Reference Librarian On the Radio!

 A completely unexpected joy arrived in my library life one day. That joy began when WCAI called the library and wanted to know if another librarian would like to talk about books for half an hour on The Point with Mindy Todd. As it turned out that reference librarian did not want to talk about books on the radio, but she asked me if I would be willing to talk about books on the radio. I said sure.

And so I went to the WCAI studios in Woods Hole and I met Mindy, and Melanie Lauwers, who was at the time the Book Editor for the Cape Cod Times. Something sparked between us, and before long we became regulars on the show. When Melanie retired to Florida in 2014, I became the regular book talker on what had become an hour long live radio show once a month. It has been such a treat to have an hour of live radio every month just to talk about books! As far as Mindy and I can recall, the first show was in February 2005. Also, as far as we can recall,  the November 24th show, which was my final show,  was the 166th book show! There were, of course, some shows that were repeated, but just let's say ... I've done a surprising number of book shows, considering it was supposed to be a one-time event.

One of the great joys of the shows is, of course, our listeners, who call in or email the station with their picks on whatever book topic we are discussing. There have been many, many topics. Here are a few: books that changed your life, LabLit (novels with scientists as characters), Cape Cod authors, cats & dogs, travel, movies, April in Paris, baseball, banned books, planes, trains & automobiles, fairy tales, survival stories, maps, whales, birds, dreaming, pirates, fish, letters, detectives, insects, romance, sisters, colors, cookbooks, magic, water, stories of the sea, and radio. When the pandemic hit in March, we began to do the shows from our homes. The library was closed to the public at that point, and so author Peter Abrahams and I did two shows on the books from our home bookshelves! Many of these shows you can find archived on the CAI web page.

It has been such a gift to share books with the CAI listeners. After one show on trees where I mentioned how much I love winter trees, a listener called in and told us about a book they adored which was all about trees in winter, with beautiful illustrations. Next thing I knew, they had sent me a copy of the book! Another time I was talking about how my mother loved to read Josephine Tey mysteries, but I had never read any. Within a few hours, a listener delivered a bag of paperback Josephine Tey mysteries to me! What a gift our listeners have been.

The last show was the day before Thanksgiving, originally scheduled for the last Wednesday of October, but it turned out to be a Nor'Easter that day, so there was no book show that morning. Mindy Todd, Peter Abrahams, and I had a great conversation about books about radio, and Mindy encouraged me to be a guest book talker whenever I was available. I look forward to doing just that, and thank all of the CAI staff who were involved in making book radio happen once a month for their help and their enthusiasm for the book show. Long may it flourish, and I look forward to listening from home.  If you would like to see some photos taken which are all related to the book show, just pop over to my Flickr photo feed.

Thirty Years and One Month ...

 It feels impossible, but thirty years a go I was packing boxes in my Ware Hall apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I had accepted a job at the Falmouth Public Library in Falmouth, Massachusetts. (That was after I had turned down a job offer that would have landed me in Madison, Wisconsin as the Head of the Children's Department!) As I packed I was listening to the radio. The reporters were reporting from the lawn of the Falmouth Public Library in the middle of Hurricane Bob. He said trees were falling! And thus I imagined that a tree would not only fall on top of the library, but also on the apartment on Palmer Avenue that I had just rented!

September 3, 1991. The first words that are written after the date in my National Brand, Narrow Ruled Eye-Ease Paper Single Subject notebook are: "List of Attorney Generals." This notebook was shared by all the reference librarians at the reference desk so we knew what question had been answered and what question still needed to have some follow-up. Other questions that can be found in that notebook:

"Can WordPerfect be used on Apple II?"

"Do you have any information on T. Bailey, Cape artist and marine painter?"

"Do you have a 16mm movie projector that the pubic can use?"

"Do you have the phone number for the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Museum?"

"Why is the blue moon called blue?"

"A child brought in a grenade for show and tell. When did that happen?"

"A patron at Snow Library wants to know U.S. Foreign Aid to Pakistan for fiscal year 1990/1991."

"When is Anita Hill's birthday?"

