|
By Rita Costello, Rosenfeld Library, UCLA Anderson
Graduate School of Management
BEING INVITED
In late February Steve asked me to be LAUC-LAs next speaker in the "Mostly
About Libraries Series." After I got past my initial defensive reaction
of where will I find the time and what would I say, I flashed back to
the positive reviews I heard about Ray Soto’s presentation which I unfortunately
missed—I knew Ray would be a tough act to follow. After that, it
didn’t take long to realize that I had something to contribute because
choosing a career that suited me well was a life decision that came easily
in spite of some of my decision because others, more experienced, were
watching over me. At various times in my life I have thought about what
it is to go to sleep each night dreading to going to work the next morning—I
can't imagine much worse—and now I believe this is probably one life
lesson I may never need to learn.
BELMAR
PUBLIC LIBRARY
As a child growing up at the Jersey Shore, my favorite places were the
beach and school. During the summer there was no school and on rainy days
there was usually no beach for me so I reasoned the local public library
was worth investigating. I came to this conclusion on my own as best I
recall; I don’t remember anyone putting this idea into my head. It didn’t
take long for Mrs.
Roper, town librarian, to learn who I was and to grant me a special
privilege. You see the children's area was to the left or east of the
entrance—while adults congregated on the right or west side. I was
so sure there were better "things" on the adult side although
I had nothing specific in mind. I told this to Mrs. Roper one day and
she said that I should just satisfy my curiosity and go over to the adult
side to investigate for myself. And I did! What I learned was that there
were just more books that lined walls where the shelves were much higher—way
beyond my reach. When I reported these findings to Mrs. Roper I told her
that surely the "better" books were on the tall shelves—I
think she knew that I was trouble—but again she urged me to satisfy
my curiosity offering the sliding ladder to explore. She was very generous
to me and I always felt that Mrs. Roper took me seriously. Our relationship
lasted through my high school years even though my visits to the Belmar
Public Library lessened as the years passed.
SAINT
ROSE
My next significant experience with libraries was in high school. In English
class we were to write a research paper to analyze a book of our choice
complete with footnotes and a bibliography. It was clear that we were
required to do library research. I thought this assignment sounded like
fun but predictably I didn't know where to start to choose a book. So
I asked my Mom and she advised me to read Truman
Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's because I always reminded her of Audrey
Hepburn. Neither one of use could forsee the next decision I was to make
for myself. To me, it seemed tame to use either the Belmar Public Library
or the high school library. After all Tiffany’s
wasn't far uptown from the New York Public Library and that is where I
decided to do my research. That decision was to be a pivotal one for me;
here would begin my fascination with information. Saturdays I would take
the bus from the shore into Manhattan's Port Authority station to begin
my research.
I just seemed to be aware of indexes & abstracts and how to use them—I
don't recall anyone teaching me this skill. I relied mostly on the Reader's
Guide to Periodical Literature to find published reviews—I loved
this look up process—making choices about what articles to pursue
and what articles were of less value to me. But even more, I loved the
process of getting the bound periodicals. I would look up my journal titles
in the card catalog—it was immense and drawers slid out from the
walls—I needed a stepstool to reach. So many cards, each one representing
a title that I knew nothing about. You filled out P-slips with your bibliographic
information, no more than 10 at a time, and brought them to the information
desk. Here slips would be checked and if all was complete your P-slips
were stuffed into a pneumatic tube. I wanted to know where these tubes
& slips went; what happened next—I wanted to know everything.
