Ex Libris: Trinity University

I have a lot of fond memories of libraries and librarians, but for some reason I was thinking today about the library at Trinity University, my undergraduate alma mater.* It was intimate yet well-stocked, and I worked there for a number of years. I started out shelving, then switched to IMS, Instructional Media Services. We provided audio duping, slide production, and what I can only describe as "science fair project production". We'd put together the actual poster presentation for professors' poster sessions. I learned how to use a b/w darkroom, shoot copy slides, dupe audio and video (back then we used the fat videotapes, I think they were 2" wide instead of your more common 3/4" tapes, which I guess are growing less and less common, aren't they?).

***Yes, my youthful digital age readers, once upon a time, in the time before PowerPoint, there was film. And, yea, it would be exposed to light and transformed by a series of chemical processes into a negative. And lain unto the photosensitive paper and exposed to light briefly, and then treated with even more chemical processes, it would then produce a kind of photo without the use of a mechanical printer. No, there was no Adobe Photoshop. Yes, it's true, children. It was a time before cell phones. And, yes, we rode to school on mastodons and wore ragged fur robes in winter. ***

My boss there, Pat, was an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan. She owned a cassette copy of her vinyl collection of every published Webber musical EVER. Both the Broadway cast AND movie soundtracks, to be sure. Whenever she was in the darkroom with me, it was all Webber, all the time. You could probably hypnotize me and get me to sing (albeit terribly) all of the Webber musical tunes up to and including Phantom of the Opera.

I fucking HATE Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. I'm not a big fan of musical theater, in general. So, yeah, that was fun.

What I actually was thinking about, though, was the reference librarian there. He could find *anything*. Seriously. Invent a term paper topic, with no resources whatsoever, show up at his desk, and he'd have a stack of books for you in no time. My friends and I called him Craig Likness, Reference Man of GOD. You have to say that with a deep movie-trailer voice.