Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

Picture on left: Purdy side of the library, picture on right Krege side of the library. This was the original library at Wayne State, now called the Purdy Kresge Graduate Library. The buildings are connected by the first floor only...interestingly, useless design. It seems as though nothing is working today at the library. Days like these I wonder if technology is really an advancement. I still have conspiracy theories about it, but I will save those rants for another day. The printer has been down on my floor since I came in. A service call put in to our contracted printer-fix-it man has gone unanswered. I posted a sign, warning the students of the problem, also offering the suggestion that printing is still available downstairs. I now have a sign hanging on my desk that says, "due to a denial of service attack originating from off campus on the WSU mail servers, incoming and outgoing e-mail is currently experiencing significant slowdowns..." What this basically means (what...

Our library has been preparing slowly preparing for renovation work for months now, though it seems that each day in preparation of renovations, we are already renovating. Deconstructing really. It remindes me of Merwin's poem, Unchopping a tree , which is a dear favorite of mine and reminds me of my wonderful friend Beth, who can actually quote long poems, a feat of which I have never mastered! So, in my ode to Merwin, my poem (though mine is in the reverse-while he is putting his tree back together, we are taking our library apart. Deconstructing a library Start with the books, heavy, dusty old collections, or new, sheltered, barely broken by service; these must be gathered into the arms of the cart bearing men, who clatter them down onto wooden semi-permanence. This does not take long, unless a spine is broken, and goes unnoticed, until the meat of the book falls onto the floor. If the move was well planned everything will come together as a well choreographed dance; each moment...