Food for the soul

"Food for the soul" - Inscription at the Berlin Royal Library.

I'm not sure why but I've recently been contemplating how exactly I came to work in a library?

I think my sudden need for self-enlightenment stems from my stumbling across a Word document on my work PC. The file was intriguingly named 'Libraries are....doc'.

It was instantly tempting to finish the sentence with any number of adjectives. 'Boring' perhaps or 'silent' more mundanely.

I eventually settled for, 'Libraries are... hedonistic dens of mind porn, where thought juices flow in a rainbow waterfall of cranial indulgence.'

Psychedelic churlishness to one side, within I found numerous quotes (my favourite of which adorns the title of this blog), some from famous names of the past, all profoundly arguing the library's importance to wider society.

Great! But how did I end up dipping my toe into this historic profession? I don't remember as a child dreaming of being a librarian (who would?), it was the standard 'football/rock and roll star' ambitions for yours truly.

Hopeless at Maths and the Sciences at school, I always tended towards the humanities and the arts. Coupled to this was the fact my Dad, working for an IT systems company when I was young, would always bring home cash registers, 286 and 386 PCs (remember them?), and later laptops for me to mess around on.

This mistaken enthusiasm for technology must have influenced my eventual decision to study A-Levels in English Literature, Geography and Computing - far from a standard mix. When it came to choosing a degree, I naively/ashamedly surmised that to work in IT would, a) earn me more money, b) more likely result in a job in the first place, and c) allow me to surf the web to my heart's content.

In reality, studying computing involved maths!! Suddenly, I had to be knowledgeable in how binary converts to hexadecimal and the complex workings of an operating system, memory, RAM etc, etc. The very words send me into a trance like state but this was far from the path to enlightenment. By the time I'd snapped out of my toner sniffing daydream, I'd already got a 'D' in A-level Computing and was weeks into my degree!!

A number of factors helped to save me. Firstly, the Information Science Dept, which ran my course in Information Management & Computing, was situated above the university library, secondly, I began to widen my interest in rock music and thirdly, there was an academic route back to fulfilling my web surfing pipe dreams.

Being in the library excited me. So much information, so many great works of literature, so many ideas. It's cliched of course but at 21, I literally felt like the possibilities were endless. I can't have read more than a handful of books, most of which were completely unrelated to my studies, but that was all the spark I needed.

Satre, Camus, Nietsche, Plath all these names suddenly meant something to me. My new found admiration for the Manic Street Preachers, whose album artwork, to which I was just then being formerly introduced, was emblazoned with writers quotes, suddenly resonating with my newly idealistic mindset.

Now, by focusing on the library related modules of my degree, I could begin to see worth in a career where access to knowledge for the majority was the ultimate aim, the nirvana that all information specialists aspired to. I ditched 'computing' and left the programming and system analysis behind.

If I wanted to be melodramatic I'd suggest that the opening line of 'A Design for Life' by the Manics, "Libraries gave us power", had a lasting effect on my career path. Maybe it did but perhaps the inscription from the Berlin Royal Library is more apt in truly answering the question I posed myself at the beginning of this blog....

It's food for my soul.