But stacks were closed and I was handed a numbered slip telling me to
proceed to either the north or south reading room to await delivery. The
reading rooms had a hugh numbered board in the front and when your number
was lit, you collected your bound journals from that service desk. Then
when I turned around there was what seemed to be an endless stretch of
reading table with green lamps. Each table was enormous and so may seats
were occupied but then you would find a seat and begin reading your reviews
and carefully making your notes to be used in your finished paper. I did
all of this around Christmastime and on my last trip to New York I brought
a brown bag breakfast which I truly consumed outside Tiffany's. Then I
went inside to admire the Hope diamond and day dream about what it would
be like to be Holly Golightly when I grew up. For all my efforts I was
criticized for my final paper. While my teacher could find nothing wrong
with my work she didn't believe that I wrote the paper because it could
not have been done from the Saint Rose Library. I was hurt that she would
assume I cheated. Only when my parents explained how I did my work was
she at all placated but my grade was never revised upwards accordingly.
That was definitely a life lesson.
CASTLETON
STATE COLLEGE. CALVIN COOLIDGE LIBRARY
I never wanted to go to college—I wanted to live Holly Golightly's
life in Manhattan. My parents of course had different plans and sent me
to a small state college in Vermont. I thought I was going to live with
cows—I wasn’t all that wrong. As a freshman I had a work study position
in the Calvin Coolidge Library. I worked for Mrs. Murray in Technical
Services. My early experiences were in cataloging! One of my many processing
jobs was the "mess-box" which literally was a small Demco box
with catalog cards with all sorts of problems from typos, to missing bib
info, to duplicate cards, to filing problems, to the same call number
assigned to different books and worse. My job for the next several years
would be to unravel these problems and make order out of this chaos—this
I did with the electric eraser! I loved that I could make wrong information
right and was good at it. I learned that I was a detective at heart. Mrs.
Murray taught me so much about principles of classification and how they
were applied in a small college library. Soon I wanted to learn more about
the content of those books I was processing.
When I graduated college, I wanted to be a guard at the Vermont Canadian
border so I could use the French language skills I studied in college.
There were many reasons why this didn't work out. By this time I loved
Vermont preferring the country to the city. So I remained several years
and joined the Library Staff full time a few months after graduation.
My first position was in the Reference Department, specifically interlibrary
loan where I used a teletype to receive and loan books. Significant accomplishments
in this position were never having a backlog and learning by heart the
zip codes for major Vermont towns.
ILL TO GOV DOCS
From ILL I moved into government documents. I loved federal government
documents immediately—I loved the SuDocs classification system—it
was all alphanumeric and a mystery to most—but not to me—I had
that key. I loved that documents were shelved separately because I now
had my own little domain over which to preside. What I didn't love was
that no one made much use of gov docs which is something I recognized
needed attention. During my ILL and gov docs years I worked under the
supervision of reference librarian Hans
Raum (since relocated to Middlebury College.) He gave me such latitude
to introduce myself into these positions that I am forever grateful. And
he taught me as much as he himself knew. But 4 years had passed; I was
enjoying my job and for something academic taking business & accounting
classes at the College. But I knew my future was not as a bean counter.
Hans, and Joe Weeks—the University Librarian at the time, for sometime
had been encouraging me to apply to graduate school. I trusted Hans and
Joe tremendously and their encouragement was very influential. And my
family offered my financial support and I was reaching the conclusion
this was the right thing to do. Still I wasn’t ready to fully commit—I
wanted to go but there were a few things holding me back and I would put
this decision to attend grad school off for another year.
FINAL DAYS AT CASTLETON
Towards the end of my time in Vermont while still contemplating my future
as a LIS grad student, the then new Library Director, Milmir Drazic, hired
a library consultant although I was never sure for what purpose. The Library
consultant was Harold Lancour—the very same distinguished educator
from the University of Pittsburgh who would come to be widely known as
the author of The Encyclopedia of Library & Information Science
and first Executive Secretary of Beta Phi Mu. Harold and I became fast
friends and would spend many hours in conversation both about the job
and about outside interests. And in time, he too was encouraging that
I pursue a graduate education in information science. Still, all that
time in Vermont I never knew just how well known Lancour was—it never
even crossed my mind this was a possibility until one winter day when
Lancour & Drazic introduced me to Alexander Solzhenitsyn—finally
there was a name I recognized! In 1976, Solzhenitsyn
chose to live outside the small village of Cavendish, in southwestern
Vt. This wooded, snowy region with rough weather was said to have reminded
him of his beloved Russia, from which he was then exiled. Dr. Lancour
did indeed write me a recommendation for graduate school where he wrote
"though untrained, Miss Costello carried out her duties with diligence,
enthusiasm, intelligence and imagination." Those words were especially
significant because Dr. Lancour recognized that I had promise for this
line of work.
