In the Days before Rock and Roll (aka Internet)

I remember declaring that I wanted to work in a library back at a careers talk when I was still in school. A classmate had a big sister working the local library and she said she wanted to work in a library too, but I knew she was only saying it because of her sister. Even then I recognised that to work in a library you needed to be passionate about it. Needless to say, she didn’t end up working in a library.

After completing my degree the recession of the 1980s was in full swing, so I spent a few years working in the Cash Office and Customer Services of Dunnes Stores, until I got my first chance to become a library assistant in Belfast Public Libraries. I was appointed to the Children’s Library Services and right from the start I found it challenging and exciting. Difficult to believe perhaps, but I was set to work designing posters and telling stories – what for me was totally out of my comfort zone. And I LOVED it. It helped that my boss was an exceptional librarian who remains a great friend to this day.

Working in a library wasn’t what I expected, but it was so much more. There were the books, certainly and the customers, and yes, there was book stamping to be done. But with the backdrop of the troubles in Belfast we were heading up the Falls and down the Shankill with a bundle of picture books under our arms, telling stories and singing songs to the children, and chatting with the parents and community workers and library staff. It really was public service in action.

After the Children’s Library Service I was moved to a college library which was very different. It was more like you’d expect library work to be but it was still enjoyable. I remember one of the staff was a chain smoker and would be sorting out cards in the back room and leaving lit cigarettes lying round – wouldn’t happen these days! I also remember that we kept current awareness folders, with clippings from newspapers. The hot topic of those days was AIDS and we were still deciding whether to label it as A.I.D.S. or AIDS. Only librarians would give this a second thought!

When I did my library diploma in Queen’s I got a job in Bangor Public Library, where I was on a rota moving round the lending, reference and music, children’s and Inter-Library Loans service. We also got to go on the mobile libraries and provide cover for a couple of the local branches.  The Music Library loaned LPs – and we had to examine each record returned for scratches and compare with the hand drawn record of previous scratches. And you could always tell when Gay Byrne had issued a quiz as the phone in the reference library never stopped. When the 3^rd person asked the same random question the penny would finally drop.

My first professional post was as Schools Librarian for Derry city and county. I moved across the country (well…province) and found myself immersed again in children’s books and storytelling. On top of that I was doing puppet shows and talks to teachers and parents about the value of books for babies and children. As if that wasn’t enough I got to go out on the mobile van to primary schools, giving all the teachers their choice of books for the classroom.

For secondary schools I even got to scan the catalogues (in the days before the Internet) and choose books for an exhibition of new books for secondary school libraries. With the selection of the newest books on board we went round every secondary school in the county and the teachers came to choose what they wanted in their libraries. We took note of their choices and ordered more copies for them. It was a good sign of it that there were very few books left in the exhibition that no one wanted!

Some school libraries had been neglected over time, but if they agreed to smarten them up we went out and provided advice on furniture and stock, and weeded the collection. Teaching staff were often shocked – they couldn’t understand how we librarians could be throwing out books, but when we explained that getting rid of the grubby, tatty, out of date, unattractive, inappropriate books and allowing the children to see the appropriate and attractive books they saw what was happening. Sometimes less really is more!

As well as storytelling for children I was involved in helping establish storytelling for adults (Yarnspinning) first in Belfast and then in Derry. It was in the middle of this that I met my husband – a storyteller from Cork. Well…a Kerryman living in Cork (a BIG difference as I came to appreciate). We had a short courtship - 7 months from start to wedding). Distance focuses the mind. There was no such thing as a mobile phone – Paddy used to unplug the house phone from the living room and move it to an extension plug in his room when we spoke by phone. It was strictly handwritten letters too – no emails, skype or texts!

Having taken a leap of faith and left my wonderful job in Derry I found trying to get a job in public libraries in Cork impossible. I applied for a library assistant post and even though I was a qualified and chartered librarian, apparently the fact that I didn’t have a leaving cert (duh, I sat A levels!) meant I couldn’t even get an interview. Thus, I found myself going down a totally different career path.

My “hi-tech” experience in Derry, searching British Books in Print on CD-Rom, got me a job in the Collins Bookshop and I spent a happy 9 months placing orders for customers. I moved on to set up an Information Centre for the newly created Clean Technology Centre in Cork Regional Technology College (now CIT). Working there with the researchers was the best craic of my working life. And in between the gales of laughter we managed to establish a research centre that is still going strong today.

My final change of employers came in 1993 when I was appointed as Assistant Librarian in UCC. I was made subject librarian for Science, Engineering, Food Science and pre-clinical Medicine (yes, all of them!) and spent the first year trying to work out what exactly a subject librarian does. It was very different from the public library side of things. There you were very much in charge of your own destiny, professionally speaking – you were in the library business and you were the expert in that environment. Somehow, in an academic setting you are always secondary to the academic pursuit of the institution – a service supporting the institution rather than the institution itself, if you see what I mean.

And in the intervening years the Internet has changed every aspect of the job beyond recognition. (That’s not a complaint, by the way – or BTW as we young folks like to say J) We’ve trained academic staff and students in the mysteries of print indexes, CD-Roms, online databases, the WWW as was and every other development along the way.

We’ve never done it with puppets though, which is a shame.