The Circulation Desk

Flashers, sex, and books

Image courtesy of Robert Patrick Doyle. The reading room at the main branch of the New York Public library. You are not allowed to use the reading room, unless you are actually reading, studying, or generally, engaged in library appropriate work.

In 2002, I took a job in the circulation department at Uris library, Cornell University’s main undergraduate library. I had always loved books, so after a soul and body killing stint in retail, I applied for two library positions on the campus where my partner was completing his graduate work. The first position was in the reference department, which suited my skill set as someone who had done graduate work in English literature, the second was in circulation because I had also done a lot of administrative work. I got both jobs but decided to take the circulation position. The reference job seemed more interesting. I’d be helping students locate various resources for their work. But the people in the circulation department were friendlier and had a sense of humor, a requirement in a job where the public had no real impetus to be nice to you. In circulation, you didn’t help patrons find necessary source material and integrate it into their work. Instead, you told them their books were overdue, all the rental laptops were in use, and the reserve materials for their class weren’t available yet.

I learned very quickly that libraries involved much more than books. In fact, particularly in circulation, books weren’t worlds you opened and got lost in, but rather objects to be shuffled continually between patrons and stacks. We didn’t read books; we processed them. Cornell University has twenty libraries scattered across campus, not including an annex, which houses all the books that won’t fit in those libraries. Each library, and each department in each library, had a particular personality, introversion figuring prominently in almost all of them. The four people who worked in the cavernous annex fetched books via electric lift and ferried them through campus mail to patrons at the other libraries. They were a quiet and rather sullen crew. They didn’t work with the public or even interact with other employees much, and they liked it that way. Uris and Olin libraries, where I worked, housed the majority of the books on campus as well as numerous library departments. Those in the reference department at these big, busy libraries generally kept to themselves, unless assisting patrons. They were the academic version of their coworkers out at the annex. The employees of the rare books department didn’t seem actually to exist, and the shelvers, who spent eight hours a day returning materials to their correct locations in the quiet of the stacks, barely spoke. The circulation department employed plenty of introverts (me included), but it also had the most consistent interface with the public and, therefore, functioned as the extroverted kid in a family of quiet souls. I developed close relationships with my coworkers, and we enjoyed throwing parties and celebrations for holidays and birthdays. We were fun.

And we had to be. Our morale depended on it, particularly, when our duties blurred, and we took on the unwanted role of security guard. The library didn’t employ actual security officers during the time that I worked at Cornell. Instead, the administration tasked those in circulation, and to a lesser extent, the other departments, with keeping an eye out for anything unusual, then reporting it to the proper authorities. During my tenure at the library, the months we spent trying to catch the flasher and the annual “Slope Day” celebration top the list of librarian-turned-correctional officer moments. I had worked at Uris for about a year, when shaken young women began arriving at the circulation desk with information about an older man, wearing the ubiquitous beige trench coat for the sole purpose of displaying its contents. We began an attempt to catch him. We failed, for months. Someone would spot him, rush to tell us, we’d rush to his last known location, and he’d have disappeared. Or we would get a report of a sighting and call the police. An officer would search the building and come up empty. Then one day, our luck turned. During one of my day shifts, I returned from lunch to whispered shouts from my coworkers, “we think we caught the flasher!” and “the police are in the building!” Those of us who weren’t “on the desk” assisting patrons hovered in the back offices waiting for a report from the officers, while those out front went through the motions of helping students, all the time waiting for a glimpse of the culprit being escorted out the front doors. A few minutes later, the whole department exhaled as the police quietly escorted the disheveled man out the front door. After months of traumatized students, hyper-awareness and missed chances, we could finally return to our regular duties of checking out and in books, reminding students not to eat their dinners in the reading room, and loaning laptops.

Unlike the flasher, we could prepare for Slope Day1. The giant end of year university sanctioned student party happened every year in early May on “the slope,” a steep hill with a terrific view of Cayuga lake and the town of Ithaca, NY in the valley below campus. Uris library stood perched at the top of this hill with its younger sibling, Olin library, directly behind it. Unfortunately, on Slope Day this otherwise advantageous location proved to be a huge headache for both libraries’ staff. University administration required the libraries to stay open throughout the daylong party so that the less celebratory, more studious individuals could still use the building services and find a quiet place to work. Our job was to ensure that quiet.