"What does Italy do to celebrate the new year?"

And one of my all-time favorite reference questions: "Would you forge my mother's signature? I got in trouble at school."

We answered them all. We were a regional reference library, which meant we were funded by the state to answer questions for all the libraries on the Cape and Islands, not just the questions of the citizens of Falmouth.

We answered them all, without the internet, without google, without an online card catalog. When I first arrived we still had a paper card catalog, but on Halloween 1991 the first CLAMS online catalog was launched. In the 1991 town report, Ann Haddad, Library Director, wrote: "Library circulation is now on computer linking a 14 member library network. Users have one card and can use the collections of all participating libraries." In the 1994 town annual report we began "a regular weekly newspaper column" in the Falmouth ENTERPRISE, which is to this day still making a daily appearance!

And then in the 1995 town report, Nancy Serotkin wrote in her list of highlights for the year: starting a World Wide Web connection for the public in cooperation with the Woods Hole research community." The future had arrived. 

It has been a great gift to have spent thirty years working for the Falmouth Public Library. I have been fortunate to have so many wonderful colleagues both at the Falmouth Pubic Library and within the Cape and Islands libraries. I thank all of the town of Falmouth for being so supportive of this stunning building and this amazing staff who work in the main library and our East and North branches.

I'll leave you with the words of my magnificent reference professor at Simmons College, Allen Smith, who said to all of his students: "In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts to your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know. I don't know of another occupation like that. The more you know, the better you're going to be."

Readling Aloud List

Books Read Aloud with M. Kane
Beginning in March 1998 

(Not Completely In Order Of Reading.)

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust, translated by James Grieve

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Mark Treharne

Sodom and Gomorrah by Marcel Proust, translated by John Sturrock

The Prisoner and The Fugitive by Marcel Proust, translated by Carol Clark

Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust, translated by Ian Patterson

All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren

The Golden Bowl by Henry James

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

Ulysses by James Joyce

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein

Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Armed With Madness by Mary Butts

Death of Felicity Taverner by Mary Butts

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope

The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope

The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope

Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson

Backwater by Dorothy Richardson

Honeycomb by Dorothy Richardson

The Tunnel by Dorothy Richardson

Interim by Dorothy Richardson

Deadlock by Dorothy Richardson

Revolving Lights by Dorothy Richardson

The Trap by Dorothy Richardson

Overland by Dorothy Richardson

Dawn's Left Hand by Dorothy Richardson

Clear Horizon by Dorothy Richardson

Dimple Hill by Dorothy Richardson

March Moonlight by Dorothy Richardson

(All the Richardson novels were put together in four volumes under the title Pilgrimage.)

The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski

Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

Doctor Faustus: the life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told By A Friend by

Thomas Mann

Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore

Justine by Lawrence Durrell

Balthazar by Lawrence Durrell

Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell

Clea by Lawrence Durrell

The Enchantment of Snow

One of my favorite quotes about snow comes from J. B. Priestley. I think I first read it in a Green Tiger Press calendar, which was filled with vintage illustrations from children's books. Until last week, I never knew where the quotation first appeared. A recent snowfall made me remember the quotation, and thanks to the magic of the web, I was not only able to find the full quote, but was also able to purchase a copy of the book of essays in which it was originally published. As crabby as I can be about the inaccuracy of quotations on the web, this was the magic of the web at work. And so below, the paragraph which includes that original quotation about the enchantment of snow.

“The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quietness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night, the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundlessly, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom, a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter’s hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired schoolmaster, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement, but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling down to the day’s work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board ship.”

From FIRST SNOW by J. B. Priestley as published in APES AND ANGELS: A BOOK OF ESSAYS (1928)

Gorey Google Doodle

Gosh, how can the Gorey Librarian not comment on today's Google Doodle featuring Edward Gorey, even if she has exceedingly mixed feelings about Google itself? The Gorey Librarian also made a resolution to spend less time on social media, thus deleting both her personal Facebook and Twitter accounts at the end of 2012. [Update: Nov. 2013, was back on Twitter by March, still off Facebook.] So here I am, in this very old-fashioned medium of the blog to encourage anyone who has not read a Gorey book to immediately go to your local public library and check one out!

