"A Work of the Devil"?
“A Work of the Devil”?
Seventh story, finis Africae! Radiant light
streaming from every direction. Bright bookshelves on every floor, open stacks,
a setting that invites a person to stay and read a while.
James Stirling’s design for the new
buildings of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Berlin Social
Science Research
Center, WZB) placed the
library in a tower. The famous British architect may well have been inspired by
that fictitious, mysterious, fortress tower—“the greatest library in Christendom”—at
the center of a remote medieval Apennine abbey in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose. Under the control
of the fanatical blind head librarian, Jorge, this “historical” library becomes
the agent of rigid censorship. All texts that could detract in any way from the
verbum Dei, the Word of God as
promulgated by the Church Fathers, have been hidden away in the building’s
secret passages and labyrinths. Among these volumes is Aristotle’s chief work,
believed to have been lost. Its liberating ideas about the laughter sparked by
the probing curiosity of humans must never become accessible, except at the
price of death.
Nomen
non est omen. The WZB library and its stacks are
always open, even at night and on weekends—a “work of the devil,” as Jorge
would say, but a dream for Umberto Eco, passionately steeped as he is in
library research.
The tower is the WZB’s tallest building at
the WZB, and its holdings are the tangible and architectural expression of the
library as an independent element serving scholarship at the WZB. Its pivotal
location, at the intersection of buildings B and D, which house the WZB’s
major research units, facilitates access to the members of the library staff
and the various services they provide.
The staff’s work is designed to allow for
optimal flexibility. Oriented to the WZB’s research units, the structures of
the library’s internal areas of responsibility emphasize personal
accountability and independence. The processing of the media—whether books,
journal articles, or electronic information—is not spread across several levels
and or dissected into separate steps. The tasks are grouped by sector instead
and attended to by one person in an integrative model of work organization, so
input and output functions are not divorced.
To the members of the library staff,
service also means going beyond their respective sectors of expertise to assist
all users of the WZB library. This variety of roles enhances the contribution
of all the WZB librarians and increases their inclination to innovate.
The high motivation and above-average
commitment routinely apparent in the staff’s activities definitely have much to
do with this environment. But they surely have to do with something else as
well—humor. Finding the comical (and occasionally the ridiculous) dimension of
daily life, cultivating the amusing side of things rather than overlooking it,
accommodating the library’s public, and bringing a certain light touch to what
are sometimes difficult and tense situations are all notable attributes of the
WZB library’s day-to-day work. Aristotle’s work, which sees “the tendency to
laughter as a force for good,” would reside here at the service level right
alongside the encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference books.
G. Paul