Although my job title is Genealogy Clerk I cannot concentrate on my work the way I should. The Genealogy Department shares open space with the Reference Department and the Public Computers; which are also the domain of Reference. My desk is a direct shot from the front so I am the person a Patron will see first and the two public computer printers hooked to a print release system, as well as the public copy machine, are directly in front of my desk. In fact, I’ve just had a person come over from Public Computer #10 and ask what to use for a “User ID” when printing and then returned to have me release their copy and collect the money for the copies. At least he had exact change and I didn’t have to go up front to make change.

            My point is that my job comes with a lot of interruptions. Reference is not always staffed, for example, every Monday there is no one in Reference from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. so Genealogy has to take up the slack. We keep daily statistics by Department and I would say Genealogy probably answered half the almost 3,000 reference questions asked last year on top of a like number of Genealogy questions of which Reference answered maybe two dozen in the evenings and on Saturdays when only one person works both Departments. Even when there is a Reference person here they may be shelf-reading, or at lunch, or with another Patron, and it falls to Genealogy to pick up the slack. The collection itself is kept inside a bank vault, as the Library was a Bank in a previous life, and even when I am working in the Vault Patrons will seek me out for Reference help or Computer help, on top of any Genealogy Patrons who happen to come in person to work with the collection.

I try to impress upon my Supervisors that sometimes, due to the nature of my job, I need to concentrate but it doesn’t seem to resonate; perhaps because I am so capable when it comes to multi-tasking. The woman who held the position before I did quit because she believed she was being asked to do too much Reference work and that was when I would be sent back from the Front Desk to cover Reference when no one was there but, then again, she had quit once before. The woman before her who held this position quit because she was uncomfortable with the amount of technology she was expected to use when we moved into the repurposed Bank building from the old Carnegie. The Board and the Administrators will not commit to fully staffing both departments. Sometimes I feel taken advantage of but that works both ways.

About a year ago I received an email forwarded to me by the Director. It was someone from the School of Library and Information Science, SLIS, in nearby Bloomington asking about an early Spencer librarian for an article to appear in the journal Indiana Libraries. I answered their question and made recommendations for further research and the person wrote back and asked if I would like to write the article. I asked when the deadline would be, and upon being informed of a date a year from then, I agreed. Why not add another pearl to my string of rather esoteric publications?

Then I procrastinated. I have a note on my desk that reads, “Monday After Vacation: Lura Slaughter Carr, Priority.” My vacation ended the first week of August.

The first of January I came back re-energized and ready to work on the article. I was laboring under the belief that the deadline was the end of January but, lucky for me, the deadline is actually the end of February and, even better, this February is a Leap Year.

The person I was seeking had died in 1963 so I followed obituaries, her husband died in 1972 and a rather prominent son-in-law died in 1997. These obituaries led to me sending letters out to potential descendants and I received polite, no, we aren’t related, from two and found a granddaughter with the third. I also had questions for Syracuse University, where our subject had graduated with a degree in Library Economy with the class of 1908. The Dean of the School of Information Studies hasn’t been able to answer and their Ask-a-Librarian service at their Library hasn’t been able to answer. I know Indiana University has an official Campus Historian affiliated with the President’s Office so I emailed the Chancellor of Syracuse, whose website touted climbing down from the ivory towers and engaging the community, and she put me in touch with another woman who, so far, hasn’t been able to answer my questions though I remain hopeful Syracuse will pull through for me at the last minute.

The granddaughter, too, is a busy woman and I don’t want to push but she has a 1908 graduation photo of our subject that I would love to have a copy of and she also said she could put me in touch with a cousin who might be able to tell me more about their Grandmother as a person, her likes and interests, so I thought I would show good faith by sending her an advance copy of the article which is further incentive to write it.

I went to the State Library over the weekend and gathered more information to flesh out the report and I explained the situation to my Supervisors, that I would need space where I could concentrate without interruption so I could put this together and was told I could use the computer in the basement when no one else was using it so I planned to start working Monday morning.

Monday morning rolled around and I gathered my material and went downstairs to work.

The first part of the morning I sorted through my material and read through the Information File folders we have here on Mary Ahern, an important supporting character in our soon-to-be chronicle. The writing I do for Open Salon is quick and dirty. I write it whenever I can steal a moment to write and I don’t have the luxury to refine and polish. This is different. It must be elegant and impeccably sourced; polished to perfection, a beautiful thing which takes time and concentration.

About 10:30 or so I sat down to write and hadn’t got very far into it when the janitor comes down and starts vacuuming and singing. I already have something of a problem with the janitor not being required to have the cleaning done before the Library opens so her singing and vacuuming was so infuriatingly distracting that I didn’t get very much done.

This morning Jennifer from Circ is using the computer downstairs to do the Interlibrary Loans. She’s usually done by 2:00 p.m. but the Reference person goes to Lunch from 2:30 to 3:30 so I’ll have maybe an hour, an hour and a half, to write. I had hoped to be done with a draft by the end of today that I could send to the granddaughter to show her how much better it would be if I had some padding on the back end and a picture to go with it, but I don’t think that will happen. In any case, I will eventually go downstairs where I will put one word in front of the other until I am done.