“We’ll have to have one card file with the names and addresses of the borrowers,” Ginny said. “On those cards we’ll write the titles of the books they borrowed and the date they borrowed them. Then we’ll have another card file with the titles of the books. On those cards we’ll write the names of the members who borrowed them, and the date the books are due to be returned. On the first blank page of every book we’ll glue a slip of paper. On it we’ll write or stamp, if we have a rubber date stamp, which we should have, the date the book is due. Also, we’ll have to have a control calendar card file. On the date which corresponds to the date the book is due to be returned we’ll write the title and the name of the borrower. And the first thing we’ll do every day when we open shop is check that calendar file to make sure the book is picked up if it hasn’t been returned previously.”

Lucy moaned and pulled strands of her blond hair across her face. “It’s all too, too complicated. I’m glad you’re the business manager, Ginny. Calendar card file, rubber date stamp, books borrowed, books due, names, addresses, titles — it’s all too much for me!” [p. 18-19]

Title: Ginny Gordon and the Lending Library
Creator: Campbell, Julie, 1908-1999
Publisher: Whitman Publishing Company
Date: 1954
Type: Text

Miss Pynchon was already at her desk when Monique showed up that Monday morning. Monique looked nervously at the clock on the desk: eight-thirty. She was half an hour early. She breathed a sigh of relief; for a moment, she thought her watch might be wrong, and she might have been late. In the Library, the consequences of being late were extreme.

“Good morning, Miss Pynchon,” said Monique meekly taking her seat at the desk opposite her supervisor’s. There was a stack of antique books for processing; it was Monique’s job to affix the bar codes on the inside front cover and record the process in her logbook. This stack of books, like all books in Monique’s section of the Library, was a collection of antique books that Miss Pynchon had acquired at auction on behalf of an anonymous donor.

Miss Pynchon didn’t look up from her work as she said, “Good morning, Monique. That’s a new dress, isn’t it?”

Monique nodded. “Yes. I bought it on Sunday at Flirt!”

Miss Pynchon didn’t look up as she said, “A little tight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Miss Pynchon.”

“Tsk, tsk.” [p. 3]

Title: Borrowing Privileges
Creator: Morley, N. T.
Relation: The Library
Publisher: Venus Book Club
Date: 2002
Type: Text

Title: The Librarians
Creator: Butler, Robyn
Creator: Hope, Wayne
Publisher: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Date: 2007
Type: Moving image

Title: Star Trek: The Animated Series
Contributor: Shatner, William; Nimoy, Leonard
Publisher: NBC Television Network
Date: 1973
Type: Moving image

The School of Librarianship was in Suzzallo Library, a cathedral-like building that seemed elaborate after Cal’s neoclassical Doe Library. In the main room of the library school we were assigned desks in predictably alphabetical order with our names neatly typed on white paper and pasted to green desk blotters.

There were forty-eight women and two men in the class, fewer than half direct from undergraduate work. Most had worked in libraries, saved money, and aimed for professional credentials and higher pay. The women referred to the school as the Cloister, and “the Missionary Spirit” was a phrase we often heard from instructors. I soon discovered to my chagrin that I had suffered needlessly through Advanced French Grammar. This university counted quarter, not semester, units.

The first quarter we all took the same classes. Fortunately, memories of the Ontario Public Library reassured me that being a librarian was more interesting than learning to be one. Cataloging exasperated me because I do not have an orderly, logical mind and could not see why it was important to snoop behind pseudonyms to find an author’s true name. Why should Mark Twain always be cataloged under Samuel Langhorne Clemens with a cross-reference card from Mark Twain? Reference work was enjoyable. Each week we were given ten questions and the resources of the university library to find the answers in a sort of intellectual treasure hunt. Once, when I was wearing the red dress, a man who worked at the reference desk actually whispered, “You look like bait in that dress.” He did not, however, turn into a prince. [p. 163-164]

Title: My Own Two Feet: A Memoir
Creator: Cleary, Beverly
Publisher: Morrow Junior Books
Date: 1995
Type: Text

Title: Anthropologie Mail-order Catalog
Publisher: Anthropologie
Date: 2005
Type: Image

Title: Batgirl
Contributor: Craig, Yvonne, 1941-
Publisher: ABC Television Network
Date: 1967
Type: Moving image

She was completely unaware that her particular level of dishevelment, normally caused from thinking about sculpture while assigning call numbers, worked to imbue her bookish physical authority with such a level of chaos that men assumed she was a slut. Her easiness was further particularized, however, with a cool distance that arose from her own intense ambitions. Making art meant she had to keep a lot of herself for herself. The result was that as Audrey was chewing on a pencil, thumbing through an old edition on Kinetic Art, men watched thinking, “I’m a bad boy, she’d fuck me, and she wouldn’t call the next day because she’d be doing something smart and righteous.” Her set up was, to be blunt, irresistible. Many men in her life had been fascinated with the librarian stereotype.

Assumptions had run rampant that, sexually, Audrey’s co-workers should all have some kind of Jackie Bouvier perspective, infamously described by Gore Vidal as a notion that sex was untidy and therefore unappealing to the ultra-fastidious. Many times, Audrey’s inherent sexuality surprised and delighted her partners. She functioned like a properly ordered card catalogue. The neat logic to her approach and system made for a more direct and efficient interaction between patron and product. Audrey’s sexual encounters almost always ended in mutual orgasm. [p. 26-27]

Title: Sexy Librarian: A Novel
Creator: Weist, Julia
Publisher: Ellen Lupton
Date: 2008
Type: Text

Eve started.

“Blandings Castle?… But this is the most extraordinary thing. I’m going to Blandings myself in a few days.”

“No!”

“They’ve engaged me to catalogue the castle library.”

“But, Eve, were you only joking when you asked Clarkie to find you something to do? She took you quite seriously.”

“No, I wasn’t joking. There’s a drawback to my going to Blandings. I suppose you know the place pretty well?”

“I’ve often stayed there. It’s beautiful.”

“Then you know Lord Emsworth’s second son, Freddie Threepwood?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he’s the drawback. He wants to marry me, and I certainly don’t want to marry him. And what I’ve been wondering is whether a nice easy job like that, which would tie me over beautifully till September, is attractive enough to make up for the nuisance of having to be always squelching poor Freddie. I ought to have thought of it right at the beginning, of course, when he wrote and told me to apply for the position, but I was so delighted at the idea of regular work that it didn’t occur to me. Then I began to wonder. He’s such a persevering young man. He proposes early and often.” [p. 58]

Title: Leave It to Psmith
Creator: Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville), 1881-1975
Publisher: Overlook Press
Date Copyrighted: 1923
Type: Text

Title: Chatham Square Branch, children lined up at librarian’s desk, April 11, 1910; “The Night Library”
Creator: Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940
Relation: Lewis Hine Lantern Slides of NYPL Branches
Date: 1910
Type: Still image