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Association of College & Research Libraries

THE WAY I SEE IT: Hardwiring Serendip: Give chance its due

by John Koch

There is a generation of us who, on our deathbeds, will not be obsessed with our lost loves and secret sins, but with trying to remember something we once read as a child in the Reader’s Digest. If our parents didn’t subscribe, our grandpar- ents did, and there was usually a substantial pile to go through during family visits.

We never read the ar- ticles, which were usually written by parts of our bod- ies to explain how they could hurt us if we didn’t treat them right. We just read the jokes and anec- dotes for which people were paid unbelievable sums (maybe $25 for a paragraph), if the humor editor liked them.

I remember one story that went something like this: Her husband’s job had taken an American woman to an African country. Bored, she went to the local library and selected a book or two. When it came time to check out, she was told that patrons must check out nine books at a time. She protested, but the librarian grabbed books at random, piled them up until the stack was nine books high, and charged them out to her. She took all nine books home. If you know anything about the Reader’s Digest hu- mor editor, you know that she read and enjoyed them all.

We librarians strive to make our systems predict- able. An author’s divorce or remarriage or decision to change his or her name to an unpronounceable symbol can cause a flurry of activity in technical ser- vices offices around the country. We try to arrange it so that when someone types asparagus into an OPAC, he or she doesn’t get a list of books on danc- ing the polka. We have de- vised authorized subject headings, such as “Ameri- can Revolution Bicenten- nial Two Dollar Bill Postage-Stamp Cancellations” and “Contango and Backwardation” to prevent ambiguity.

Ambiguity can be the answer

But ambiguity is not totally preventable, and, in certain circumstances, we can use it. We try to think in straight lines, but are often most productive when we deal in analogy and metaphor. Creative leaps happen after we have steeped ourselves in a problem and given up on horizontal thinking. Our unconscious mind keeps on working and sometimes finds a solution in the patterns produced by something far removed from the original problem.

About the author

John Koch is reference librarian/documents coordinator at the Steen bock Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, e-mail: jkoch@library. wise, edu

From now on, libraries should refuse to accept delivery on a new automation system unless the OPAC interface includes a button that says “RANDOMIZE,” or maybe “POTLUCK.”

Maybe a horticulturist will be mulling over an asparagus disease, and a book on polkas will provide the insight she needs: “Let’s lay out the beds ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two- three-four.” Realms of discourse and thought interpenetrate, and ideas that arose in mathematics are applied to botany, physics, economics, medicine, and French literature; eventually, a particularly knotty problem in topology is called something like “Baudelaire’s conundrum.”

It is time we give chance its due. From now on, libraries should refuse to accept delivery on a new automation system unless the OPAC interface includes a button that says “RANDOMIZE,” or maybe “POTLUCK.” Click on this button and you get ten titles from the database— any ten titles, chosen by a random number generator. You may look at these titles for divine guidance. Or just for fresh ideas.

Creative writing teachers may assign students to write papers that cite any seven of Morphology of Vascular Plants, Lower Groups (Psilophytales to Filicales); National Party Platforms, 1840-1972; Great Riding Schools of the World; Methods of Interpreting Plato and his Dialogues; Nutrition and Diet Therapy; Field Guide to the Butterflies of Africa; Emily Dickinson: an Interpretive Biography; Lumbrosacral Spine: Emphasizing Conservative Management; Readings in British Monetary Economics; and Delineating Toxic Areas by Canine Olfaction.

There’s a report guaranteed not to be available from any online term paper mill. What instructor wouldn’t be willing to pay money to grade a paper like that? Or to see the movie based on it?

When an undergraduate comes in saying that he or she can’t think of a good term paper topic, we could give “POTLUCK” a spin and offer a real choice. When an undergraduate is making career decisions, he or she could RANDOMIZE and ask “Which of these ten books represents something I wouldn’t mind spending the next four or five years learning about?”

But the real benefit would be in broadening the boxes in which we think. In times of change, we look at things that seem to be beyond our control and understanding. By imposing our own order on them, we create the new. We open the Bible and stab our finger at a verse, or toss yarrow stalks, or deal from the devil’s deck, and the resulting pattern tells us what we already knew, but didn’t want to admit.

A random word, a book seen by chance, can break us out of our mold. Little things can lead to far-reaching consequences. Somewhere a butterfly, dreaming that it is Chuang Chou, flutters its wings and starts a distant hurricane. ■