The Gorey Librarian will be celebrating Edward's birthday in a quieter way, with former fellow cast mates who had the great pleasure and honor of being directed by Edward in his Cape Cod plays. Our biggest goal during any performance was to hear Edward laugh at something we had done with one of the puppets. See more here. I am told that this evening there will be a birthday cake and "also tea and maybe absinthe and/or sherry" at the birthday celebration.

I had not only the delight of working with Edward, but also had the privilege of living for many years with Jane Cujo Gorey, one of the many cats that lived with Edward. You can learn a little bit more about Jane here and here. She is also featured in my favorite Edward video on Youtube. And see a photo of Jane and Edward together here.

We miss Edward and we miss Jane, but it is such a joy to know that Edward's name is now circling the world via twitter and facebook, all thanks to a google doodle. I never thought I'd say this, but thanks Google!

A Good Week to be a Reference Librarian

Some weeks it is still good to be a reference librarian. Last week was one of those weeks. It began with a box of Godiva chocolates delivered to me by an acquaintance of Mrs. Allen, a 103 year old woman who still calls the reference desk at least twice a day. The note with the box of chocolates began, "Lady, Jill." Mrs. Allen is the only person I know who calls me "Lady Jill." She also calls me her "Reference Life Line." The box of chocolates was just a thank you for the help the Reference Department gives her. I have found Italian phrases for her, and tracked down the names of towns in Italy she once visited, or restaurants in New York City that have long since closed at which she once ate. Mostly I remind her how to spell words, as she can no longer see to read her dictionary. In fact we had recently found an 800 number for her for Godiva chocolates, and we couldn't imagine why she needed that information, until the letter with the chocolates told us that she had called them to make sure the chocolates she had been given at Christmas were still safe to eat. They assured her they were.

For me Mrs. Allen is my link to the Ready Reference that used to be such a big part of our day at the Reference Desk prior to the invention of the Internet, but that now barely exists. It was such a sweet thing to have people call us with questions about spelling and grammar and congressional addresses or the time the sun would set on a particular day or when a tide would be high. Someone would need a recipe, and tell us we had saved their lives when we found the right cookbook on the shelf with the right recipe. It all seems sort of unbelievable now to those that have grown up searching the web for answers, no matter how wrong those answers might be.

The other joy of the week was when I got a comment on a library blog entry I had written in November, 2011. The blog was about a misattributed F. Scott Fitzgerald quote. It all stemmed from the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was indeed originally a Fitzgerald short story, but the quotation circulating was neither Fitzgerald nor Brad Pitt, who had said the lines in the film. In any case, last week the message I got was this:

"hey thanks! I did an google search after reading that quote on Pintrest bc it didn't seem like Fitzgerald, and I ran across your article in my investigation!"

And so Google uncovers my old-fashioned reference research. Well done Google!

Sailing

A Reference Librarian always knows what the patron really wants (and/or needs). An elderly gentleman came into the Reference Room wanting mortality rates for different decades. I pulled out historical statistics on population & the simple World Almanac list of longevity by year born. As I spoke to him he kept telling me that he had been born in the wrong era, and that he loved sailboats and he wanted to have been born in "the age of sail". He also told me his father was quite elderly when he had been born, and his father's brothers were all ten years older than his father. When he was a child he would listen to his uncles tell stories about the Civil War, and he again told me he felt he lived in the wrong age.

As he looked through the death statistics I pulled off the reference shelves two books: The Encyclopedia of Yacht Design by Lucia del Sol Knight and Art and the Seafarer; a historical survey of the arts and crafts of sailors and shipwrights edited by Hans Jürgen Hansen. I brought them over to him, put them down next to him as he poured through the  statistics, and said he might like to take a look at them. Sometime later I looked up and he was still turning the pages of the books on yachts and sea art. He stopped by as he left and said he would have to come back when he had more time to look at the Encyclopedia of Yacht Design. He was no longer talking about death or being born in the wrong age.