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Best Place to Spend Quiet Time
St. Louis Public Library
By Bryan A. Hollerbach
“This is not a quiet place,” remarks Patty Carleton about the St. Louis Public Library’s Olive Street headquarters. “This is an active, vibrant, alive, exciting place.”
Indeed. Scant hours before, as part of a program overseen by Carleton as director of Youth Services, glorious tumult had erupted in the downtown landmark. Clattering and laughing, their sneakers squeaking, their voices echoing off marble and granite, third-graders from Festus Elementary bounded to a top-floor gallery, where librarian Kathy Muller bewitched them with an African fairy tale.
So much for the stereotype of library-science professionals as nothing more than a “Sssh!” and a glare. From its librarians, who must hold a master’s degree to work there, through technical-services, cataloging and other staff, the Olive Street HQ’s 300 full-time personnel seem to thrive on aiding 2.5 million patrons annually to access the 4.7 million items in its holdings.
“My philosophy is, every year, we’re going to do it better,” says customer-service manager Rose McKinney, who, after almost four decades, remains as dedicated as ever to helping library patrons. “It’s just very pleasing to the innards.”
McKinney’s co-workers share her delight in the library’s 142-year history. Special Collections librarian Jean E. Meeh Gosebrink reminisces about Frederick Morgan Crunden, who headed the library longer than any of its other directors has. “Crunden was a really crusty character,” says Gosebrink, a birdlike veteran of the Library of Congress, laughing as she sketches his achievements with gusto.
Standing amid battalions of barrister’s cases, Gosebrink’s colleague Tom Pearson shows like pride in a trio of treasures from the 25,000 items in Special Collections: a Bible printed in 1611, illustrated manuscript pages from even earlier and cuneiform squares four-and-a-half millennia old. Regarding the squares, which resemble shortbread covered with insect tracks, he smiles thinly and says, “Most of these are business records—‘I owe Shem four bushels of wheat.’”
Although such wit might shock subscribers to the “Sssh!”-and-glare stereotype, a skewed jocularity characterizes the library staff. Working from references ranging from Burke’s Peerage to Cemetery Records of Macon County, Missouri, Adele Heagney, librarian in the St. Louis Area Studies Center, often fields questions and suggestions bordering on the bizarre: “What we should have done is, every 10 years, someone should have taken a photograph of every building in St. Louis—and then just put it on the Internet.” Heagney pauses a heartbeat before adding, poker-faced, “Absolutely.”
Still, the central library’s downtown location can prompt more than laughter, as librarian Katie LaBarbera recognizes. As a virtual-reference administrator, she staffs the Information Center, between the stacks—gray steel bookcases that rise three stories through inch-thick frosted-glass floors on the structure’s north side—and the central Great Hall, some of whose occupants, frankly, stink. Their BO functions as a reminder that indigents shelter in the library during operating hours. “It’s frustrating, seeing all of the social problems,” confesses LaBarbera, a twentysomething pixie. “We can help them to an extent, but certainly not with the help that needs to be given to the homeless people of St. Louis.”
Her concern seems emblematic. At multiple levels, outreach defines the library. “There really is a mission,” says Carleton, behind whom a bumper sticker proclaims, “Kids Who Read Succeed!” in her cluttered Youth Services office. “People who stay on staff are proud of that mission and want to be part of it.”
St. Louis Public Library
By Bryan A. Hollerbach
“This is not a quiet place,” remarks Patty Carleton about the St. Louis Public Library’s Olive Street headquarters. “This is an active, vibrant, alive, exciting place.”
Indeed. Scant hours before, as part of a program overseen by Carleton as director of Youth Services, glorious tumult had erupted in the downtown landmark. Clattering and laughing, their sneakers squeaking, their voices echoing off marble and granite, third-graders from Festus Elementary bounded to a top-floor gallery, where librarian Kathy Muller bewitched them with an African fairy tale.
So much for the stereotype of library-science professionals as nothing more than a “Sssh!” and a glare. From its librarians, who must hold a master’s degree to work there, through technical-services, cataloging and other staff, the Olive Street HQ’s 300 full-time personnel seem to thrive on aiding 2.5 million patrons annually to access the 4.7 million items in its holdings.
“My philosophy is, every year, we’re going to do it better,” says customer-service manager Rose McKinney, who, after almost four decades, remains as dedicated as ever to helping library patrons. “It’s just very pleasing to the innards.”
McKinney’s co-workers share her delight in the library’s 142-year history
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Standing amid battalions of barrister’s cases, Gosebrink’s colleague Tom Pearson shows like pride in a trio of treasures from the 25,000 items in Special Collections: a Bible printed in 1611, illustrated manuscript pages from even earlier and cuneiform squares four-and-a-half millennia old. Regarding the squares, which resemble shortbread covered with insect tracks, he smiles thinly and says, “Most of these are business records—‘I owe Shem four bushels of wheat.’”
Although such wit might shock subscribers to the “Sssh!”-and-glare stereotype, a skewed jocularity characterizes the library staff. Working from references ranging from Burke’s Peerage to Cemetery Records of Macon County, Missouri, Adele Heagney, librarian in the St. Louis Area Studies Center, often fields questions and suggestions bordering on the bizarre: “What we should have done is, every 10 years, someone should have taken a photograph of every building in St. Louis—and then just put it on the Internet.” Heagney pauses a heartbeat before adding, poker-faced, “Absolutely.”
Still, the central library’s downtown location can prompt more than laughter, as librarian Katie LaBarbera recognizes. As a virtual-reference administrator, she staffs the Information Center, between the stacks—gray steel bookcases that rise three stories through inch-thick frosted-glass floors on the structure’s north side—and the central Great Hall, some of whose occupants, frankly, stink. Their BO functions as a reminder that indigents shelter in the library during operating hours. “It’s frustrating, seeing all of the social problems,” confesses LaBarbera, a twentysomething pixie. “We can help them to an extent, but certainly not with the help that needs to be given to the homeless people of St. Louis.”
Her concern seems emblematic. At multiple levels, outreach defines the library. “There really is a mission,” says Carleton, behind whom a bumper sticker proclaims, “Kids Who Read Succeed!” in her cluttered Youth Services office. “People who stay on staff are proud of that mission and want to be part of it.”
