{"id":11467,"date":"2015-12-03T08:46:20","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T13:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/rubenstein\/?p=11467"},"modified":"2015-12-03T12:35:16","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T17:35:16","slug":"the-archives-of-the-library-answer-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/rubenstein\/2015\/12\/03\/the-archives-of-the-library-answer-person\/","title":{"rendered":"The Archives of the Library Answer Person"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September of 1982, a librarian at Duke set up a simple loose-leaf binder suggestion book in the lobby of Perkins Library. Each page in the book had a spaces for three suggestions\/questions and three answers. In October of that year, the first group of pages with written suggestions and questions were removed, taken home by that librarian and answered in long-hand, then typed up by an administrative assistant directly onto the original pages and placed back in the book for anyone to read. This was the beginning of the Perkins Library Suggestion\/Answer Book, a popular tradition that would live on, in more than one form, for more than twenty years.<\/p>\n

At first, the binders were available in the Reference area after the pages filled up; then photocopied versions were bound into volumes and included in the Perkins and Lily Library stacks. In 1993, a \u201cbest of\u201d selection<\/a> was printed in a limited run in-house. But now, the original pages<\/a>\u2014with accumulated detritus of organic material, white-out, pen and pencil scribbling, and water damage\u2014have at last come to the University Archives for preservation and long-term storage. Some pages are missing and the binders were exposed to water at some point; the lovely people in Conservation have already dealt with some inert mold and the pages are now being rehoused in acid-free folders.<\/p>\n

The pages are fascinating. The suggestions and questions are signs of the times, demonstrate student engagement with the library and the University as a whole, and show students being students: curious, angst-y, angry, grateful, silly, and thoughtful. In return, the Answer Person is both serious and facetious, deflecting offensive questions with jokes, omitting names, giving in-depth answers from outside sources, taking constructive suggestions and compliments to heart, and generally being a librarian (often instructing suggest-ers and questioners where they can find their answers instead of simply providing easy answers for them).<\/p>\n

Some concerns are clearly timeless: why is the library so cold, why aren\u2019t the printers working, more bathrooms, more food, more lights, please restock the toilet paper:<\/p>\n