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The Ballad of the Entry-Level Librarian
by
Frank X. Roberts
Difficile est proprie communia dicere
--Horace
O quam te memorem virgo
--Virgil
I.
I sing of an unnamed librarian,
In a branch at Clacton-On-Sea,
Who knew books, modern and antiquarian,
But whose evenings were usually free.
II.
While others went to theatres or dance halls
With tall chaps, dark-haired or fair,
Mostly she sighed within four walls,
And read, and said, “I don’t really care.”
III.
In her books she would studiously bury,
Her head, and try not to frown,
When outside she heard laughter hurry
To the gay, warm life in the town.
IV.
She read V. Nabokov’s Pale Fire
And wept as the mud curled above
The head which escaped, in the cold mire,
From a world that was lacking in love.
V.
Still she tried hard to be cheerful,
Smiled wistfully, made tea for the staff;
But when her cup only ran to a tearful,
She thought, “Well, life’s a cruel laugh.”
VI.
In the 880’s, she found the Greek stories,
And wailed with Antigone,
Dreamed about all Helen’s glories,
Sad entry-level from Clacton-On-Sea.
VII.
She identified with heroines in novels,
(A to Z on the long fiction shelf)
Who progressed to palaces from hovels,
And thought of them all as herself.
VIII.
Next she read in the Russians,
(The wind blew in from the ocean)
How maidens with tragic expressions
Sucked down each dark, fatal potion.
IX.
From the Bridge of Sighs she leapt mournfully
With Hood’s unknown victim of fate,
Felt the hot tears falling scornfully,
And then went to bed, it was late.
X.
She was intimate with Dewey’s main classes,
Embracing the 0’s through the 9’s,
And thought, “How fast the time passes,
Memorizing Melvil’s general outlines.”
XI.
The Librarian soon realized her potential;
She quickly rose up through the ranks,
Received a salary with no differential,
And had accounts in separate banks.
XII.
She wore her blouse free at the neckline,
And had her hair done once a week;
An Assistant in Admin often took her to dine
At Chinese restaurants or Italian or Greek!
XIII.
Why should a ballad end sadly,
With a hiss from an open gas oven?
Hard work should be rewarded, gladly,
With promotion, more money, and loving.
XIV.
The message to all entry-level librarians
Is: Go off on a long reading spree,
For status, a rise and generous friends,
Like what’s-her-name from Clacton-On-Sea.
Notes (for non-librarians and some librarians):
First epigraph: “Difficile est proprie communia dicere” is a quote from Horace’s Ars Poetica. It has been translated, “It is hard to treat in your own way what is common.” Lord Byron placed it before Cantos I-V of his comic epic Don Juan. Byron put the quote into verse on another occasion, making it read: “Whate’er the critic says or poet sings / ‘Tis no slight task to write on common things.”
Title: An “Entry-Level Librarian” is a librarian newly-hired, usually at the lowest point on the pay scale, and probably new to the profession—most likely having just completed her/his library degree. While the hero of the poem happens to be female, the “message” in Stanza XIV is intended for entry-level librarians of both genders.
Epigraph to the poem: “O quam te memorem virgo” was spoken by Aeneas upon encountering the goddess Venus (his mother) outside the walls of Carthage (The Aeneid Book One, Stanza 44). Every school girl/boy probably once knew this, but alas, no longer—pace, Mr. Hirsch. An accepted translation is: “Maiden, how shall I name thee?” T.S. Eliot also borrowed this line to use as the motto for his poem La Figlia Che Piange (The Young Girl Weeping).
Stanza I: “Clacton-On-Sea” is a real town on the south coast of England in the country of Essex not far from Colchester. Any resemblance to any librarian in the library at Clacton-On-Sea is purely coincidental.
Stanza II: “I don’t really care” seemed somehow more honest and more plaintive than “I really don’t care,” but the reader should decide for him/herself.
Stanza IV: “. . . V. Nabokov’s Pale Fire,” Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-born novelist, and the author of that other story of a young novice, Lolita. Nabokov taught literature for many years at Cornell University. Pale Fire, one of Nabokov’s stranger novels, starts with a long poem of 999 lines in four cantos, together with a foreword, a commentary and an index. The poem is arguably one of the best pieces of poetry written in English in recent years. if anyone who has not already read Pale Fire want to know more about “the head which escaped, in the cold mire / From a world that was lacking in love.” I highly recommend their reading Pale Fire.
Stanza V: “made tea for the staff” is a piece of poetic license. Entry-level librarians are not normally asked to do this—not even in England. It is possible though that staff members in English libraries may take turns “brewing up” as they say.
