She came for five weeks. She stayed for 19 years. And after mastering the arts of book-binding, microfilm mending, and format-shifting, Debby Black is retiring Friday, Jan. 13.
"It's time," laughs Deb as she works in her "cage" on the Library's ground floor, mending the last of the damaged books that librarians have sent her for repair.
Deb's job title was Serials Assistant. So what does that entail?
"Oh my goodness. Where do I begin?" she says. "It's a cornucopia." Highlights include receiving new journals & magazines and maintaining those sections of the stacks; updating catalogue records for newspapers; helping people use the microfilm and microfiche readers; sending print journals to be bound into hard-cover volumes; all manner of book repair; and the endless task of fixing broken serial links in the Library catalogue. She also gathers statistics and performs many background tasks that make the library run smoothly.
Book repair is the job that inspires the most envy and admiration.
"Sometimes they come down and they're in a dozen pieces," says Deb, who glues in loose pages, fixes broken spines, creates new covers, and even builds sleek boxes to protect rare and fragile books or documents. "It gives me great satisfaction to have an old book that is beaten and destroyed, and you send it back upstairs and know it's going to have a few more years of life. You can see you've done something."
If Deb at retirement age could tell her 20-year-old self anything, she'd advise this: "You've got to be open to change. And change is good."
That receptiveness to change led Deb to her library job just as technology was radically changing libraries. When she arrived in the R.P. Bell, all the books were in a card catalogue and the few, pricey computers had a DOS interface. Journals were in print. She didn't know what a URL was let alone how to fix a broken one. Flash forward nearly two decades, and Deb can count herself instrumental in making sure all the library's books are searchable through an online catalogue. Similarly, with most journals now online in databases, Deb continued to help readers get access to them by ensuring catalogue links work.
What will retirement bring?
"I hate bingo. I'm not a very good old person," Deb says.
She has better plans: volunteering at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute. Taking trips with her husband. Travelling to warmer climes. Gardening.
"It's been a great place to work. I like everything about it. But it's time," she says. ♦
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