Hazzards of the Job
Most folks think being a librarian is a fairly low-key kinda job. It is in most respects; save for the stalkers, bomb threat makers, urinators, book destroyers/thieves, etc. If Reference is the "glamorous" side of librarianship, Cataloging is surely the ugly stepchild. We catalogers do our thing behind closed doors*, classifying materials, making them accessible to the masses. However, today Gentle Readers, I experienced something of a shock in the course of my duties.
We received a used copy of a 1979 book about oriental vases. The book is in surprisingly good condition and I did my usual check of pages, title, and other information to make sure the book in hand was the one described in the record. Well at the back of the book there it was: a lock of hair. Whose [what's] hair, I do not know. It was gray/black and sat there on the page, motionless yet inexplicably "alive". Eww! Was it from a human head or a dog? How long had it been there? Why hadn't the previous owner thought to remove it before giving away/selling the book?
Lunch has no meaning for me now. You can bet chunks of hair found in books won't be covered in this ALA session.
*That would make for an excellent bumpersticker, no?
5 comments:
Ha, usually i just find my hair in collections. But to add to the weird/gross found objects hidden in collections. The R.L. Moore Papers at the CAH contain the former math professor's wisdom teeth. And I currently have a 50 year old stick of spearmint gum at my desk after it was removed from a collection.
I have been enjoying my tours of duty on the desk formerly known as Reference lately. Periodicals staff have offered a perspective that was unknown to me. On a fairly regular basis, prophylactics -- both unused and soiled -- have been found in the nooks and crannies of the Ned. No books, that I know of.
Better or worse than mammalian hair? History will decide.
wow, if only public radio was so exciting.
I think all the students here do their screwing in the various computer labs.
Ick, prophylactics? Human hair? The worse I found was a pile of supposed vomit in the corner of the library. And our library is very small so we have no clue how it got there unless someone quietly vomited in the corner. The other nasty thing: flasher. But other than those two, not much else.
~The Booklahver
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