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How I Became a Librarian, Part III

libraryI had left my librar­i­an’s posi­tion at Tren­ton State Col­lege, and set in to write full time. 

That said, I was not so sure I could make the finan­cial bar. In any case, at the same time my wife accept­ed a six-month aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tion at UCLA. I’m not sure quite what hap­pened but, when she arrived, she was informed that the UCLA library had a posi­tion open for me. It seemed to be stan­dard oper­at­ing procedure.

I inquired. Turns out, the UCLA library made a num­ber of assump­tions. First, they assumed that hav­ing been giv­en a posi­tion at UCLA, my spouse was a male. Fur­ther that I, as a spouse, (pre­sum­ably female) was only look­ing for make work. They offered me a posi­tion as a file clerk.

I did not take that job, but final­ly set­tled in to write full-time. I acquired my first com­put­er, and had one of the great days of my life when I learned to use the spell-checker.

I would not work as a librar­i­an again.

Charlotte Doyle, Crispin Cross of Lead, Catch You Later Traitor

BUT—my method for doing research remained the same. Each time I embarked on a work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion I brought togeth­er my own library on the sub­ject. Thus, when I wrote The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle, I built up a library of books per­tain­ing to 19th Cen­tu­ry ships and sail­ing. Not small libraries either. When I wrote Crispin (my New­bery book) my library per­tain­ing to the Eng­lish mid­dle ages num­bered about a hun­dred vol­umes, if not more. I am vague­ly con­tem­plat­ing a book set in Venice. That means I am build­ing my Venice library.

When I was a boy, each week my moth­er took us kids to the local library. She encour­aged us to have our own libraries. At some point I was allowed to walk to the library on my own. (The library in Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor is my mem­o­ry of that library.) No mat­ter where I have lived I have been sur­round­ed by books. I have lived the apho­rism sug­gest­ed by the Roman writer, “A house with­out books is like a body with­out a soul.”

Librar­i­an, read­er, writer. It’s all one to me.

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