Being a Librarian: Multi-Tasking

at the Reference Desk, ca.1890

A multimedia play for voices in one act, based on Horace Kephart’s article “Being a Librarian,” published in Harper’s Weekly, Aug. 30, 1890, and in Library Journal, November 1890.

[SLIDE 1]

Dramatis personae: Narrator, Kephart, 24 voices (male and female)

Narrator

Our setting is a cold Spring afternoon in a college library about 1890. The Reference Desk is lit by a green glass lamp. Traffic at the desk is busy and calm by turns. It is located in the large main room, dusty and drafty, accessed by a double glass door leading directly outside. High windows illuminate the room with pale, diffuse light. Patrons enter and leave singly or in boisterous small groups of students. Each time the door opens, a brisk gust of wind enters.

We see Kephart, an educated, energetic, and dedicated young librarian, sitting at the Reference Desk (or “delivery desk” as it was called), meeting patrons. He is also engaged in a perplexing cataloging task which he will share with us in detail, which requires detailed study of a number of heavy, dusty French reference works, each of which contradicts the others in matters of bibliographic fact.

Being a Librarian. . . . PNLA Ver. 18 integ 2.5.03

Kephart

Librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession. I am cataloguing the four thousand and tenth of an interminable series of French plays, when a herd of unbroken Sophomores comes prancing into the library. Before my wits can be jogged out of Paris and across a half-century, a chorus of voices bursts upon me:

(Nearly in chorus)

Voice 1

Say, will you please give me a chart of Long Island Sound?

Voice 2

Say, may I have all my books renewed?

Voice 3

Say, can you tell me where Milton speaks of the Golden Chersonese?

Kephart (aside)

After some effort, I find the Golden Chersonese. Perhaps future librarians will have an easier time of it than mining through dusty volumes like this.

(recites, as from dusty volume) Paradise Lost, Book 11, “and thence to Agra and Lahor of great Mogul, down to the golden Chersonese. . . .” “Chersonese” comes from the Greek word for “peninsula.” According to this source, Milton meant specifically the Malay Peninsula.

Narrator (sweetly)

Does that completely answer your question?

Voice 4

Say, will you show me something on the woodchuck?

Voice 5

Say, is Professor Scribner in?

Kephart

It takes some time to make them all happy, and then I go back to my plays. Here is a thin little pamphlet called Les suites d’un mariage de raison . . . by Messieurs Dartois, Leon Brunswick, and Lheric.

[SLIDE 2]

To catalogue it I must first of all identify the authors. Querard

[SLIDE 3]

introduces me to three dramatic writers of the same period, brothers, whose family name was Dartois de Bournonville

[SLIDE 4]

and their baptismal names, respectively, Francoise Victor Armand, Louis Charles Achille, and Louis Armand Theodore. Under the first of these I find my play credited to the said Fancoise, “avec M. Lheris." Leon Brunswick is not mentioned, and Lheric is spelled Lheris

[SLIDE 5]

Sound familiar? As Francoise or Louis would say, Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Kephart

Our lists of historical novels are of no service, and I am reluctantly forced to give up the search. After assuring several persons that they can find Professor Scribner in his own room, I return to the drama.

No such name as Lheris is to be found among the L’s in Querard

[SLIDE 6]

but he has two contemporary playwrights, brothers, named Victor and Leon Lherie.

[SLIDE 7]

Puzzling over this, my wandering eye is attracted by a timid little body who needs encouragement to speak out. Yes, we have a “shelf of poetry;” many of them, in fact. And I point out the more accessible. Just then a gentleman asks me, innocently,

Voice 8

Have you a class photograph of Thomas Green, who graduated here in 1792?

Kephart

Hmmm. The first photograph was made in 1826, so it’s unlikely. Perhaps we could look for a portrait?

Narrator

They look. And in one of those little miracles we sometimes experience at the reference desk, they actually find a small portrait of Mr. Green. The patron leaves happily, with promises to return soon with his mother.

