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Memories
They say it is an urban legend that Porter library is haunted. However, I know it is not a make-believe story — it is true. I have encountered "him".
I believe it is Dana Porter himself who haunts the Library.
Over 20 years ago, before all staff had fobs and at a time when the work day started at 8 a.m., I was one of those who came in earlier. On occasion, I would open the building. The first time Dana let me know he was here was at 7:30 a.m. I was alone in a dark building and the elevator doors decided to open. There I was, alone; who was there with me? I froze in my tracks and cautiously peered inside an empty elevator. Then it closed and proceeded to the 10th floor.
As part of opening duties, I had to make rounds through the Library and I frequently did this in the dark with only the night lighting to guide my way. My next unnerving experience came on the 6th floor. As I checked the computers, the lights suddenly come on in the northeast corner. Okay, so it wasn't Dana this time. Someone neglected to tell me they installed motion lighting but how does that explain the deep roll of laughter I heard after? The building makes noises when it is dark and empty. The fourth floor got me too. I was to unlock the doors to the stairs and the elevator — the rest of the doors on the floor were locked tight. Except that one morning, again in the dark, the door to the executive offices was wide open , and there was a shuffling sound. Tentatively, I called "hello" and a "hello" echoed back. I will never forgive Mark Haslett for that one.
Back to Dana Porter. I know he hides the books too. I have numerous reports of books being returned by students but cannot find them. And then suddenly, the books will appear, cold as ice, back on the shelf where they belong. You can't tell me Dana isn't playing games with the students.
I might as well blame Dana for the waterfall I encountered in the staff elevator one Monday morning as well. I heard he also busted the pipes at the entrance and there was a Sunday when a waterfall coming from the 3rd floor blocked the front entrance. While I'm at it, he also smashed the big windows on the main floor just two panes down from my current office space. It was very strange having the wind blow through what was the circulation workroom that day.
A few photos from the UMD/UML days, in EV1:
This is from our GeoAbstract Art Show, where we created art work out of satellite imagery:
University Map Library (UML) in EV1, before we moved to Porter:
During our move from EV1 to Dana Porter Library, 328:
I visited the Library frequently during my years as an undergraduate student in English. I always found the librarians and circulation staff incredibly helpful and friendly, but a couple of instances stand out for me — a time when a librarian helped me with an "impossible" research question and another time when a circulation staff member made what turned out to be a *perfect* reading recommendation. Now that I'm a librarian here myself, it is such a delight to remember these instances, work alongside these two individuals, and see this same level of commitment and service from all library staff.
As an undergraduate student, I used to come to the Library at 8:00 am and study on the 10th floor before I had class. Looking out over Needles Hall as the sun came in was really peaceful and I was able to get into the "zone".
The 10th floor is the best.
I also remember Elsie looking through my backpack by the doors when I would leave the Library and thinking that the Library was a really intense place.
There was a big change in moving from analogue to digital, from print to online. Many of our books and just about every journal is online. Our users want and appreciate the online versions.
I have seen many changes since starting in the Library in 1999. In my first years, the Internet was in its youth and the Library was just learning how to incorporate and take advantage of this new technology. I was a member of a committee which was struck to evaluate the installation of Internet drops for laptop use, in the days before wireless. I also joined the LibWeb Site Management committee which investigated software to manage the Library’s website. I can only imagine the changes in technology and services which the Library will embrace over the upcoming 60 years.
However, over my 18 years at the Library, what has always remained the same is the supportive and friendly working environment. The Library and its staff have provided a collaborative and encouraging space in which I was able to grow as an information professional. My work friends and relationships have also been there to celebrate my personal successes, from owning a new home, new family milestones and to simply share life advice and delicious recipes. I envision that the future 60 years will bring many changes and challenges for the Library but that its people and their relationships will continue to be its greatest success.
Believe it or not, at one time the idea of having a coffee shop in the Library seemed somewhat controversial. There were some concerns about introducing a café in a study environment. Before the opening of Browsers coffee shop in the Dana Porter Library you made your way over to Modern Languages or to the vending machine in the staff lounge to buy your coffee. I moved over to DC library (luckily Tim Horton’s was just down the hall) before Browsers finally opened in October 2000, but the smell of fresh coffee welcomes me back to Porter every once in a while. I don’t know who came up with the name "Browsers", but it fits.
Someone else's memory reminded me of my first job in DP as a student worker on Saturdays, back in 1976. My sole job was to hand out headphones and phono-tapes/records. For seven hours and almost no business. Drove me crazy. After a week or two, I begged to be trained to sign out reserves too.
Luckily someone else agreed that I had the potential to handle a second duty!
