Can we help you?

The only routine work in the reference library on the 5th floor of Television House is the opening of packets of newspapers and letters, and distribution of incoming magazines; from then on anything can happen. This article by kim pettet and her colleagues in the library deals with some of them.

 

Cast your minds back to last October. In one week we had a general election, Russia dispensed with Kruschev [sic] and China exploded a bomb. On the following Monday with the Outer Hebrides result still due we were contemplating the state of the parties … the telephone rang, ‘Please’, said a breathy, secretarial voice, ‘Could you tell me if Parliament is sitting?’

Not all queries are answered quite so readily. A great deal of time is spent begging photographic agencies to send us pictures of ‘aeroplanes about to crash at night’, ‘jets taking off dramatically’ or ‘a plane in flight at an angle to match the picture I am holding in my hand of a bird in flight’. We were asked for a picture of a middle-aged man in a passionate embrace with a young girl. Having no luck, but an avalanche of suggestions, we put out an emergency call to the staff – alas all we got were middle-aged men. Aviation apart, subjects range from left-handed polo players to Zeppelins flying from left to right at night.

Checking spelling and helping with your letters to Dukes and Lords, together with those elder sons of Earls helps the day pass. There are also calls to various establishments on your behalf. One of us once rang the Tower of London, ‘Is that the Keeper of the Tower?’ ‘No,’ replied a quiet elderly voice, I’m his mother.’ We are quite accustomed to worried stage-managers asking us whether a man stabbed in the back would die with his eyes open or closed … how far would a brick have to fall to kill someone … what are the death agony symptoms of certain poisons?

The books on our shelves are a combination of standard reference and technical handbooks. As a library we are able to borrow from any public library in the London boroughs. People ask for stories they think might adapt for programmes, some we feel are not really for this purpose at all. Did you ever see a programme based on ‘The Naked Lunch’? We had fun last year trying to borrow a book for someone who was sure it was called ‘Cobbles from my Brain’ – we did, however, track down ‘Pebbles from my Skull’. We have a copy if you want to read it. Our most cherished memory of the American library dates back to 1962 … we rang to ask for any biographies of President Kennedy and still find it hard to believe they really said, ‘We don’t have any, after all, everyone knows all albout him anyway’. Among the facts we check are place and club names, and in the case of the armed services whether we are about to use an actual officer’s name in a programme. The first time we rang the Army Records Office only to be told, ‘Oh, we don’t keep records here’. We now know where to ring. Sometimes we feel like an annexe of W. H. Smith’s with more than 500 magazines passing through our hands each week in addition to the daily papers and Television Times. [sic]

Then there are quotations. It is better to check before broadcasting. The best yet; ‘Is it really, “Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt melt”?’

We have our dissatisfied customers. There was the researcher who returned the Tenniel drawings of‘Alice in Wonderland’ because they didn’t really look like Alice … or the one who wouldn’t believe that an actual photograph of Sherlock Holmes, even without pipe, didn’t exist … or the one who couldn’t understand why we were unable to obtain photographs of aboriginal houses, although our resident Aussie explained that they are ‘nomadic’ so they don’t stop anywhere long enough to build them.

Being British the weather is often the subject under discussion. When illustrating types of traffic hazards we were asked for a picture of traffic ‘in smog so thick you cannot see a thing’. Or country snowdrifts over 16 feet high (how the photographer arrived and departed was apparently his problem), buildings about to be struck by lightning or a river about to overflow its banks. We must hand a bouquet to photographic agencies; they try very hard on our behalf. Once when trying to find pictures of Chinese farm workers studying, a helpful Chinaman offered to go home and take some.

Incorporated in the library picture collection is the Weaver-Smith collection. This consists of 300,000 engravings covering the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The designers and programme staff use them frequently and we also loan them to outside concerns. One of these once asked if they might borrow again the engraving they had had five years ago. ‘It was,’ they said, ‘one of a medieval street with a dog in the corner.’

If this article has given you the idea that working in the library can be fascinating and fun we are pleased. It is and we enjoy it even though we sometimes feel that this query is the toughest yet … until the next one comes along.

We could fill a few pages of Fusion with anecdotes but writing this article has quite satisfied any desire we had to go into print. We leave you and return wholeheartedly to the search for ‘a man on a raft alone in the middle of the ocean’, to check the spelling of Popocatepetl and the satellite ‘Early Bird’ (honestly!) and endeavour to find a photograph of‘a municipal rubbish dump’. If you should require any strange information do ring us, or come and browse through the books … as for us, we should love to hear from those of you who have ever taken an unusual picture.

Somebody is bound to want it sometime.