Sunday, January 29, 2006

Rare book librarians: CSI Style

We watched an old episode of CSI last night that focused on a suspicious death in the rare book conservation lab of a Las Vegas historical society. (Painstakingly detailed plot synopsis here. Josh had to put up with many scoffs from me during the episode (note: Josh hates scoffs during CSI). Here are some jewels:

1. The dead woman was the conservator who accidentally killed herself when trying to poison her boss because he found out she was forging documents. Also she was sleeping with her boss. Also she was sleeping with the only other employee we see at the library, a high-functioning autistic man. Conservators = thieving sluts?

2. The curator of the library, the conservator's boss, is a total jerk. He is pretentious and full of scorn for anyone in his library.

3. The autistic librarian was a pretty good guy, although it would be difficult to picture him in a public service role at a library. He does have an indignant speech where he announces that he has a Masters in Library Science that is pretty endearing.

4. A lot of fun talk about PH levels and conservation techniques. Honestly I don't know enough about this to know if they were making it up or not. Me = not a chemistry person.

5. It is apparantly extremely easy to sneak books in and out of this library. Perhaps that is because only three people work there.

6. The phrase "all you have in this business is your reputation" was repeated about a million times.

The moral: Come join the world of rare-books librarianship -- its sure to be a blast!

1 comment:

Traci Drummond said...

The Las Vegas Historical Society has their own conservation lab? No one was laughing at that? Because that's the first thing I laughed at when I started reading your blog entry.