Polymath

My favorite St Andrews historical personage is Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. He was a professor of natural history, a mathematician, a zoologist, a museum developer, classicist, and parrot lover.

He had a reputation, even before taking up the chair at St Andrews, as being eccentric. He once said about his magnum opus On Growth and Form "it is 'all preface' from beginning to end." The book advocated natural laws that govern behavior rather than strictly focusing on evolution. Which at the time in 1917 was kinda radical. He also used math to point out differences and similarities between species.

This book inspired both Alan Turing and Jackson Pollock. Talk about differences in the species! He created both the natural history museums at the University of Dundee and the University of St Andrews(I enjoyed studying in the Bell-Pettigrew, which I talked about in an earlier post). One of his habits after moving to St Andrews would be to walk about town with his parrot on his shoulder.

My point here is that Professor Thompson was a polymath. Equally comfortable with language, science, math, and art. And parrots.He refused to be confined to disciplines. He would have made a good librarian.

I've decided to be more like D'Arcy W. Thompson. I'm not going to get a parrot and it's probably too late to be a renowned mathematician(even if I wanted). But he knew how to own his differences. He made them work for him. That's what I'm going to do. Learn more, walk about with a figurative parrot on my shoulder, use my knowledge and not apologize for it.

After all, I am a librarian. And as another (probably) polymath and librarian, Allen Smith, once said, "In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards 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.”

 

A really clean library

That's what they'll have when I leave.  If nothing else it will be clean and ruthlessly organized.  Today I made a huge dent in my master list, when I got wood polish!

My boss was a little amazed that one bottle of wood polish would make my day.  But she had gotten used to the non-glowy look of the wood in the library.  I knew better.  I'm using the Day Missions Room at Yale Divinity Library as my inspiration for the wood cleaning.
I told her we needed a gross of it.  She thinks I'm kidding.  I'm not exactly.  There's a lot of wood.  Plus the place hasn't been cleaned since Max (Reinhardt)died.  Okay, maybe sometime in this century, but not recently.  I went through 4 dust cloths in about an hour!  They are black with dust and dirt and whatever else...I don't want to think about it too closely.

Another problem is that the wood that makes up the place is really dry.  One match and whoosh!  I'd spray the polish and the wood would just suck it right up before I could get the cloth on it.  I'd love to hose it down with Murphy's Oil Soap, but that would entail moving the books and we just don't have the storage.

The schloss photographer came by in the afternoon and took my photo as I was cleaning the shelves.  It was a big deal.  He said no one's cleaned the place in his memory.  Bright side?  I made a dent in the dust and dirt and I'm helping the poor lonely books.  Down side is that I smell like wood polish.  It's not exactly the sexiest smell.

And don't get me started on the library closet.  Sigh.  At least the library is organized if a bit dirty and old.  The closet horrifies my librarian's soul.  But it will surrender.  Resistance is futile.

Graduate School

Well, it finally happened. After taking classes and working for years in a library I applied to library school and got accepted.
YES!
I applied to another-less discrimating library school program-twice! I was cruelly rejected. Damn math scores. I'm not building bridges here people. Why do I need a 500 on the GRE in math to do ILL or catalog? It made no sense. And besides there's this wonderful invention called a calculator.
But this other school had a more sensible view. A 1000 combined on the GRE or a 3.0 GPA.
Now you might think that my school has a less respected program than the other one. But that is not the case. In fact my school is one of the highest respected MLIS programs around. Not to mention it's a tad more diverse than the one I was going to. It has more in the way of preservation, archives, and academic librarianship. Which is what I'm interested in anyway.
Now I just have to pay for it.