Title Information
Title
Interview with Bonnie Buzzell
Name: Personal
Name Part
Buzzell, Bonnie
Role
Role Term: Text
interviewee
Name: Personal
Name Part
Bouchard, Karen
Role
Role Term: Text
interviewer
Name: Personal
Name Part
Cournoyer, Carina
Role
Role Term: Text
interviewer
Type of Resource
moving image
Origin Information
Date Created (keyDate="yes", encoding="w3cdtf")
2014-02-14
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Abstract
Bonnie Buzzell begins by stating her current job and saying that she came to Brown first as a Pembroke student in 1968. Her first impression of the Rock was that it was cold and intimidating but after she began working as a student assistant and got to know the staff, she found it friendlier. She became a full time employee in 1973, working in serials at the Science Library. She later became a Searcher in Rock Acquisitions, doing all work on paper. Later an automated system was brought in and then OCLC. She talks about how as a student worker she would get book paging requests via the pneumatic tube system and send them down in the dumbwaiter, and also how they would find overdue books by "needling" cards. The next innovation was using carbon paper. She discusses how spaces have changed, including how much room the card catalog used to occupy and how there used to be music listening stations in the Rock and a caged area for sound recordings. She talks about having to wear skirts while on the Brown campus and to work in the Rock, and how there was no food or drink allowed in the library but there were smoking lounges. She goes on to say that all of her work back then was checked by supervisors but now there is no time for that kind of checking due to how fast everything happens. She talks about working on level C as a student and being scared by a loud noise that turned out to be a ticker tape machine printing out interlibrary loan requests and also how scary it was to work alone in the building during the Blizzard of '78. Bonnie ends with a story about a project she organized to measure all the books in the Rock and goes on to say how happy she is that students still find a home here.
Subject (Local)
Topic
Acquisitions
Subject (Local)
Topic
Automation
Subject (Local)
Topic
Blizzard of 1978
Subject (Local)
Topic
Circulation
Subject (Local)
Topic
Clothing and fashion
Subject (Local)
Topic
Computers
Subject (Local)
Topic
Dumbwaiters
Subject (Local)
Topic
Food
Subject (Local)
Topic
Interlibrary Loan
Subject (Local)
Topic
Library spaces
Subject (Local)
Topic
Music collections
Subject (Local)
Topic
OCLC
Subject (Local)
Topic
Pembroke
Subject (Local)
Topic
Pneumatic tubes
Subject (Local)
Topic
Smoking
Subject (Local)
Topic
Students
Subject (Local)
Topic
Student workers
Subject (Local)
Topic
Work conditions
Genre (aat) (authorityURI="http://vocab.getty.edy/aat/", valueURI="http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300202595")
oral histories (literary works)
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.