Complex Numbers

Librarians

Getting back to articles, here's one from Cracked that should be of interest to readers. Since you're reading this, I assume you're a reader.

     5 Ways Libraries Used to Be Hardcore  

The title should more properly be "Ways Librarians Used to Be Hardcore."

While every profession employs miserable people doing jobs just because they’re told to, librarians are an exception. Librarians are heroes.

Every hero needs a catchphrase. For librarians, traditionally, it's "Shh."

5. Libraries Sterilized or Even Incinerated Books, and Laws Kept the Sick From Borrowing

We used to care about public health.

You were touching all these items that other people had fondled, people whose hygiene and morals you had no way to evaluate. We don’t have many public shoe exchanges, or rent-a-bra companies, because despite the obvious advantages of such facilities, such ideas repulse people. Maybe we should be just as weirded out by borrowing books.

Unlike with machines in gyms, there's no "wipe the books down when you're done."

Fuel for these fears came from a scientist named William R. Reinick, writing in the American Journal of Pharmacy. Someone once caught smallpox from a book, he said. Someone caught gonorrhea from a book, he claimed (exactly what they’d been doing to the book, he did not say). You could even catch cancer from books, he asserted. Then he shared the results of an experiment, where he kept 40 guinea pigs and gave them library book paper as bedding. All the guinea pigs died. This was damning evidence, if you don’t know much about how experiments are supposed to have control groups.

And also that guinea pigs live about two years, anyway, if they're lucky. Not to mention those suckers will eat anything, and I'd think it more likely the ink poisoned them.

Then as now, such studies were usually publicized so that the studier could sell their solution to the problem they've just created.

Some health measures make sense, while others do not. Examining books tells us that, yeah, they might have some germs on them, but still, it seems no one ever gets sick from handling books.

4. During the Depression, Librarians Went Out on Horseback to Bring Books to Mountain Folk

These mounted quests weren’t easy. Sometimes, the horse (or mule) would keel over and die. The librarian would have to continue the remaining many miles on foot. Sometimes, locals didn’t take kindly to these strange women bearing written words, forced on them by the government.

Nice to know nothing's changed in 90 years, except the caliber of firearms used to shoot at trespassers.

3. Librarians Put on Uniforms and Went to War (as Librarians)

"Bang!" "Shh!"

In Vilnius, Lithuania, the Nazis set up a Jewish ghetto and banned anyone from entering or leaving. Librarian Ona Šimaitė managed to go in and out anyway, using the excuse that she was collecting overdue library books. During these trips, she smuggled in food and arms, and smuggled out documents for preservation. She also smuggled out children, in sacks.

Legitimate badassery, right there.

2. Police Arrested People in the Middle of the Night Out of Their Beds for Overdue Books

Take New Jersey in 1961. Harold Roth, the director of the East Orange Public Library, decided he was through waiting on people to return their late books, and so, he called in the police. The cops staged midnight raids on 14 homes. People who had cash on them to pay the fines did so, while others had to go right to jail.

Fortunately, jails have libraries.

Today, libraries find that abolishing fines is actually the more effective tactic at getting tardy patrons to bring their books back.

"What are you in for?"

"Murder, rape, larceny, rape, resisting arrest, rape, and loitering. You?"

"Overdue library book."

1. J.P. Morgan Locked the Nation’s Financiers in a Library Till They Agreed to Bail the Country Out

This one was interesting to me because it involves a place I've actually visited.

In 1907, the economy was in real trouble. ...the burden for saving the country fell on J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan, librarian.

It's a stretch to relate this to librarianism, though technically it happened in a library, albeit a private one at the time. It's still a really interesting bit of history. Full disclosure, though, I couldn't be arsed to fact-check it, and I don't recall seeing any plaques about it when I visited the building in question.

Hell, I don't think most people have heard of the financial crisis of 1907, though it's what led to the formation of the Federal Reserve System. It was comparatively brief, and later overshadowed by the Great Depression (see #4 above).

The country survived, as did the library. Visit it today, to see some books, or to see a third-century Roman sarcophagus that Morgan installed.

The building in question, since the article neglects to mention this, is on Madison Avenue, a short walk from the Empire State Building. I don't remember the sarcophagus, though.