Slope Day has a long history, and over the years, library administrators and supervisors had honed a detailed plan to keep inebriated and often amorous students out of the buildings. The plan hinged on the underground tunnel that ran between Olin and Uris libraries. Staff used the tunnel to shuttle carts of books and other supplies back and forth between libraries with ease and out of inclement weather. On Slope Day, we closed all the entrances to both buildings. Instead, the tunnel’s outside exit, hidden against the backside of Uris library, became the only entrance to both buildings. Staff stood positioned at this new entrance to direct bewildered patrons through the tunnel and up to the public part of the buildings. We also checked the bags of people entering and leaving the library in order to keep controlled substances out of the stacks and make sure patrons had managed to check out books properly in the midst of all the chaos. The bulk of this job, however, involved monitoring the condition of those trying to enter the building as well as the intentions of couples, who might be attempting to fulfill a Cornell Slope Day tradition, having sex in the stacks. We turned the obviously drunk or high students away and, when suspicious couples entered the building, notified the staff who manned the circulation desks.

In addition to door duty and regular circulation duty, you could get assigned a third job on Slope Day. After the bouncers at the tunnel entrance alerted circulation staff to a possible coupling in the stacks, being careful to include a description of the suspects, the individual with this third job would attempt to follow the students and catch them in the act. The third year I worked at the library, I drew what I considered the short straw, and got assigned the job of stalker. I had finished lunch after an uneventful morning when I received a heads up on the walkie-talkie we each carried for the day that two individuals had entered Uris library moments prior. They had already passed the circulation desk in the large Dean Room, and were proceeding to the A.D. White library, a kind of boutique library sandwiched between the first and second floors of the building2. The architect of Uris library had constructed this room as an ode to ancient and atmospheric European libraries. Plush red carpet covered its main floor and two additional balcony tiers, dampening sound. The oblong room contained a central alcove with a huge fireplace and stain glass windows; heavy wooden reading tables with individual lights positioned along their spine ran the length of the space. At either end of the room, twin spiral staircases provided patrons with access to the second and third floor balconies and the crosswalks that joined them. Ornate and, in my opinion, very low banisters bound these narrow spaces. Bookshelves designed to fit the small footprint lined the walls, but they also ran in short groups perpendicular to the banisters. The sound muffling quality of the room together with the distinctly hidden spaces between these tight bookshelves practically screamed, “have sex here!”

I opened the room’s leaded glass door as quietly as possible and stepped inside. The carpet squished beneath my feet. I listened. Silence. Then I heard a noise to my left and above me on one of the balconies, a noise you don’t make studying for a Chemistry exam. I had absolutely no desire to catch these individuals in the act, so I proceeded to make a lot of very official sounds. I took several determined steps across the room and began to push in some of the large chairs at the central table. I heard a squeak and some muffled laughter. The suspects emerged managing to look nonchalant, if slightly disheveled. I tried not to make eye contact as I directed them down the stairs and out through the locked main entrance. Gratefully, that year’s Slope Day came to an end without me having to surprise any other couples. My coworkers and I headed home, exhausted, but looking forward to the following day when most of the student body would be sleeping off hangovers, and therefore, not at the circulation desk.

A few years ago, my family and I traveled back to Ithaca and Cornell University. My partner and I wanted to visit old friends who still lived in town, show our kids the campus, and I wanted to visit the library. Many of my coworkers still worked there. I gave hugs and introduced my kids. My supervisor and another staff member and I walked down to the student union to eat lunch in one of the cafeterias, something we’d done regularly during my time at the library. We didn’t talk about the flasher or Slope Day, although I’ve heard that the event is much more controlled now. We just caught up on our lives. My supervisor told me she would hire me again, if I ever decided to move back to the area. In that moment, I wanted to return, to be a member of the library community again, to laugh, complain, gossip, eat holiday treats, and catch hapless students together. I wanted to do it all with a book in my hand, and hopefully, an actual security guard stationed at the front door.

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