This post is "My Life in Libraries" (abridged version) (I'm sorry for the sideways pictures, but I'm tired and I'm not going to fix that right now.)
1970. These first three images demonstrate that I had a relationship with libraries from rather young. I trust some of my readers also remember their parents taking them to the library when they were young and helping them check out books.
I don't know how common this is around the world, but in the USA at least it's very common for public libraries to have reading programs of the nature these images represent. Usually the child, after having read 10 books gets some kind of acknowledgement for their efforts.
About this same time (5th or 6th grade) my school library had an arts/crafts contest to create something depicting something from a book. I made a papier mache scene of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on a raft in a river. The reward that time was a hardbound copy of "Five Little Peppers." I still have the raft from the scene and also the book I was awarded, but I didn't think you needed to see those too.
1984. Of course, like all college students, I used the university library too, but I'm going to move on to other aspects of my relationship with libraries. Next we see the second (of 2) contracts that I had working for Slavic Gospel Association in their library. This was interesting work, really. They have a largish room all on materials dealing with religion in Communist countries, or other pertinent information close to that subject. The cataloging I did of the videos was not standard cataloging (like Dewey or Library of Congress systems), but it was a system that worked for that size of a library. I also helped patrons find materials, and we had a lot of college students use the library (there was a relationship with Wheaton College). The other interesting thing I did then was peruse recent newsletter from other missions, including some in French and German and collated them into a packet to be sent to the various stations where the mission had workers. For the German and French articles I either translated them or wrote summaries. The second page is the list of duties I was to perform under the contract.
It was during this contract that the Vice President of Finance told me that they got money from the CIA for their radio work. It was also during this time that I made the appointment with the director to talk with him about some concerns I had (which I've written about elsewhere). After that contract ended I began a second year at Bible school.
1990. I've mentioned that the year after I returned to the States from Vienna my spirit was really crushed; they did me a good one, that's for sure. I had begun to believe that I was I was awful bad and couldn't do anything.
About 3 months after I returned home I got a job at my old alma mater in the library as a library assistant. Those were the days before computers, although it wasn't long after that that the university joined the Western Library Network, which eventually joined with OCLC. How things worked when I was there is that we'd get the printed cards (I can't remember if it was from a jobber or Library of Congress), but they wouldn't be complete. So I'd type out the call numbers and also the headings at the tops of the cards. That was mainly it.
The people there were very nice and so supportive. I still stay in touch with one librarian who's now retired. The library was very nice about working around my schedule to go back to school and then also when I was meeting with Galina Grischenko, wife of the man being treated there for leukemia from flying over Chernobyl dumping materials to contain the spread of the radiation. That job was a real godsend, for sure.
But the thing about that job was that when I got that first review I was shocked that they actually had some good things to say about me! Really, before I went to Vienna that wouldn't have been an issue, but after that ordeal (2 years with the mission) it was a very big deal to me to get that kind of affirmation. It's hard to explain how much that meant to me.
1991. It wasn't long after that, though, that I got a call offering me a job in Siberia. After a second call when I thought I asked about everything a person could ask (I had a very long list of questions. After all I'd been through I finally decided I'd better take the offer because who knew if there would be another opportunity. I had a 4 month contract, but I ended out staying 6 1/2 years, but not working for those same people. During the time of the contract, though, the city where I was had a 30th anniversary celebration and I was invited to say a few words. Like many things during that time, I felt set up. I was not very confident with my Russian, at least not to speak in front of a group like that, so someone wrote a few words on this waxy paper that virtually soaked up the ink and I could hardly read it. Then I felt stupid having dressed so casually, but I had asked (the people who invited me to work there) what I should wear and they said to come as I was. Yeah, right. I felt like people probably thought I was drunk or something because I couldn't read what was written and then I was dressed inappropriately on top of that. That was only one of many problems though that I had with that group, and a relatively minor one at that.
1991. Actually this one was on the way to the job in Siberia. I flew in to Moscow and then took the trans-Siberian train to where I was going to be teaching. While in Moscow I managed to visit the Russian State Library and got a library card for hall 1 where the social sciences were.
2005. I returned to the States in 1997 and had a lot of escapades of various kinds, until I decided to get a Master's degree in Library Science. So you see my diploma there.
2006. My first professional librarian job was as a contract librarian to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Library, where I cataloged mostly English books, but also some French and Russian and even a couple Korean (!) ones. For the Korean ones all I could do there was make out the publisher and publishing location, and fortunately most of the other stuff was available at least by way of a summary or abstract. I worked on cataloging a collection of materials from another NOAA satellite library that had down-sized, and that collection included a few videos. Also, I did a few serials too, especially the Russian ones. So what you see here is a book I was cataloging in OCLC. Our policy was to catalog in the OCLC catalog and then download the card to the NOAA library system and then tweak it in our catalog for our unique specifications. I really liked working there and the people, but being contract you didn't get all the benefits, but there contract librarians there who'd been there 10 years even, because it was a nice place to work and they did treat us pretty well. But I was thinking I wanted to have a retirement plan, for example, so I ended out accepting a job offer where I am now in southern Florida. Of course I immediately got sick and ended out losing that job after less than 6 months because I was sick and didn't know what was wrong with me and didn't have doctors there. They did give me a severance package though. I had to fight too to get any benefits from the Long Term Disability insurance I got when I was with them.
2010. I did eventually get somewhat better and got a job offer as a librarian for the county library system. I started work 1 week before I saw the neurosurgeon and he wanted to operate (on the thoracic) right away. So I worked a couple months and then was out almost the same time and had trouble working full-time right away so when my physiatrist (rehabilitation medicine) sent them a note that I could only work part-time the administration went into gear trying to negotiate to come back full-time. The wanted me to go from 20 to 30 to 40 hours a week, over 3 weeks. I thought that was too fast, but I didn't even have a chance to ask my doctor. They asked me to come in on my day off for a meeting and we were supposed to discuss my schedule for returning to work full-time and that there was nothing wrong. I had barely just walked in to the room when they said they wanted to offer for me to quit or they'd terminate me. I was devastated, because even while I was out on leave after the surgery I had spend hours and hours on the computer working on collection development, when I wasn't supposed to be sitting that long (I was supposed to mover around more). They had no complaints about my work.
So there you have it. I haven't told you everything I could about me and libraries, but I think this is an interesting way to look at my life anyway. When I met a Russian about a month ago at a doctor's office we got to talking (in Russian) about various things. I felt like we sort of hit it off like we understood things the other was talking about and finished each other's sentences even a few times. She mentioned that if I had stayed in Russia I would have died by now of Hepatitis C (which I got there from a blood transfusion - "graznyi krov'", dirty blood). My response was, "Maybe so, but at least I would have had a good job until I died."
