2024, books, Family, home, Uncategorized

My Archivist

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I am not a really neat and organized person when it comes to putting away books, recipes, and media such as LP’s and CD’s. I will eventually get around to to when the volume of clutter starts to bother me. Husband, on the other hand has taken it upon himself to be the archivist, reveling in putting things way alphabetically and with similar content. It has got to the point that he doesn’t want me to search for recipes in the binders he has created, insisting that he get them and put them back. He has them organized just so, with the categories just the way he wants them.

It has been quite hard to have all our books in boxes in the furnace room while we wait for the mitigation company to send the guys to put the basement furniture back where it belongs. They said they would be at the house on Monday, but didn’t show up. I plan to send a pitiable text to the foreman pleading with him to speed things up. The bookshelves are behind a bunch of other heavy furniture so we couldn’t get to them and move them if we wanted. We are going to dust off every book before it goes back on she shelf. There are a lot of preliminaries before the archivist can get to work and arrange the books to his liking. I don’ t know what his plan is for organizing them on the shelves, but I am sure that whatever he comes up with will make sense to him, at least, but not necessarily to me.

What job would you want if you worked in a library? Tell about the best library you ever visited.

48 thoughts on “My Archivist”

  1. I’d want to be a “reshelver” or whatever the person who puts returned books back onto the shelves. If I’m browsing and see a title out of place, I ALWAYS put it where it belongs! 🙂

    No libraries stick out to me as best, but I have fond memories of my elementary school library and the “new” St. Louis Park public library (new in the late 60s). The Owatonna library iss quite nice. A blend of 100+ year old, high-ceilinged mustiness combined with a “modern” new wing. Again, maybe 50 years old now. Adult section on top, children’s library below with a big play area/stage (for readings) and lots of computers.

    All libraries are good, most are “better” and I suppose there are a few bests depending on what a reader is looking for. Love ’em all!

    Chris in Owatonna

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  2. Shelving the returned books! I got to do that in our junior high school library, and loved it – found things I wanted to read, enjoyed putting them in the right place…

    Another form of archiving: We’ve printed out an alphabetical list of the already-used Wordle words. After we do our nightly Wordle, Husband finds the appropriate spot on our list and writes in the result – it’s a good post stroke mental exercise…

    I think the New York City Public Library (Main Branch) on 42nd St. and 5th Avenue. In 1975, at least, it was so beautiful, and iconic – you’ve seen it in movies.

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    1. My cousin was a librarian at the New York City Public Library for a few years while he got his degree in document preservation from Columbia University. Then he went to work at Ohio State as a librarian.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I think every library is my favorite. What an ingenious idea by Benjamin Franklin. I have written before about the public library in my home town, staffed by Mrs. Smith, the Victorian lady dressed in black, who severely disapproved of my reading material (To Kill a Mockingbird, Spirit Lake, Andersonville). She called my mother to complain. While my mother had her limits as a parent, when it came to reading, she allowed me to read widely. When I came into my teens I had read most of what had interested me in the town library, so I sstarted to explore the college library. The librarian there, Mrs. Kang, was a friend of my mom and she liked me. So when I entered that library over the next 8 years someone was glad to see me and did not give me dagger stares of disapproval. I could check out anything on my mom’s card. That was my favorite for a long time.

    I have worked in two libraries. I staffed the front desk at the Grand Rapids (MN) Public library from 1977-79, and at the Iowa State University Library from 1973-1975. Loved it.

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    2. I had a librarian in my school when I was in fifth grade who didn’t want me to check out The Hunchback of Notre Dame. To this day I don’t remember why I wanted it, but I did. I doubt if she called my parents, and even if she had, my parents probably would’ve said “mind your own business she can read what she wants”. But if it weren’t for her disapproval, I might not have slogged my way through it in fifth grade – that proverbial red flag— Just awful from my fifth grade perspective as every single major character and even a lot of the minor ones are dead by the last page. I’m still trying to figure out how Disney could’ve made a movie out of that.

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  5. Luverne had a real battle ax of a children’s librarian in the 1960’s. Her main goal was to make sure no youth checked out any book by our local author Fred Manfred., because, as everyone knew, Fred wrote dirty books. Oh, the laciviousness of Lord Grizzly!

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        4. Manfred sounded English, which was probably the point of taking that name. But because of that I did not know he was part of the Dutch settlements. He was bitter about the Reformed chirch.

