THE LIBRARIAN’S REVENGE
THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS OF BANANAS
By John Clark
This is a story
about revenge with a happy ending. From 1970 to 1997, I worked at the
Augusta Mental Health Institute (AMHI) in Maine. During that time, I got
sober, got married, became a parent twice, earned two masters degrees, and
episodically went nuts because of the work environment. I learned that I was
a lousy supervisor, a fair teacher, and a good researcher. I also learned
that many of the administrators were sinister, sick, or both.
In the mid-1980s,
I was in charge of the adult education program for patients at a time when
interest in learning had waned considerably. Many of my classes consisted of
me and a lesson plan sitting in an empty room. I comforted myself by firing
up the Commodore 64 that had been purchased with grant money and playing
around with the educational and entertainment software that had come with
it. It was a fun machine in its time, but you could almost read the entire
New York Times Book Review while waiting for programs to load from
the 5.25-inch floppy disks. However, that machine was the key to my next
career move, for it opened an ever-growing interest in computing and
information technology.
When the librarian
retired, I approached the assistant superintendent with a brash offer: Let
me take over the library. I’ll continue teaching those few who want to
learn, AND I’ll modernize the library. My desperate offer was met with an
“OK, give it a try.” Panic set in as I had no clue how to fulfill my brash
promise. I did, however, know how to ask for help. I contacted members of
HSLIC, the Health Sciences Libraries Consortium. Since the medical library
had a good collection of mental health and psychology journals, the HSLIC
libraries were happy to help out. Deb Warner, then of St. Mary’s Hospital in
Lewiston, and Barbara Harness, now at Maine General Medical Center in
Augusta, took me under their wings.
Within a year, the
medical library was computerized, and we were an active member of DOCLINE,
the National Library of Medicine’s electronic interlibrary loan system. On
the other side of the corridor, the Col. Black Library had been thoroughly
weeded, and new books were being added every month, thanks to a mix of
endowment money and federal funds.
Over the next ten
years, I continued to add a good blend of mystery, science fiction/fantasy,
best-selling fiction, and unique nonfiction titles to the patient library.
On the other side of the corridor, I expanded the journal holdings in the
medical library through a combination of added subscriptions and an
energetic use of an Internet resource called Backmed. Backmed was an
Internet listserv that allowed medical librarians across the world to offer
and claim excess or unwanted journals and books. I learned to mine it
aggressively and once went so far as to bring a full pick-up load back from
the mental health library at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. My
efforts resulted in the AMHI library being a sought-after DOCLINE partner by
major medical facilities in both the U.S. and Canada.
During those
years, I discovered that Maine State Government didn’t particularly value
innovation or efforts to save the taxpayers’ dollars. Two examples still irk
me. When the Department of Human Services decided to close their library, I
offered to house the journals and maintain access to them by all DHS
employees. My offer was rebuffed, and the thousands of dollars of journals
went to the dump. A few years later, the same thing nearly happened with the
library at Pineland. This time, however, I made such a stink that I was
allowed to retrieve two pickup loads and add them to the collection in the
medical library.
In 1994, the
University of South Carolina brought their masters in library science
program to Maine, and I enrolled. As my coursework progressed, working
conditions deteriorated. By 1997, I was ready to graduate and had the
dubious pleasure of being expected to run both libraries as well as oversee
the staff development department. Shortly after graduation, I decided
twenty-seven years in mental health was enough, so I took early retirement
and went looking for another library job.
Seven days later,
I was hired as the library director in Boothbay Harbor. My position as
librarian at the Augusta Mental Health Institute was never filled.
Over the next nine
years, I made two more job changes—first to the Maine State Library, then to
the Hartland Public Library. During that time, the new Riverview psychiatric
facility was built, and AMHI closed. Every so often I would think about my
old libraries and remember how many good books sat on those shelves. The
powers that be decided not to incorporate the library holdings into the new
Riverview facility, and two years after closing AMHI, my old libraries were
put out for bid by the state surplus property division.
Only other
libraries were eligible to bid. I went back and forth in my head: bid,
you’re nuts, bid, you’re nuts. My wife sided with “you’re nuts,” her point
being that I was one person and there were more than 6,000 books, not to
mention all the other stuff. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many
really good books I had purchased over the years. After getting the approval
of the library board, I took a deep breath and bid $400.
I suspected nobody
else thought there was anything of value left in the collection. I was right
as mine was the only bid. All of a sudden, I was like the dog that caught
the car. I looked at the book cart, fourteen-foot birch reading table, and
400 plus feet of pine shelves. “How in heck do I move all this plus 6,500
books, two wooden bookcases, and the contents of two closets the fifty miles
from Augusta to Hartland without killing myself?”After getting a quote of
nearly $4,000 from a mover, I was in panic mode. However, the man I was
working with at state surplus was terrific. He helped arrange for the
purchase of archival storage boxes and lined up a crew from the Pre-Release
Center in Hallowell, which is next to Augusta. I rented a big truck from
Ryder, and on consecutive Mondays, we boxed everything and loaded the truck.
I got lucky on the
other end as well. Peggy Morgan, the Hartland town manager, lent me the town
crew, and with the help of two dollies, we had the truck unloaded in less
than two hours. Total cost: just over $1,100. At that point, I was faced
with triaging the books and maintaining safe passage through the basement
for the homeschoolers who store their curriculum materials there.
Between March 25
and mid-December, 2006, I managed to look at all 6,500 books. Two unexpected
things happened during the process. As I looked through the books I had
bought for the Col. Black Library, I realized how good my selection skills
had been. I added just over 1,000 of the books to the Hartland collection.
Science fiction holdings doubled, mystery increased by 40 percent, health
and history increased by at least 50 percent, and we ended up with one of
the best poetry collections outside of academia. As I went through, removing
the old checkout cards from books, names of people long forgotten brought
back their faces or conversations we had as they used the libraries at AMHI.
The triage process validated me as a librarian while softening any remaining
resentments I had toward the mental health system.
The remaining
books took several interesting paths on their way out of the library. I had
a huge book sale during Hartland Days, netting more than $350. Two rare book
dealers bought another $500 dollars worth, while an Internet vendor—bookprospector.com—netted
another $300. Several thousand books went to another Internet vendor—Better
World Books. Revenue from those will trickle in over the next few years, and
15 percent of the sale will benefit literacy efforts in underdeveloped
countries. When the dust settled, I had a buck-a-box sale and sold
everything else, making another $220.
Not only did I
make back our investment, but the bigger book case allowed me to make a
complete rearrangement of the adult holdings. Oversized books went on one
side while science fiction filled the other. This made room for all the
other additions with space left over. The synergy of adding more than a
thousand new books created heightened interest in the library. Circulation
almost doubled while interlibrary loan increased almost as much. Many of the
books added from the AMHI collection are the only copy available in a Maine
library.
What began as
revenge ended as a very satisfying project that made a lot of book buyers
happy while preserving access for everyone in Maine to books long
unavailable. And the thirty thousand pounds of bananas? That was the Harry
Chapin song that was running through my head as I drove the rental truck up
Interstate 95. 
