain Machiavelli was in it. Like they said a well-trained librarian could have found the book just as well, but it is my being a lover of books and a reader which made my job in this case very, very, very easy.

The other case came to me like this: “I have seen this book a few weeks back but I did not borrow it because I was busy. I can remember its cover which is red. I can’t consult the card catalog because I can’t remember its author and I only remember a fraction of its title. I have looked and looked for it at the shelves but it is not in the “P” section anymore”. So I asked the student if she was sure it was a book that belonged to the “P” section because sometimes books are misplaced. She was sure because it was a collection of short stories. I asked next what the fraction of the title was and she gave it. It is a book some of our staff are reading and re-reading and which I have read too so I was able to give the girl the author and complete title: The next 500 stories by Frank Mihalic. Had I not read the book it would have been very difficult for me to help because the fraction she remembered was the 500 which is in the middle of the title itself.

It was the start of the bowing and the endless looks of idolatry and the ever grateful smile that is star-struck in essence. I noticed because like I said students more often take me for granted or pointedly ignored me.

I may not have even noticed the hero-worshiping look, had it not been accompanied by a slight pause and a bow. I could take star-struck smiles thrown my way maybe. It was the bowing I can’t handle. And bow they both did every time they met me in the lobby or anywhere else inside and outside the library. I know they were responding to the excellent librarian they saw in me in those instances but it was only so because of my being first and foremost and always a reader.

I’m glad the semester is over. I hope the break will cure them.