Kephart

I get back to Querard

[SLIDE 8]

but have hardly found my place when a leisurely acquaintance drops in for a chat. He is soon displaced by a hustling and persistent book peddler, so I bless the old professor who needs me to fetch a book from the nethermost abyss of the basement stacks.

Voice 9 (speculatively)

Do you know any history in the Spanish language that would sell well in an English translation?

Of course translating is rather overdone, I know; but I’m thinking of undertaking such a project. . .

Narrator (Quickly)

A wild-eyed woman, in great haste, rushes up and hands Kephart a volume, exclaiming,

Voice 10

Please extend my time on this book!

Kephart

I renew her book in English, while thinking in Spanish and musing in French.

My play is found again under Victor Lherie’s name, attributed to him “avec MM. Brunswich (i.e., Leon Lherie) et Dartois.” Here is progress.

[SLIDE 9]

My authors’ names now stand as follows:

Dartois de Bournonville, Francois Victor Armand [Lherie (or Lheris, or Lheric), Leon (pseud. Leon Brunswick)] , Lherie (or Lheris, or Lheric), Victor.

However, past experience has made me distrustful of Querard’s accuracy, and I proceed to verify these names, having first sent messengers in search of the elusive Professor Scribner, whose presence is urgently wanted in four different places at once.

Hoefer

[SLIDE 10]

Vapereau

[SLIDE 11]

and Larousse

[SLIDE 12]

copy Querard’s spelling of my first author’s name. When four such authorities agree, I say, the matter may be considered settled. Now, then, for the Lheries.

Voice 11

Pardon me, but I have a very rare book here, printed in the sixteenth century. Can you tell me what it is worth?

Narrator

After some research, the book is shown to be worth about. . . ten cents.

Voice 12

Can you inform me, sir, why Shakespeare omitted Henry the Seventh from his plays? . . .

Kephart (Eyes on ceiling, stroking chin)

Hmmmmm. . . .

Narrator (aside)

Perhaps he simply died before he could cover all the Henries.

Kephart

I seem very stupid this afternoon. It is close in the library, albeit whenever the front door is opened a gust of icy wind sends shivers up my back and makes me sneeze. Brunswick, Lheric, fiddlesticks! It is hard to recover the lost thread of evidence.

Voice 13

Will you be kind enough to show me everything you have on incubation?

Kephart

Not being an agricultural station, our library yields only short articles in reference-books and periodicals, and these but grudgingly.

Narrator

An art student inquires for

Voice 14

…a good book on science – something short and interesting.

Kephart

I gave her Thompson’s Depths of the Sea and Dunkin’s Midnight Sky. She balances them in her hands [demonstrates], and selects the latter.

Her companion wants the largest and best book we have on elephants, and I spend some time searching for an exhaustive monograph on the anatomy of pachyderms. It is only after carrying thirty pounds of folio up and down stairs that I learn what is really wanted:

Voice 15

I really just need a picture of an elephant with his trunk up, to work into a decorative design.

Narrator

Sound familiar? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Kephart

Well, Querard was certain that “Leon Brunswick”

[SLIDE 13]

is the assumed name of Leon Lheris, or Lherie. In a later volume of his I find “Lheric, afterwards Lherie (Leon).” To make assurance doubly sure I consult a still later continuation of his work, and find no such pseudonym as Leon Brunswick, but under plain Brunswick is the entry, “Pseudonym (Leon Levy, later Lheric et Lherie).” Matters are becoming complicated.

Voice 16

Beg pardon, but will you show me something on the history of the choir of Westminster Abbey?

Narrator

This found, the gentleman seeks assistance in deciphering some of his own handwriting. Another wants a German book, author’s name forgotten, title remembered only in English, though the work has never been translated, and the English title might be variously rendered in German. Here the incubator man returns his books with a disappointed shake of his head.

Voice 13

You see, my landlady is raising chickens.

Kephart

Yes, with an incubator?

Voice 13

No, with a hen, She breeds game-cocks, and has sold one for as much as twenty-five dollars. Well, there’s a sort of workshop next door that has just put in a huge trip-hammer, and the old lady has sent me up here to find out whether the thumping and jarring by that trip-hammer will spoil her eggs.