Hans Raum, Joe Weeks and Harold Lancour were all very influential in
my life at that time. I liked them each and respected their opinions.
Each has a passion for the job that even I recognized as unique. I wanted
to join them and I know I wanted to find my place in the world.
UTK
I chose the University of Tennessee in Knoxville for one major reason—it
seemed far away to me and I knew I would be exposed to a different culture
(the southerner vs the stereotypical new englander) and I was offered
a position in the University's
Undergraduate Library (its UGL was disbanded many years later.) I
remember many faculty and library staff there being aware that I was the
incoming student with a recommendation from Harold Lancour!There I was
placed in the Reference Department; a world I always wanted for myself.
I loved that the Ref Desk was at the very top of the escalator to the
third floor. Students would get off the escalator and be deposited at
your desk. During the day the desk was double staffed, but in short time
I worked alone late into the night and closed the department. I never
found it frightening to be alone on desk – just the opposite, it was energizing
because I was able to delve into all subjects and had to rely on myself
for answers. Linda Phillips, head of the UGL & my supervisor at that
time, was a perfect role model for so many reasons. Of all the supervisors
I have had in my life, I would characterize Linda as the best, the most
supportive, genuinely the most interested in me personally and in my work.
But there were others in that Department who also were to have a profound
effect on my professional development—Rita Hoyt Smith, Daniel Ream,
Joan Worth and Felicia Wheeler. As part of my job, Linda Phillips assigned
me to deliver a presentation on the "Mission Goals and Objectives
of the Undergraduate Library. "What I didn’t fully appreciate until
I began my research is how different are the library needs of university
undergrads and that there were only about a dozen undergraduate libraries
in the US at that time. Those University Libraries that supported UGLs
were perceived as forward thinking. I interviewed several UGL librarians
over the telephone, including UCLA's Tom Fry. Little could I have known
then was that many years later I myself would be employed by UCLA.
DREXEL
UNIVERSITY. HAGARTY LIBRARY
Upon graduation, another life lessons hit me head on—there were no
professional positions available in Vermont. I chose to return to Jersey
and look for a position casting a net from Maine to Georgia. About the
only place that I did not want was Pennsylvania. So, 6 months after graduation
I accepted a Government Documents position at Drexel University in Philadelphia—I
didn't want to be in Penn and here I was in the 4th largest
US city when I yearned for the country. But my intuition told me to ignore
these downsides. In looking back, my 7.5 years there were more than I
ever could have imagined. A former polytechnic school, the University
was highly experimental and there I saw became part of some early experiments
that would not be mainstreamed into the Library world until years to come.
One significant example was in the early 1980s the University required
that all undergraduate students own a Mac 128. Drexel was the first University
ever to make such a requirement. Since the only software developed was
a drawing program (MacPaint) and a word processor (MacWrite), the students
and library became part of a large scale plan to deploy end-user searching
capabilities to undergrads using the BRS databases. I became one of the
official University BRS trainers. Here my interest in computer applications
in libraries was born and my familiarity with the world of online databases
was fueled.
DREXEL YEARS
At the start of my position as Gov Docs Librarian I was reading James
Dean's "Blind Ambition" during my daily train commute. My Vermont
experience already showed me how underutilized gov docs were there and
I was learning the same was true at Drexel. So, I decided to learn from
James Dean’s book and make myself irreplaceable when it came to gov docs
just as Dean tried to make himself irreplaceable in the Nixon presidency.
But life seemed to turn out better for me than it did for James Dean.
