Ok, librarians/archivists/archive nerds: if there any weird superstitions, workplace foibles or other bizarro daily facts in your profession I'd love to hear about them
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Please help make this go viral! We have to step up our game because our representatives are clearly not going to save us from this fast moving coup! The only thing we really can do that's nonviolent is slow production. Cost them money. Don't get fired. Don't hurt anyone. But do more where youcan
I used to work in a medical library that had some very confusing architecture. The architect ended up in an asylum and the joke was that either our building sent him there or that it was proof of why he ended up there.
I spent a startlingly large amount of time creating catalogue records for USB charging cords, plugs, and thumb drives. And one for the adjustable chair.
Some things I’ve come across in archives/libraries: a petrified wig, Margaret Thatcher’s handbag, a set of fake ‘ancient’ erotic plaster cameos (actually Victorian), two rugs once belonging to Lawrence of Arabia.
All that to say: you sometimes find a lot more than books & archive material!
I worked at an academic library in the 1990s, and a foil-wrapped ham kept working its way around the second-floor stacks for almost a year.
(I finally threw it away on a different floor, and it didn’t return from that.)
(I wrapped it in several layers of dot-matrix paper before I touched it.)
An urban myth common to several different university libraries is that their architect forgot to account for the weight of all the books when drawing up the building plans, and that they are slowly sinking into the ground as a result.
Some archivist colleagues cleaning out neglected shelving in a staff area came across a binder labeled EMERGENCY PLAN. When opened, it proved to be disguising a bespoke foam-lined artifact box containing a bottle of whiskey. The conservator swears the box was constructed before her time.
In an unprocessed accession the box or folder labeled 'pornography' will almost certainly not contain pornography, all other boxes and folders are fair game though.
We have one where no toasters are allowed in staff areas, be cause three times in one month an over-toasted bagel set off the fire alarm and the whole building had to be evacuated.
This is similar to how our library lost its microwave privileges. A student left the foil wrapper on something and set off the fire alarms. I think the fire marshall didn't want to keep dealing with evacuating our five-floor building anymore.
I had a twitter thread go viral a few years ago about a library practice I wasn't familiar with!
Older patrons making marks in books to identify if they've read them before, from before the digital systems were used and before Goodreads/Storygraph 😂
Also, as I was in public libraries in Scotland, there was zero agreement on how to alphabetise Mc/Mac surnames (and no library policy!!!), and huge disputes over what counted as "Scottish" for the Scottish Fiction section (author? setting? characters? vibes?). Major arguments broke out.
We also had separate Crime sections (required a named criminal investigator on the blurb, eg a DI, not just for a crime to have taken place) and for Scottish crime, was it "more Scottishy or more crimey"? Our catalogue would show multiple libraries shelving them in different sections.
(We had 14 libraries, and there was a central cataloguing team but they didn't do genre bc the librarians were so territorial about it and yelled at them when they got it "wrong", so instead we would have things catalogued differently across the network, so chaotic, I loved it)
Always put a stool or box in between the compact rolling shelving units when you go in between or the lock might fail/someone will crush you (one person I worked with said the museum ghost would unpin the lock on purpose).
Did medical archiving for half a year. P sure I indexed all the resuscitation paperwork by myself cos no one else wanted to touch it - if a person died during the intervention, the paper went onto a separate pile, sorting is time-consuming, and guess which box was 100% gonna have lots of deaths 😅
I'd tell you, but the last person who received unauthorised communication of the ancient wisdom was found crushed between two racks of mobile shelving.
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All that to say: you sometimes find a lot more than books & archive material!
(I finally threw it away on a different floor, and it didn’t return from that.)
(I wrapped it in several layers of dot-matrix paper before I touched it.)
Book trucks (aka cart) are often named (weird punny names a la public transportation) and decorated and departments fiercely guard their carts.
Kart Cobain
Napoleon Bonacart
Paul McCartney
Carty Mcfly
Dale Earncart
Brett the Hitman Cart
Also anything with Mark becomes Marc (a library computer language).
We also attribute any malfunction of shelving to the ghost of our founding director.
(also totally going to write some surprise pornography into the book now)
(There was a sign in the kitchen at my uni halls which read something like: "Do not heat sealed tins in saucepans of water in the oven")
Older patrons making marks in books to identify if they've read them before, from before the digital systems were used and before Goodreads/Storygraph 😂
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-full-episode-1.4607942/how-a-scottish-library-worker-solved-the-mystery-of-the-underlined-page-numbers-1.4608092
Also, this goes for all of what I did but especially the ER/ambulance stuff: never ever wonder what that mysterious fluid stain on the paper is 🤣
And if it's a slow day we walk around saying maybe we should close early and go home
It works