Marilyn Johnson is no stranger to the library world. Her charm, intelligence and humor made This Book is Overdue! a big success, and now she has used her talents to showcase the world of archaeologists. Lives in Ruins is a fantastic read (hint hint: I hear now is a good time for gift giving), and Marilyn has been kind enough to share some thoughts on how these two professions might not be as different as you think.
*****
Marilyn Johnson reports from the trenches:
“One question keeps popping up as I hit the road to speak about my new book, Lives in Ruins. How did I come to write about archaeologists? I am not an archaeologist, or even a scientifically-minded person. I enjoy looking at nature— through the window. I don’t like insects and rarely get my hands in the dirt. And yet, something about the profession fascinates me, and the people who practice it seem to me to be in the same general business as librarians and archivists and even obituary writers, the subjects of my other books — they are all engaged in the mostly uphill battle to preserve bits of our cultural memory. Yet when I proposed archaeologists as the subject of my next book, my publisher looked at me as if I’d gone bonkers. Who in her right mind thinks librarians and archaeologists are in the same business?
“Librarians and archaeologists share the big things — a love of research, a desire to catalogue their resources, a reverence for the past— but I found that they differ in two significant ways. Librarians, for instance, are helpful by definition; if a writer approaches them with questions, they fall all over themselves to offer assistance. Archaeologists — not so much. They are a suspicious lot, worried about the integrity of the sites they survey and fearful of looters and bumblers who might ‘ruin the ruins.’ It took me twice as long to track down archaeologists as it did librarians, four years vs. two. Once they warmed up, archaeologists were as fun-loving and garrulous as librarians, and that’s where I learned another way these two tribes differ. My research into librarians had been fueled by white wine. I’ll never forget the librarian who, deep into a shared bottle and a story about some weirdo who trailed her through the library, wailed, “I’m paid to be nice to freaks!” Archaeologists choose a different intoxicant: beer. They order it in quantity, extoll its virtues in the field, cook it up in their home offices, fall upon it with relish after a season digging in a country that prohibits alcohol. One archaeologist loves beer so much he works with a brewery to recreate ancient beers. Though I stayed lean when I hung out with librarians, I had a bit of a paunch after researching archaeologists. I also had a sunburn and mosquito bites and a few other reminders of an even more obvious difference between archaeologists and librarians: librarians do their digging in the stacks; archaeologists dig outdoors.”
*****
Thank you, Marilyn!
Go get your copy now!
- Annie
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