As gov docs librarian, each day I found a use for gov pubs—be it
in reference, BIs, new book shelf, an article in Library to faculty publications,
a referral to faculty with that research interest—I was always trying
to match a gov doc to someones need. I also conducted a survey among Drexel
faculty regarding their knowledge & use of gov pubs; even though experience&
intuition told me what the outcome would be. I then used SAS to analyze
the results that gave me even further ideas how to publicize and make
available federal documents. I even patrolled the gov docs stacks offering
on the spot assistance to anyone in the area who looked lost. Regardless
of what that person asked for I found something useful in a gov pub. Even
I admit I may have gone a bit over the top but I loved that world; it
was such a positive experience. But in one years time I was promoted into
Business Administration which was equally exciting to me but I was not
ready to let gov docs go. In Bus Ad I thrived; less than 2 years out of
grad school I am sure that I had found where I was to be in life and all
this happened through little conscious direction from me. Still I used
what intuition I had developed to make good sound choices; I was open
to change.
ONLINE SEARCHING
It was my former supervisor Michael
Halperin (who has since moved on to the University of Pennsylvania)
who brought me into business librarianship and introduced me to yet another
library great. During my Drexel heydeys there was tremendous user support
for graduate students & faculty with online database searching; these
were subsidized and grad students paid $5 for the large output they would
receive. Internal statistics showed that I searched for nearly 2,000 individuals
each year. I was into online searching in a big way. In addition to B-School
grad students & faculty I was also running a large service for online
searching for local business people who were charged full costs. By this
time I am utilizing all the major database vendors Dialog, BRS, SDC, tax
services by West and Prentice Hall, etc were my favorites. Then a researcher
from Cherry Hill, NJ asks for my services. For more than I year I did
citation searching and analysis for Francis Narin who is credited to be
one of the fathers of bibliometrics. His company CHI
Research/Computer Horizons was the principal investigator in government
funded research to investigate the background and expertise of federal
government researchers. One of his specializations was citation analysis.
Again, at the time, I did not realize at the time how influential Francis
Narin was on the information community. Another business man for whom
I conducted many mediated online searches was from the Mars Co. in northern
New Jersey. We struck up an acquaintance and one day I teased him that
he should really pay his online serarch bills in chocolate bars—Three
Musketeers, Milky Way and Snickers. It wasn't long before a rather large
box of tasty treats arrived. I am growing concerned about how I will explain
this unusual payment to my Library Director who is diabetic! Within a
few days a check for payment was received, luckily for me.
During my 6 years as Bus Ad librarian at Drexel I really grew not only
in subject expertise but I began to network among my peers locally and
through professional associations. I received the most support from 2
Drexel colleagues who are now lifelong friends Michael Halperin &
Ruth Pagell—in fact these 2 are equally responsible for my entering
the world of business for which I have expressed my gratitude in so many
ways. And Mike, Ruth & myself each held the position of Bus Ad Librarian
at Drexel at separate times.
UCLA
And the consequences of my 1986 decision to come to UCLA's Management
Library are still unfolding for me.
SUMMARY
These are the events & people who contributed to my being here today.
Preparing for this presentation enabled me to recall many happy moments
in my life and showed me whom I now consider to be my heroes. What I now
hope for myself is that I have served in this capacity for another beginning
librarian. I hope that I have been a hero for someone although that person
may not even recognize my influence for years to come—I can think
of nothing more important. And for those successes I’ve enjoyed during
the past 20 years, I always think back to these early influences and wonder
if they knew how much they helped me?
If a future LAUC-LA Chair should approach you about being a speaker in
this important series, I would encourage you to avail yourself of this
opportunity. The entire process of self-reflection about how you arrived
where you are today and what was and has become important to you is a
valuable. The process will re-introduce ideas, names & places you
haven’t thought about for years; many you will be pleased to recapture
while others will speak to you differently in the past than they did while
you were living the event.
|