Stanza VI: “880’s” are those subdivisions of the “800 Literature (Belles-lettres)” class of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme (DDC) under which Greek literature is classified. “Antigone” is the eponymous heroine of a play by Greek dramatist, Sophocles. In Greek legend she is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. She defied the authority of the State to perform funeral rites over the body of her dead brother, Polynices, a supposed enemy of the State. Unlike the story of our entry-level librarian, Antigone’s tale of woe does end tragically. “. . . all Helen’s glories” refers to Helen of Troy, of course, whose beauty (as every school girl/boy probably still knows) “launched a thousand ships” and started the Trojan War.
Stanza VII: “A to Z on the long fiction shelf.” In most public libraries, fiction is still arranged alphabetically by author.
Stanza VIII: “. . . the Russians,” Heroines in Russian novels have a penchant for tragedy. Anna Karenina is an example. She didn’t take poison, but she might have done if the train hadn’t been on time.
Stanza IX: “. . . The Bridge of Sighs,” is a bridge in Venice which leads from the Doge’s palace to San Marco prison. It is a celebrated sentimental monument, made so, in part, by the English poets Lord Byron (1788-1824) and Thomas Hood (1799-1845). Byron used it in Canto IV, Stanza 1 of Child Harold’s Pilgrimage:
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structure rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand: etc.
Thomas Hood wrote a poem entitled The Bridge of Sighs about the suicide of an unnamed female. Hood’s victim was in a sense known, since the poem was probably based on the court trial (as reported in the Times (London) 26 March, 1844) of Mary Furley who, unemployed and husbandless, threw herself and her younger child into the Regent’s Canal. The child drowned, but Mary was rescued. However, Hood’s venue for the poem (it is said) is the Waterloo Bridge over the Thames River, although neither of these is actually mentioned in the poem. The Waterloo Bridge was (is) the traditional jumping off place for suicides in London.
Stanza X: “. . . Dewey’s main classes” are those ten divisions of knowledge which form the basis of Melvil Dewey’s scheme for classifying all knowledge. Dewey claims the idea came to him one Sunday in church during a rather dull sermon. The following are the ten main classes with their assigned meanings:
0 Generalities
1 Philosophy and related disciplines
2 Religion
3 The Social Sciences
4 Languages
5 Pure Sciences
6 Technology (Applied Sciences)
7 The Arts
8 Literature (Belles-lettres)
9 General geography and history and their auxiliaries
“. . . general outlines” refers to the divisions of each of these main classes (also numbered 0-9) equaling 100 divisions in the so-called “Second Summary,” and 1,000 sections in the so-called “Third Summary” of the DDC. After the first three digits of the notation have been filled, “the system permits further subdivision to any degree desired, with a continued decimal notation, which consists of the addition, following any set of three digits from 000 to 999, of a decimal point and as many more digits as may be required.” Of course, our entry-level librarian could not memorize all the 1,000 sections of the Third Summary, but the 100 divisions of the Second Summary are within the realm of mnemonic possibility (or so I’ve been told).
Stanza XI: “. . . a salary with no differential” is a phrase which harks back to a time in the not-too-distant past when women were routinely paid less than men for equal work. The somewhat dubious rationale behind this practice was, in part, the idea that men needed a higher salary because they had families to support. The practice, owing primarily to pressure from the Women’s Movement, is now on the wane. It is certainly not extant in the American library profession, though it may be elsewhere.
Stanza XII: “. . . Admin” is library slang for “Administration,” that department of a library where important decisions are made affecting the operation of all the other departments of the library, and where the people who make these decisions are highly rewarded.
Stanza XIV: “. . . a rise” is a “raise” in American parlance, a usage which, if inadvertently used in staff meetings in American university libraries, seems to give everybody a rise (i.e., raises a laugh).
Frank's extensive career in teaching and librarianship began when he taught English in the U.S. From 1961 to 1963, as part of a Columbia University program called “Teachers for East Africa,” he taught English and American Literature in East Africa. There he met his wife, Dorothy. They returned to the U.S. where he simultaneously taught and finished two Masters’ degrees, in Education and in Librarianship. In 1968 they returned to England where Frank taught Library Studies, and adopted Hodge, a cat who later traveled around the world with them. In 1972, Frank was “seconded” for two years to teach at Makerere University in Uganda, East Africa, but left reluctantly after one year when the tyranny of Idi Amin became intolerable. From there it was back to England, then Australia and finally to America in 1979, to Buffalo where Frank earned his doctorate. Later they moved to Colorado, where he was Professor of Library Studies at the University of Northern Colorado until retiring in 1997. Frank published James A. Michener: A Checklist of his Work with a Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood Press) in 1995. He has written on bookmarks, specifically on medieval bookmarks, his special area of interest. A poet by avocation, he writes eclectically but traditionally. Frank and Dorothy live in Colorado with two very senior citizens of the feline persuasion. He can be reached at
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