Narrator

A bell rings, and in comes a troop of students. All talk at once.

(Voices rushed together, but words intelligible)

Voice 17

Have you got any of Cardan’s formulas?

Voice 18

I’d like to get the latest Canadian tariff lists.

Voice 19

Where can I get a traverse table?

Voice 20

Can you give me Lord Bacon’s “New Atlantis”? I think it’s a magazine article.

Voice 21

I must work up something on ‘Byronism on the Continent’ for tomorrow morning. Can you give a girl [or fellow, if male speaker] a hand?

Kephart

By and by I get back to those delightful pseudonyms. Querard’s latest statement is supported by Vapereau and Larousse

[SLIDE 14]

Narrator

You remember Vapereau and Larousse, don’t you?

Kephart

The spelling Lheris, though copied by Oettinger

[SLIDE 15]

seems to be a typographical error

[SLIDE 16]

The man’s name was originally Levy, which he subsequently changed to Lheric, and finally to Lherie. Yet the British Museum catalog

[SLIDE 17]

enters thirty plays under Brunswick alone, and one under Leon Brunswick, both of which are given as pen-names of Leon Lherie, with no mention of Levy. No two authorities agree about the dates of his birth and death.

Narrator

A stranger saunters into the room, gazes awhile at the overburdened shelves, approaches the delivery desk, and opens with a question,

Voice 22 (Southern drawl)

Have you any special litterury taste?

Narrator

An emphatic negative does not disconcert him.

Voice 22

We’ve organized a litterury club down at Richmond, and they made me secretary. Now I’d like to get some points on the subject.

Kephart

He is scarcely gone before a clergyman appears, almost a stranger to me.

Voice 23

I know you must have a good head for figures. Will you be good enough to figure out my rooming-house bill? I’m about to leave town, and my brain is all in a muddle from these Easter services. (Coaxingly It won’t take you long!

Kephart

Dear me! What would the powers that be remark if they knew it took me half a day to catalogue a tract? Did these Frenchmen themselves know their own names?

[SLIDE 18]

Let us stick to Larousse, and call the man Levy. But the third name remains to be settled. The resources of our library are exhausted without finding any trace of such a person as “Lheric,” save that Querard says this stands for Victor Lherie, brother of Leon. Since Leon’s name is not Lherie, after all, but Levy, it follows that his brother’s name was probably Levy also.

The afternoon is waning. The pale light from our high windows now blends with the all-pervading dust. A shape arises before my dim vision, and I shudder. It is the genealogist, a volume in his hand, propitiatory smiles upon his patient face. Alas! I know his mission.

Male Voice 24 (excitedly)

Ah, sir, I have discovered a wonderful thing – a very wonderful thing indeed. May I ask you to translate this for me?

Kephart

On one of the open pages

[SLIDE 19]

is an emblazoned coat of arms; opposite this a facsimile of some old document. It turns out to be a grant of land which I translate for the gentleman,to one William Sigar, soldier, or as it stands in Latin, Guilielmus Sigar Miles; “Miles” meaning simply that William Sigar was a soldier. The heroic fellow’s name was therefore “Sigar.”

Voice 24

You see,

Narrator

cried the excited mouser, as his trembling finger singles out the name. . .

Voice 24 (excitedly)

. . .you see, I am a Miles myself on my mother’s side!

Narrator

Alas, he has got this important point quite wrong; it’s unlikely he’s related to the worthy soldier, since miles is not the fellow’s name at all, but rather his occupation. But. . . [trails off thoughtfully]

Kephart

The little French play is finally catalogued – author card, subject card, cross-references, and all. Dartois and the brothers Levy prove to have been quite fecund, and erelong their names as joint authors are intricately woven into the main catalogue.

[SLIDE 20]

Then one day I discover by chance that Dartois really wrote his name Francois Victor Armand d’Artois de Bournonville, and I have all that work to go over again.

[SLIDE 21]

Fini

Being a librarian 18, 2.5.03