Many current book titles begin with “The Secret of…” or the “Hidden Life of…”
Some examples, to name a few, are: “The Secret Garden”, “The Secret Lives of Bees”, even “The Secret of Fat”, “The Secret History “, along with “The Hidden Life of Trees”, “The Hidden Life of Wolves”, “The Hidden Brain”, and not to be forgotten, “The Hidden Life of Life.”
Rather than following this line of thinking too closely, (The Hidden Life of Librarians?) we ask instead:
WHAT MAKES A LIBRARIAN?
Arlene Allen, a former librarian at the Silver City Public Library from 1977 to 1980, has agreed to be our first interviewee to answer this question. When asked what made her a librarian, she immediately answered that she was a “natural”. She did not grow up in a reading family. Her parents worked hard and did not have time for books. And there wasn’t a Library in the small town of 2,000 in Ohio where she grew up. The only place where she could get books was at the local drugstore that rented books, mostly mysteries by Leslie Charteris (1907-1993). He was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction in a series named “The Saint.” The books were very popular at the time and Arlene read them all.
After World War II, the town had enough money to open a Library. Arlene was the first person waiting on the front steps for the Library to open. (The Librarian nearly tripped over her when she opened the front door.)
As Rita Mae Brown, author of the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries, said, “When I got my library card, that’s when my life began.”
In the early 70’s during the Vietnam War, Arlene and her four children lived in Thailand for three years while her husband, Bill, worked in military intelligence in Saigon. She worked in the military library for families and children.
It was known that between 1975 and 1995, an estimated 800,000 people fled Vietnam by boat, and according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea.
When Arlene and her family were back in the States, living outside of D.C., they sponsored a Vietnamese family of four with two children under the age of three. They became an extended family of ten in a three bedroom home. They shared meals, and she and Bill slept in the basement.
This proves the saying that, “When the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian”. – Joan Bauer – author of Young Adult Fiction
Arlene already had a B.A. in history and political science. It was a “natural” for her to study library science since Catholic University was just down the street from where their family lived. She attended night classes.
Part of her training was in the map division of the Library of Congress. She was asked to figure out the location of a hand drawn map of a troop camp from the 1920’s in Nicaragua. At another time she had to identify a place in Africa that was between Libya and Egypt before there were set national boundaries. And before computers, she only had descriptive words to work with, such as “oasis” and “water from the Mediterranean”. She was a reference librarian in the making.
She came to Silver City because her husband grew up here, with roots going back to his grandfather who was the editor of The Enterprise in the 1920’s. While a reference librarian, she said, “I don’t know anything about sump pumps, but I can find out.”
Now, up to date, and retired, when asked what her first thoughts were when she came into this library recently, she thought, “I wonder if Daniel Silva has a new book out?” She left with two books, Munich by Robert Harris and Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit by Christopher Mathews. She said, “I still have too many books, and I’m still getting more.”