![Sisyphus, Titian [Vecellio di Gregorio Tiziano], 1548-1549, Museo del Prado](/sites/web.library.emory.edu/files/large_sisyphus_0.jpg)
Sisyphus, Titian [Vecellio di Gregorio Tiziano], 1548-1549, Museo del Prado
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Sisyphus: The Patron Saint of the Stacks Team
King Sisyphus of Ephyra was punished by the gods for his hubris. His sentence was to push a huge boulder up a hill and when he almost achieves the top, the boulder rolls to the bottom whereupon he is forced to begin again. This myth illustrates the idea that there is no greater punishment than to do physically intense repetitious work that has no value. So, why would the Stacks team name Sisyphus as our patron saint? Simply put, it’s because his plight has so much to teach us about how to survive and flourish.
So how is the punishment of Sisyphus like stacks work? Basically, replace, “boulder” with “book”. The work is physically hard. Not because the books are heavy or the carts are difficult to push, but because half the shelves we are using are below your waist height forcing you to squat down to see the call numbers 4 inches from the floor, whereupon, you stand up, take a few more steps bend down, stand up, reach up, squat down etc…. for hours at a time. The next way the punishment is similar is that the work never stops. As soon as you finish shelving on a floor, more books are delivered, when you finish shelf-reading a floor, there is always another, and when one floor really starts looking straight and tidy, users come along and the shelves are messy again. Moreover, each day books are being added to the collection and books are being moved out to storage, changing the shelf densities and compelling us to shift the collection. There is never a time when the work is finished. But the most devastating similarity to the punishment of Sisyphus is that all the work we do is destroyed. The more successful we are, that is, the more the collection is used the faster our work is undone.
So, how do we cope? Well, in my observations, this is how I see it. As we attempt to fulfill our basic needs, we need to feel the protection that comes with being a valued member of the community. As an individual and a team we project what value, by showing that we are the powerful enough to be successful in our endeavors. As the stacks team, our mission to defines how we know we are successful. The mission of the stacks team reads: we serve the Emory community by providing an accessible and well maintained print collection. The operative words in this mission are “team”, “accessible”, and “serve”.
Sisyphus worked in isolation where his spirit is continually crushed. In stacks we work as a team. The foundation of being a member of a team is acceptance. First, I need to accept the responsibility to do the work. Even more so, I need to accept that when I no longer want to do the work it is ok to stop. Each day it’s important to be able to say “yes, this is something I am interested in doing.” Second, is that I need to need to be able to extend and receive the trust, respect and shared success that is needed to maintain the relationships that make up the team. It’s so important not just to succeed with the other members of the team, but to own and invest in the success of each of other members of the team, knowing that they are responsible for their work but when a bad day comes that you are there to help.
In stacks, when we think about a making the material accessible we think about it on three dimensions. First, we want the material to be in its proper collection and then in proper sequence. If the material is on the shelf where the catalog says, it allows the users to find the items and do so quickly. Searching for materials in the stacks always take more time than you think. The second dimension is that we want the materials to move through our work processes quickly. The more time an item is sitting in a book-drop, in a sorting area or on a cart, the less accessible the item is to our users. The third dimension around which we organize is the preservation of the material. A well-made book will last for hundreds and hundreds of years. If we take care of the collection, the books we own will be available far into the future. There are two ways that we address the preservation. We keep the books spine out, straight and gently standing next to each other and on the front edge of the shelves and by managing the shelf density. Managing shelf density includes both shifting and transferring material to storage. When the density of the tower increases, the more shelves and ranges of books become filled end to end. When this happens, inevitably, a lot more shelves get overfilled, compressing and crushing large numbers of books and many of which are irreplaceable.
Finally, I would like to address service in the light of our Sisyphean task. Service is the idea that allows us to transform the work from a soul crushing punishment to a valuable and uplifting endeavor. The work is physically difficult, repetitious, never ending, and all the work you do is quickly destroyed. The work has the added challenge that only the highest quality is acceptable. Each item has only one place in the call number sequence. If someone needs the information from a particular book, only that book will do. So, how can we perform this alchemy? I do this by taking the time to embrace the success of those who are using the materials. Not so much the success in finding a book, but the success in the incredible things that can come from reading it.
