ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

INNOVATIONS: Humor and creativity: Library committees

By Norman D. Stevens Director The Molesworth Institute

In my initial introduction to what has turned out to be a longer than anticipated series of short pieces on contemporary library humor and, to a lesser degree, creativity, I commented on some of the virtues of humor in the library workplace. One of those virtues, I suggested, was the extent to which the development of an inbred sense of humor among the members of the committees that so dominate the life of most academic libraries helped alleviate the tedium of committee work. Indeed one of my few and fondest recollections of serving as chair of the University of Connecticut Libraries’ MRAP (Management Review and Analysis Program) Committee foisted off on us by ARL’s newly established Office of Management Studies in the early 1970s is of the light-hearted approach to our work that safely carried us through to a successful conclusion. I am sure that I still have buried in my files somewhere the extensive list of alternative adjectives to express varying degrees of confidence in our conclusions that we developed as a handy— but never applied—guide to the editing of our final report. Much, if not all, of that internal committee humor is so inbred that it makes little sense to outsiders even in the same library. Nor is most of it published or distributed very widely so it is among the scarcest kinds of library humor.

Not to worry. Committees have become so prevalent as a way of life in academic libraries and library associations and organizations that there is no lack of independent outside humor addressing the serious impact that committees have on our inability to get our real work done. Unfortunately few of us have either the power or the wisdom demonstrated by one of our best-known and bestbeloved college librarians who has firmly told his staff that he is available to attend committee meetings only before lunch. The widespread adoption of WAM’s Law of Creativity—I hesitate to give him the full credit he is due for fear it will lead to censure by the ACRL Committee on Committees—would do more to increase productivity in academic libraries than any other step we might take.

The true nature of committees

A careful review of the Molesworth Institute’s Archives of Library Humor has, as you might expect, turned up a wide variety of comments, few of them favorable but almost all of them revealing, on the true nature and the insidious role of the dreaded library committee. There are, as we will see, some serious lessons to be drawn from these observations as well as a general conclusion. The general, and obvious, conclusion is that although the committee, even when disguised as a task force or “working” group, may have become the most common means of attempting to use a body of library staff to arrive at a series of recommendations for dealing with a major problem, the claim that people working together can arrive at sounder and more creative solutions than those working alone is not widely believed. Staff attitudes towards library committees, as well as administrative insight, suggest that academic library administrators need to be far more circumspect and judicious in their use of that approach to problem solving. Here endeth the sermon.

The record

Actually the record, as revealed in various library newsletters and other ephemera, clearly indicates that their common dislike for committees may be one of the few areas in which there is agreement between academic library administrators and staff. We all have a cynical attitude towards the use and value of committees even as we continue to appoint and serve on them. If we either dislike committees, or regard them—at best—as a necessary evil, why do we continue to have so many of them? perhaps there is a major character flaw among librarians that warrants mass psychoanalysis.

So far I have turned up no ode to the library committee or little evidence that music librarians, despite their otherwise peculiar nature, make much use of committees, but otherwise the record is replete with delightful examples. In the Law Librarians of New England News (December 1988) Mary Jane Kelsey and Jo-Anne Giammattei, of the Yale University Law Library, proposed a Law of Library Inverses: “Meeting length and committee size is inversely proportional to the importance of the agenda.” A somewhat similar view was expressed in the 1987 April Fool’s issue of Mailings from the University of Arkansas Library where a contest to revise forms within the library was announced. The fifth rule of the contest provided that “No more than one committee, composed of no more than three persons, may meet no more than one hour to determine the form of the revision.” The Biblio-Fobe (April 1,1989) from the San Diego State University Library, contained a listing prepared by Harry (I Love Committee Work) Keehan of several potential OPAC committees that didn’t, alas, make it past the final cut. Those included: the Terminal Courtesy and Color Scheme Committee; the Card Catalog Demolition Tag Teams Committee; and the Remote Access from Outer Planets Committee. A limited edition computer-generated advice column from the Health Sciences Library at the Oregon Health Sciences University contains, among other gems, a response from the regular columnist, Miss Braithwaith, to Sue Snow, who has lamented the lack of excitement in her life. Miss Braithwaith asks: “Have you considered committee work? After a hard week of struggling with the application of the AACR rules, I find the meeting of a committee to be stimulating to the verge of exultation….I am sure you will find, as I have, that committee work (while it does take some time away from other creative pursuits) is exactly the stone to keep a keen edge on one’s intellectual razor.”