Oh, Professor, No Charge for You

Noel Perrin has been teaching at Dartmouth for 36 years. He has gradually acquired a wide range of opinions about the College's students, its faculty, its coaches, its alumni clubs, library policies, side-walk maintenance, and other important subjects.

At one time chair of the English department, he now works in environmental studies. At various times he hashas been a columnist for Vermont Life,Boston magazine, and the WashingtonPost. For the next year he will he writing one for the Alumni Magazine. Ed.

Last summer I was picking books for a new course I taught in the fall, a freshman seminar called "The Eco-History of New England." One of the books I wanted to read, with an eye toward using it, turned out not to be on the shelf in Baker Library. Someone had it out. So I put in a recall notice. Usually a book comes back in a day or two.

Three weeks later I stopped by the circulation desk to see what had happened. I thought maybe I had managed to lose the notice telling me the book was back.

I hadn't. It wasn't back. It was still out to a fellow faculty member (they never tell you who), and he had ignored three recall notices of mounting urgency. "I really need to see that book," I said hopefully. A week later I came back. Now it was five notices he had ignored. I asked if they would consider phoning him.

'We can do that," said a circulation librarian. "But I don't think it will work. Why don't you just get a copy through inter-library loan?"

So I did. Quickly, too. Patsy Carter, who handles inter-library loans at Dartmouth, is wonderful, as many of our other librarians are too, like Bob Jaccaud and Sue Marcoulier. Just one problem: It cost the College about $20 to borrow the book for me.

If students or alumni take a book out, they can keep it for a month. Should they not bring it back on time, they get four days' grace, and then they start paying a fine of ten cents a day. If the book is on recall, the fine jumps to a dollar a day. If the student or alum has managed to slip a non-circulating item out of the library, the fine is 50 cents an hour.

For faculty members and administrators, hings work differently. Essentially you can take a book out forever. I once knew a professor who was said to have several thousand books out. There are no fines. You do have to renew your books once a year—but nothing much happens if you don't. One professor who didn't get tenure left Hanover taking about 300 Baker books with him. The library eventually recovered about 250, and simply lost the rest. If the man had left still owing parking fees, the College would have garnished his salary if necessary. But for books it more or less just wrung its hands.

Last summer I was at a party where there were five directors of college libraries in Vermont present. I asked each one what she or he did about faculty who won't return recalled books. Two of them were prepared to fine a sufficiently obdurate prof. The other three were not, but said they would either personally retrieve the book, or send a forceful assistant librarian to do so.

Like any other faculty member, I enjoy taking out books for long periods. Saves bother. And privileges are just naturally fun to have. But I wonder if the time hasn't come around to treat us (and the administrators) a little like everybody else. I heard from friends in Baker that it's only a tiny minority of us who abuse our privileges maybe 20 or 25 out of 350 faculty. But just one person with several thousand books out may be enough to warrant action.

Besides, equality has a certain appeal. One of my favorite library stories brings together the great critic Edmund Wilson and a student assistant at Widener Library at Harvard. Wilson had a book to check out, and saw there was a line of four or five people. Striding around it, he said to the student assistant, "I just want to take out this one book."

"Would you take your place in line, please?" she answered. He started to, then swung back. "Young woman, I'm Edmund Wilson," he explained.

"I know who you are, Mr. Wilson," she said. "Now, would you please get to the end of the line?"

The story may or may not be true. But the mere fact of its existence reflects something rather nice in the American character.

That something could use a little revivifying in Baker.