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        5. His people came from one of the Dutch islands in the North Sea. He had three children, all very tall. One daughter is a poet. Fred would come to all the high school basketball games. He was very thin. He lived in a house adjacent to Blue Mound State Park and used to wander around the park wearing only the tiniest of bikini briefs.

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        6. Years ago, I attended a reading by Freya Manfred, his oldest daughter. Aside from being very tall, she’s a fine poet in her own right, but her reading that night was from a memoir she had published about her dad.

          Apparently the home the family built near Blue Mounds State Park was her dad’s dream home with large windows and natural stone. She told about the frequent visits from her dad’s well known friends (Robert Bly and Bill Holm are two that I specifically remember her mentioning) during the years the lived there. Unfortunately, the home developed all kinds of structural problems over the years, and became extremely expensive to maintain. It became an interpretive center for the park after the Manfred’s moved out.

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        1. There has been some uproar about the Manfred house. As you described above, it was becoming too costly to maintain. The DNR owns it now as part of Blue Mounds, but they don’t want to keep the house. They want to tear it down. There was public outcry in a the past few years. I think a petition to save it might have been going around. I don’t know what has been decided.

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        2. I’ve read that too, the cost of maintaining it became prohibitive, and I believe it was closed to the public. I don’t know what the current status is.

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  6. My very first library is another favorite – a lovely old Carnegie Library in Storm Lake, IA. Children’s department was in the basement, and there was a round turret with a round table by the picture books… My mom would park me there while she went upstairs, and I was in heaven for a while.

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  8. I’d want to be a research librarian.
    The header photo looks just like my library—

    IMG_1281

    except for the paucity of empty spaces, the order- alphabetical or otherwise, and the lack of fine bindings.

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  9. Bet nobody’s ever been there, but the Downtown Reno Public Library is one of the most extraordinary libraries I’ve ever been to. We grew up there and my sister was so obsessed with books we’d walk down there every few days. She wasn’t very good at keeping the books intact, though, and mother was not happy when the library bills went up to 20 dollars (before inflation)

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  10. Sandra was born to be a small town librarian. Children’s librarian who made it a warm and welcoming place, at first in the basement of an old fashioned Carnegie library as Barbara talks about. Then later in the sunny addition. Her summer reading program drew over 150 kids a year. She usually had a few kids hanging around her desk or reading in the wide ledge of the huge modern window behind her.
    In the winter she worked from 3-9 three or four evenings depending on budget and 10-3 on Saturday. Her afternoons were for the kids, the evenings for college kids and adults who hung around. Saturday was story hour where little kids first fell in love with her and the library.. She would open back rooms and stay late as finals weeks approached. Many students commuted to UMD. I was her trivia research librarian. She would call me with questions I knew or could look up at home, usually, not always. She broke rules frequently like you cannot check out reference books. She would to people she trusted when they had pressing need.
    Clyde

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  11. My first college had an amazing reading room, at first hard to study in. Gothic, called Chicago Gothic because the university had its own distinct style. The ceiling was arched to 35 feet. The room was wide and long with endless long oak tables with heavy gothic legs and chairs. The walls were rows of stained glass windows starting above the tall shelves of reference books and reaching all the way to the ceiling. Early winter sunsets shone diagonally through the colored glass. It was warm and bright and honey colored. Sitting in there it gave me the feeling of imposter syndrome.
    Clyde

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  13. The basement furniture is all back in place! Now Husband can spend his time putting all the books back on the shelves, after dusting, of course. The basement hasn’t been dusted for more than a year because of construction and renovations. I expect to sneeze a lot as we clean it all up.

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  14. A library aid job would be great for all the same reasons given before. I haven’t ever worked in a library.

    I used to spend quite a bit of time in the St. Olaf Rolvaag Library and the Carleton Library. I liked the Carleton library best. It had so many interesting books and places to sit and read.

    Northfield has a nice Carnegie library and I like it a lot. I can’t say I have a favorite library. They’re all interesting in their own unique ways.

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  16. I’ve been lucky enough to visit the New York City zlibrary, as well as the Library of Congress and of course, the most stunning of all for me was the Trinity College Library in Dublin. All awe-inspiring. But of my favorite Library still has to be the Cole County Library in Jefferson City. It was across from the A&P and every Saturday my mom dropped me off at the library for an hour while she did the family shopping. My favorite time of the week..

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