From the sensational 2011 Dimbleby Lecture given by Michael Morpurgo comes this moving story. Those of us who danced in the Kremlin during the IFLA Conference when the coup took place against Gorbachov have another tale to tell - but that's for another day....

"Time for another story – I’ll tell you why afterwards. It’s one that I heard in Russia in 2003. There was an extraordinary happening to which I was invited, a gathering of 400 librarians from all over Russia. On my first evening in Moscow I found myself in the Kremlin, a glittering palace of gold and white, buzzing with people talking about books. It was a great, celebratory evening, the kind of glitz that you would never ever find at a conference for librarians in England – more’s the pity. (Think of that in a month when we’re told hundreds of libraries across Britain might have to close). In fact it was a celebration of librarians – the unsung heroes of the book world – of the importance of the work they do in bringing books to children and children to books. So this was dear to my heart.

Instead of a cabaret, there was a prize giving. And right at the end of a rather long evening, the last prize-winner was announced. As he stood up, a rather diminutive man in an ill-fitting suit, 400 librarians rose to their feet and began huzzah-ing like Russian troops at Borodino. I turned to my minder and asked her what was so special about him. Ah, she said. He is a hero. One day his library caught fire. With no thought for his own safety, he rushed into the building and began to carry out armfuls of books. Inspired by his courage and determination, the townspeople followed suit, so that before the building burned to the ground, they had saved about three quarters of the books in the library – thousands of them., “And the story doesn’t end there,” she said. “He told the townspeople to take the books home and look after them, as many as they could; and then when the library was rebuilt, as he was sure it would be, then they could bring them all back. And that is exactly what happened.” So, with tears in my eyes, I huzzah-ed along with the rest of them.

And I was thinking, it is people like this Russian school librarian who make a real difference to children’s lives, a different kind of hero, unfamous, unglamorous. His love of books and his ability to inspire reminded me of the people who had made a difference to my life, my mother reading to me the stories and poems she loved: Kipling, de la Mare, Masefield, Edward Lear; my choir master at school, Edred Wright, whose enthusiasm gave me a lifelong love of music. We can each of us remember the individuals who made the difference in our own young lives. Yet, something is wrong here and it is this, so often the importance of these individuals in children’s lives is not reflected by their importance in our society."

Michael Morpurgo. Set Our Children Free. 2011 Richard Dimbleby Lecture. http://www.michaelmorpurgo.com/news/read-michaels-dimbleby-lectur/

Those of us who danced in the Kremlin during the IFLA Conference when the coup took place against Gorbachov have another tale to tell - but that's for another day....

Laurie Taylor's THES Column was always a joy. This piece comes from a column where characters choose their favourite read of the year:

Douglas Stacksmaster (Senior Librarian)
Oddly enough you don't catch many of today's new information specialists (formerly librarians) sitting around reading good old-fashioned books. Oh no, most of us these days are into "accessing data-bases" (excuse the jargon). My own favourite database this year was one called InterLibrary. Instead of all those hours mooching along the shelves you now simply key in the topic which interests you and this database immediately tells you the number of inter-library loan forms you will need to complete in order to obtain the necessary information. fascinating stuff.

THES 28.12.90 p.16

From a flyer for a course at the University of London. We know what you mean - but it's not what you say.

Handling Discipline at Work

Date: 24th November 1987
Venue: University College London
Aim: To consider the practical application of rules and procedures and to provide some 'hands on' experience...
Programme: Timekeeping
Sickness
Drink
Sexual Harassment

Hands on sexual harassment, eh. No wonder it was limited to 12 participants

From the classic and perceptive novel Small World:

"...information is much more portable in the modern world than it used to be. So are people. Ergo, it's no longer necessary to hoard your information in one building, or keep your top scholars corralled in one campus. There are three things which have revolutionized academic life in the last twenty years, though very few people have woken up to the fact: jet travel, direct-dialling telephones and the Xerox machine. Scholars don't have to work in the same institution to interact, nowadays: they call each other up, or they meet at international conferences. And they don't have to grub about in library stacks for data: any book or article that sounds interesting they have Xeroxed and read it at home. Or on the plane going to the next conference. I work mostly at home or on planes these days. I seldom go into the university except to teach my courses.

...As long as you have access to a telephone, a Xerox machine and a conference grant fund, you're OK, you're plugged into the only university that really matters - the global campus. A young man in a hurry can see the world by conference-hopping"

David Lodge: Small World London: Secker & Warburg, 1984.

Sir, - The discussion (Guardian Letters) of British Library amenities reminds me of a notice in the Northampton Public Library early in the war : it said, simply, Persons must not lie on the shelves (What had persons been up to?).

Phoebe Carter.
1Port Hill,
Hertford.

Guardian Letters page 21st August 1987

Angus Wilson on the joys of running things:

On occasion I wished for the immediate applause given to the acrobat, the pop singer or the tennis star. But perhaps the paid administrator has a more continually pleasant sense of ministration adnot being truly appreciated than any of these.

As he [Nutting, a research worker] said "It never does the administration any harm to be criticized, even when it's done the right thing."

and citing Pope

"For forms of government let fools contest,
What'er is best administered is best."

Angus Wilson. The Old Men at the Zoo. London: Secker & Warburg, 1961

Blogger, know thyself.......

"Saw Romeo and Juliet....It is the worst play that ever I heard in my life and the worst acted."
(1 March 1662)

"Then to church and heard a simple Scot preach most tediously." (26 October 1662)

"So to church and slept all the sermon, the Scot, to whose voice I am not to be reconciled, preaching." (21 June 1663)

Great Book Titles of our Time:

Seaman, Julian. Sixteen Hands Between Your Legs. British Horse Society, 1987

A gobbit from Roy Hattersley's Endpiece column in the Guardian of 28th January 1984.

"Librarian Larkin presided over the shelves and stacks of Hull even in that university's paleolithic period when I was a student there, and I often experienced the austere wrath which he directed at constant return-date dafaulters.
Even in these pre-promiscuous days , in the University of Hull keeping a girl out all night was safer than doing the same to a book. In the Brynmore-Jones Library, the safest course of all was to take half of Polonius's advice and never a borrower be."

Terry Pratchett and Librarians

Pratchett fans will know that the Librarian first appeared in a footnote in "Sourcery".

"A magical accident in the Library, which as has already been indicated is not a place for your average rubber-stamp-and-Dewey-decimal employment had some time ago turned the Librarian into an orang-utan. He had since resisted all efforts to turn him back. He liked the handy long arms, the prehensile toes and the right to scratch himself in public, but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn't that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it."

Pratchett, T. Sourcery London, Gollancz, 1989. p.16

This first post is a long standing favourite and describes Thomas Carlyle's experience of Edinburgh University Library in 1814.

"A fat Highlander with even less weakness for letters was in command and considered students his natural enemies. In 1814 Tom was a six-footer and a good witness of what used to happen as he stood in the queue at the door, and what he said he saw was as funny as a farce. At the appointed hour the students began battering the door and the Highlander opened it slowly, slowly. He could not use his feet or his fists to show his love for his foes, but he did what he could as they crowded in - he bent his body at the last moment to send sprawling as many of them as possible"

I guess this refers to farting! It's from a biography of Carlyle written in about 1900. Sadly I don't have a proper reference, but it's Page 88 and the Chapter is called "Boy to Man"