The author of the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes observed: ‘Of the making of many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh’. I must confess, however, that my own recollection of many hours spent in the Baillieu in the early 1960’s is not coloured by any sense that it was accompanied by ‘a weariness of the flesh’; my residual memory is that I found the library a very energizing and ‘user friendly’ place within which to toil. Apart from attending lectures most of my university time was happily spent in its congenial surrounds.
At the same time, I know that in that period of my life I developed a healthy respect for the librarians who were faced with the maintenance and care of the many books, of which ‘there is no end’ to the publication. But especially, I became aware that the daily business of having to interact with a body of demanding students, some of whom did not actually share a concern to care for the precious items on the shelves, must often have triggered a very real sense of the ‘weariness of the flesh’, even to the point of exasperation.
One incident stands out in my mind. I studied in the honours school of History. Amongst other things, I did a couple of ancient history units with Jack O’Brien. Apart from his legendary interest in the ‘Athenian tribute lists’, he had an interest in Anglo-Saxon England and the study of English place names. There were about eight of us in the class working on projects in the library, mainly using some important English antiquarian publications of the primary source material. The Doomsday Book was amongst them, and I recall multiple volumes of very big thick books bound in red, though I have forgotten the exact title of the series.
To my puzzlement I found not just one instance but a couple where the particular page I wanted to consult was missing. Then with alarm, not just one or two pages but a handful … and then some clear evidence that these precious volumes had actually been attacked with a razor blade. Somehow the cuts looked ‘fresh’; clearly it did not need Hercule Poirot to generate the suspicion that one of our class preferred to work at home rather than in the Baillieu!
A little more detective work, and it became clear that the missing pages related to a specific topic, and of course we all knew who was doing what topic. So the missing pages had to be mentioned to Jack O’Brien.
The rest is history, as you might say. One of our number simply disappeared from the class without notice. We knew that Jack O’Brien had been to the library to investigate. Whether the missing pages were ever retrieved I do not know. But I can well imagine the hand-wringing lamentation amongst library staff.
All praise to long-suffering librarians over the last 50 years for their work of maintaining and caring for the collection, and living with the risks of making it available to all-comers, despite the obvious hazards.
Archbishop Carnley is now retired & lives near Nannup (SW of Western Australia) - in the middle of the beautiful State forest.