Over thirty years of librarianship: an interview with Phebe Kirkham

December 30, 2010

About a month ago the head of reference at my library announced that she’d be retiring at the end of the year. We have a very low turnover rate and Phebe had been with us for thirty years (!) and just did everything, so the idea that we would be losing her was shocking. Over the last few weeks, she’s imparted to our administration and reference staff everything she can about how she does her job and how the library works and today will be her last day with us.

Yesterday Phebe agreed to let me interview her about her time at the New Canaan Library and about the changes she’s seen in librarianship over her career. Here are the highlights.

Phebe first started working in libraries in 1972 when she got her first professional position as the Chatham County Librarian in North Carolina. Although she’d never worked in a library before that, she said that she always knew she wanted to be a librarian–although she originally envisioned herself working in rare books where she’d be able to combine her love of history (she has a bachelor’s degree in history, after all) with how much she enjoyed exploring and researching. In 1981 she began her tenure at the New Canaan Library, and today she’s the Head of Reference.

When I asked her what in her thirty years with us she was most proud of, she thought for a while and then responded, “The way we serve the population in this town. The way we answer their needs, challenge them, and brought new technology in.” And can I tell you how much I loved that answer? It’s not just one project, one accomplishment that stands out in her mind–it’s the service the library provides to the community.

One of the reasons I wanted to interview Phebe before she left is that I am so new to this field that I have no lived sense of what librarianship was like before the Internet changed things so much. I mean, I know about looking things up in card catalogs and how much original cataloging used to be done and that reference used to be incredibly different, but because I’ve grown up with computers so integrated into my life, I can’t really emotionally understand what librarianship used to be like. Phebe’s not just lived through a lot of changes–she’s been the one leading the library through those changes (she not only maintains the library’s Twitter feed but actually tweets on her own time!), and I wanted to be able to understand the perspective she’s been able to develop over all of those experiences and years.

So when I asked Phebe what the biggest change was she’d seen over the last thirty years, I wasn’t surprised that she responded, “Computers.” She said that they’ve not only completely changed the way we look for information: they’ve also completely changed the way we access the collection. Far from seeing technology as something that ruined libraries and their glory, she pointed out how much more convenient keyword searching is than using subject headings that might use vocabulary that’s completely different from what people are thinking about as they try to find a book. She also pointed to the OPAC as a great help since now we can look up a record and know that it is, in fact, checked out and not missing, and we can even tell patrons exactly when that book is due back. However, Phebe did say that she misses the interaction she used to have when they were doing homework, and she worries that they may not be getting the best information, adding, “We still know where there’s secret stuff they should have used!” (I love love love this sentence.)

In talking about technology and the Internet, there was one thing in particular that Phebe said that sort of surprised me–except that in thinking about it more, I suppose it shouldn’t. She mentioned that while Alice, our director, credits her with leading the charge to bring the Internet to the library, it was actually a much more gradual process that started with indexes being made available on CD-ROM and then those indexes later being available through the fledgling Internet. She also mentioned that as those technological advancements came to the library, the reference staff was always teaching classes about the new tools–and that kept the staff at the forefront of what was available.

When I asked about how librarianship generally had changed, Phebe continued to pull through the thread of technology, saying that librarians today need to be much more technologically savvy than their predecessors were. But she worries that some of us who are new to the field and who are so steeped in technology might be losing contact with old reference materials and techniques and things like just knowing in detail what’s going on in the local community and being able to connect patrons with those events and resources. She also pointed to the difference in how we seek information now: rather than a student sitting on the floor and paging through twenty books about the Civil War to find what he or she wants and occasionally running across interesting things he or she wasn’t expecting to find, students now do a Google search and if what he or she wanted doesn’t come up in the first two pages, the student just quits. She lamented that loss of browsing and serendipity–but did concede with a laugh that being able to just do a Google search was much faster!

I was also hoping that Phebe could identify some of the overarching values and practices in librarianship that hadn’t changed over her career. Phebe pointed out that patrons still want information–and they still need help finding it. She also said, “People still want a good book to read. Whether they read it on a Kindle or they listen to it through their headphones, they always want a good story.”

And just because you can’t do a retrospective without also looking to the future, I asked Phebe where she thought librarianship was going. She said that the library has much more become a community center–and stepped up to do things like be an emergency shelter during storms–and that programming has exploded. In light of that, Phebe predicted that the brick and mortar structure of libraries will remain, but what we do within those walls will continue to evolve. In fact, she thinks that “astonishing things will be going on inside.” (Another sentence that I love! I think I might turn that into a slogan. “Your library: astonishing things are going on inside!”) And at the end of this bit of our conversation, Phebe laughed and said that one innovation she hopes we’ll get soon are better laptop batteries or some sort of wireless electricity so that patrons won’t have to constantly be asking where they can plug in their laptops.

During our holiday party this year, our director said some lovely things about Phebe and where the library has gone under her direction, and when Phebe got up to accept her gifts, she talked about how hard our staff works and what an impact we have on the community. As she stepped down, she closed with the following: “We help people–and that’s all I ever wanted to do is help people.” We’re absolutely going to miss Phebe steering the library through all of the changes in society and in information in the years to come, but I think what we’ll miss most is her passionate dedication to helping everyone in the community.

This interview was mostly to satisfy my own curiosity about the changes to librarianship over the years; NCAdvertiser.com has a much better portrait of Phebe (including an actual photograph!). We–both the staff and the patrons at the library–really are going to miss her.

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Tags: connecticut, interviews, librarianship, library history, library technology, work