Snapshot: Sid Berger
By Katharine Dunn, Dean's Editorial Fellow
Sid Berger wears many hats: He is currently the Ann C. Pingree Director of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, which houses many of the original transcripts of the witchcraft trials along with a vast collection of other historical, artistic, and genealogical materials. It is the third largest library in an art museum in the country. He's the owner/operator of a press (in his house), for which he hand prints books of poetry and other works, some by Pulitzer Prize winners. He's a paper maker. He has been an English, Communications, and GSLIS professor at Simmons since 2002. In GSLIS, he teaches History of the Book and Rare Books and Special Collections Librarianship. "I think [History of the Book] is a really important class and should be required," he says. "No matter what area of librarianship you're going into, even if it's IT, you have to know about books as artifacts, how they are made, how they have been used and abused."
Tell me a bit about your job at the Phillips Library.
It's one of those wonderful jobs; I do so
many things that it's never boring. The
two major things I do are write reports
and go to meetings. As a director of a library I have
to oversee the budget, acquisitions, and cataloging; I
deal with donors, trustees, and overseers; I give
talks. I do everything. It's really fun.
How familiar with the library were you before you got this job? I knew it only sketchily. I've learned a lot, and I know it well now. I do administrative work and I still don't know it as well as the librarians do. I buy for the library, which is the fun part.
What have you bought lately?
We're bidding today on a very rare item. Since the museum has
a great maritime collection, we look for unusual things in the
maritime world. About a year ago we bought a sketch book of
sailors' tattoos for a tattoo parlor. The owner of the parlor could
just show the sketchbook of dozens of tattoo designs to a sailor,
and he would pick out the one he wanted. Well, the one we're
bidding on today is a semaphore manuscript. If you're on a ship
and you want to communicate with another ship, they didn't
have walkie talkies or iPhones; they would put flags and
pennants onto the rigging of the ship to communicate with other
ships. The book is a manuscript on those pennants, and it is a
really rare one; it's from the War of 1812. [Ed. note: The bid was
successful.]
The library has many of the legal papers related to the 1692/93
witchcraft trials.
They actually belong to the state, but the state didn't have a
proper place for them. The Phillips Library was founded in 1799,
but the family had been collecting for a century or so before that,
so it was the logical place to put the papers. They're fully
digitized and completely available on the web, so we never have to show
them to patrons anymore because they're pretty fragile. If any user has a legitimate need for the originals, we'll certainly bring
them out. But you'll get a better view of them online because
online you can enlarge them and observe them greatly
magnified.
What are the library's most popular collections?
In a historical library as ours is, there's always the genealogist
contingent. But many of those people using genealogy materials
are not genealogists; they're novelists and historians writing
historical fiction or fact. True genealogists are maybe 10% of our
users. The strongest collections we have are East Asia, the
Maritime collection, American decorative arts, and the historical
collection, which is local history plus New England. These are
the most used collections.
"Everyone in one way or another is involved in books and manuscripts and archival materials. All people in the library need to know about books."
How did you move from English to LIS?
It was a logical thing. As an English professor for many years, I
taught the history of the book, design in printing,
printing on a hand press, paper making, book
collecting, book appraisal, and other book-related
classes and workshops. For history of the book, part
of the course had to do with how libraries were
founded, how they're run, what's their function, and
of course, censorship and legal issues. And after
being a professor for 18 years, and 24 years of
teaching, I was in a situation in which I was going to
too many committee meetings. I was grading papers
left and right, day and night. I had a colleague or two
who were not perfectly congenial to work with. I
figured I had done my time in English. I had been a
devotee of libraries since I was a wee tyke. I was
living in Champaign, Ill., and I figured I might as
well get a library degree, not thinking I would shift professions.
And then a job came up that was pretty awesome, at the
American Antiquarian Society.
You like old things, is that fair to say?
I like new things, too.
You're not a Luddite?
No! I love my computer.
You love the physicality of books. Do you worry that people don't
read enough anymore, and that maybe books are going to
disappear?
Do you know that last year in this country alone, more than
200,000 new titles were published? I'm not talking about
electronic. No, I'm not worried about the future of books. More
books are being published now than ever before in history. More
than 2 ½ million books are still in print in the U.S. alone, and
the number of publishers keeps going up. I think we're close to
100,000 publishers in the U.S. now. The big publishers that
used to publish in 22 different areas are now publishing in only
six. All these little publishers are picking up the niche
publishing areas. I mean, I can be a publisher. I can sign up
with the Library of Congress and publish books and get my own
ISBNs.
Aren't you a publisher?
Yeah, I am. I print my own books, but I haven't done one in
several years. I've been too busy. I'm in the middle of printing a
book of poems.
How long does it take to print a book of poetry, start to finish?
If I did nothing but that, I could do it in six months.
How long have you printed books?
I started in 1965. I was in graduate school. My very first
semester, one of my professors came into the class and he
brought in a poem that he had printed in a beautiful little
pamphlet. He said there's a print shop on campus, and one of
the world's great printers, Kim Merker, teaches courses on
printing here. As soon as that class was over, I went down to the
basement and I introduced myself to him. I worked for him for
six years. I wrote a book about him later on. He is one of the
great book designers of the 20th century.
What's the appeal of hand printing?
The final product is beautiful, it's important. I try not to do
things that are not important. It's therapeutic. You're setting
type, inking up the type, putting paper into the press. You can't
mess up. You can't get the letters upside down; you can't put the
paper into the press wrong; you have to ink the type properly by
hand for each pull of the press. It takes tremendous
concentration to do it. And when you're concentrating that hard,
your back pain disappears, your bills go away, the fact that you're
hungry — you don't even think about that. And when the press
is congenial to you and going along smoothly, and you're
listening to Gilbert & Sullivan on your record player, which I do,
or Bach or Beethoven, it's heaven.
Why is it important?
It is important for me because I print only what I think are
important texts. The Donald Justice book [Banjo Dog] has four
poems about the Great Depression, and they're wonderful
poems. The Thom Gunn book [Lament] that I did has the first
poem ever published about the death of someone from AIDS. So
I like to think I'm contributing an important text to the world in
a handmade, quality book.
You teach History of the Book. Why is it important for
librarians?
What does the word library mean? Liber, book. I don't care where
you work, even if you do nothing but technical stuff on the
computer, what are you doing but creating access. The result is
that you're linking patrons up with information they need. So
everyone in one way or another is involved in books and
manuscripts and archival materials. All people in the library
need to know about books. My History of the Book course tells
them a few things. There are a lot of courses I would like to
teach here: bibliography, the history of paper in the scholarly
world, medieval codicology. Maybe when I retire about 60 years
from now, I can teach them.