Thinking about my first use of a computer reminded me of the joy of doing performance appraisals on a typewriter using a multi-part, mult-coloured form. Part of the tools required were white out, yellow out, pink out, and one more colour — green or blue likely. Correcting a mistake would take forever — all that drying time! Most times it was easiest to just think of another word or phrase that incorporated the mistake! Can you even buy whiteout any more?
When I first moved to DC in 1991, the office next to mine was empty except for a desk and a huge box in the corner. The box contained a computer. Although we were all used to the GEAC terminals at the circ desk, dumb terminals were the closest I'd ever been to a computer. After a few months of thinking that having a computer in a box was probably a poor use of it, I finally resolved to at least get it set up. It amuses me now to think of my trepidation.
I started in February 1989. The card catalogue still existed but hadn't been updated in some time. We used very primitive computers — white print on a black screen. Windows wasn't used yet — I think this was a DOS environment.
Functions were limited. We were using the computers for sign in and check out at the circulation desk, and pulling out the recently defunct punch cards for notepaper.
My desk was initially in the Circulation workroom. I think there was 6 or 7 of us in one space — all at desks that were grouped together. We really had to get along in that tight a space — no privacy. Luckily, some portion of my job was spent in the Annex — I got to get away from the workroom now and then.
Oh, the Annex! There was massive project to get thousands of books out of the library and into the Annex. We processed them partway here and put them on skids in the Annex. Oops, now we can’t get to the books because they are all boxed up waiting to be properly stored in the Annex’s different system of organization — by size on their spine to maximize the limited space. Call numbers ceased to matter, it was shelf and placement on that shelf that mattered. Taking the boxes off the skids to place them evenly on the floor so we could walk across boxes (gently!) to get into them when a book was requested. I still have to shake my head at that one.
I remember getting a work email account for the first time a few years into the job, but it took another couple of years to get my own computer. Nowadays I spend so much time in front of the computer, I can't imagine how anything got done back then!
I remember some coworkers gone by — some left willingly to retirement, and some were taken away by circumstance. One in particular — I think the whole library attended her funeral, we had all been so touched by her presence. We didn't have grief counseling in the library back then, but we had each other.
There have been renovations, and then more renovations, and then more still!
There are still more in the future — one really has to learn to roll with the flow around here. And I'm not even including all the new buildings I've seen squeeze into Ring road in the last 25 years!
It took me nearly 15 years to get a parking space in H lot and I got on the list fairly early. I didn't even own a car when I got on the list, but I figured I would, someday.
It took me almost the same amount of time to get a window of my own — this was an important thing at the time. I'd arrived, I had achieved!
I was on the 8th floor, pulling books when the power went off. I kept on pulling, there was plenty of light from the windows. I finally came down to the main floor and looked at everyone looking at me. All of southern Ontario had lost power, really? Wow.
I remember the day the planes crashed into the New York towers. I found out about it in an email group of friends, and started wandering around the library to see who else knew about it. People gathered around a tv on the 4th floor and Murray Shepherd was in charge of the remote, flipping channels like he hoped to see someone telling us it was hoax on one of them.
People, spaces, changes ... it's all here. We spend so much time at work, this stuff is all important and has a huge impact on who we become. I'm lucky to have spent the time with people I mostly like, most of the time, in an environment of learning and collaboration.
And I look forward to still more to come!
What I remember as a kid growing up on and near campus was how little time it took people to apply the "the library is sinking" urban legend seen on many campuses to Dana Porter. People started spreading it pretty much as soon as the construction began — I seem to recall there was a delay when they got to the fifth floor and that was what convinced people the weight of the books had been overlooked*.
I had the privilege to be one of the many people working at Dana Porter when the library transitioned from the old paper system to a computerized system ancestral to the one now in use. Someone or rather a lot of someone had to take down every book in the library, slap a bar code on it and enter it into the system. Many of the books that got catalogued were ones not often signed out and we discovered some enterprising people used stretches of unpopular books to hide caches of illicit material in the library. I have no idea why they would use the library — maybe they didn't want their roommates to know what material they consumed — but it added a treasure hunt angle to the epic task.
* There was a genuine oversight with the Engineering Lecture Hall, which was that nobody thought to see where the water table was back in those days. Flooding from water welling up was an issue.
Vinyl records are making a comeback with millenials — at great cost, but the library once had a collection of records and cassette tapes that you could sign out. There were a number of study carrels with built-in record players or you could sign out a cassette player to use within the Library.
Today you can get an article from another university's collection delivered straight to your email in hours through our interlibrary loan department (ILL). When the University first opened, it took 2 weeks to 2 months! In 1967 the Library became the first department on campus to have a Telex (think texting using a typewriter) which, along with the inter-university transit system, made huge improvements to ILL service.
Up until the mid-70s, the Library dress code forbade female staff from wearing pants.
Visions
Learn more about the Library revitalization efforts to get an idea of what the Library might look like in the near future.
