HORNEL, New York. The process of checking out a book from a library is a simple task repeated millions of times each day in America, but when Dr. Claude Nostrand, a professor of chemistry at Upstate New York State College, hands over his selection to head librarian Emily Schuskopf, it is one fraught with tension.
“Ooo–I’m getting this, like, science-y feeling all over!”
“Master of Library Science,” Nostrand sniffs, barely concealing his contempt as he edges forward, third in line. “Real scientists get to wear cool lab coats and blow things up,” he notes drily. “The biggest technological problem ever solved in a library was a jammed book return.”
But Schuskopf, who has endured Nostrand’s abuse before, isn’t backing down. “Library scientists have long been derided as poor relations to the ‘hard’ sciences,” she tells this reporter, making little finger quotes of dubiety in the air to express her contempt for the hierarchy she suffers under. “But at least library scientists know what ‘derided’ means, which is more than you can say for this bag of molecules,” she says, nodding at Nostrand.
“Our story hour guest today is this illiterate mook, so you’ll see what happens if you don’t read.”
The disdain that those trained in the physical sciences feel towards library scientists is due for a re-appraisal, however, as recent breakthroughs herald a new era of respect for the men and women who man and woman our nation’s stacks, checkout counters and reading rooms. “If John Dewey walked into a library today he wouldn’t recognize the place,” says Patricia Ormond of the Croton-on-Hudson Municipal Library, referring to the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, a method of library classification. “Of course, he’s been dead for 63 years, so he has trouble recognizing a lot of things.”
Dewey: “Where do you file the Mad Libs–under M or L?”
To prove her point, Ormond escorts this reporter to a back corner of the library, where a group of high school girls is gathered around a table, ostensibly to do their geometry homework but in fact giggling as they manipulate a “cootie catcher” to determine who will be their dates for the spring prom.
Cootie catcher: File under “Catcher, cootie.”
“Girls,” Ormond says primly, “I asked you before to use your ‘library voices’ but other patrons have complained.”
“We’re sorry,” Cynthia Lemon, a popular cheerleader, says with feigned contrition.
“That’s all right,” Ormond says. “I was able to hack your Instagram accounts using our bodacious new server. I don’t think any of you need to worry about going to the prom now.”
She turns on her heel leaving the gaggle of girls aghast, and enters the library’s command center, a darkened room where a bank of computers casts an eerie blue and green glow.
“I’ve got a teenager in Zone 4 taking Lady Chatterley’s Lover into the bathroom.”
“In the past library science was about ‘inputs’–how many books we bought and checked out. Today, it’s more rigorous. We are the interface between the printed word and the human species,” she says, using high-flown language that would sound more appropriate in a college classroom than a community library. “Here, take a gander at this gizmo,” she says, pointing her finger at a dial that measures volumes of bodily secretions per library patron. The needle climbs slowly from a green “safe” zone to an amber “warning” zone and, as it approaches a red “danger” zone, she reacts sharply.
“Excuse me,” she says as she springs into action and turns on a microphone that feeds into the building’s public address system.
“Bobby Lilja,” she barks. “Do not wipe that booger on ‘David Copperfield’!”
Now I want to be a librarian! Especially if I get to call someone an “illiterate mook.”