Excerpt from "OFF THE RECORD"

Bookmobile Brouhaha

by Bruce Anderson

THE SUPERVISORS last week tabled an agenda item aimed at downgrading the Bookmobile position, a cost-saving move proposed by County Librarian Erika DeMille that has library staffers complaining that the downgrade is (1) somehow a first step towards dumping the Bookmobile altogether and (2) an attack on librarian credentials. "Bookmobile librarian" would become "library Bookmobile specialist" and, henceforth, the job would "require a high school diploma or GED, and two years of experience working with the public" rather than a college degree in library science.

CURRENT JOB REQUIREMENTS for driving the Bookmobile around the county and passing out books to the 50 Mendocino County residents who read them is a bachelor's degree "in a related field" and "two to three years" interfacing with the public. Cruising Mendoland in a medium-size Winnebago getting and giving books does not require "a bachelor's degree in a related field."

AND WHAT EXACTLY is "a related field"? Related to books or related to driving? There are several million living Americans with bachelor degrees who still haven't read a book. Our president for one, and uncredentialed persons seem to drive as well as credentialed citizens.

WHILE WE'RE TALKING METAPHYSICS, what exactly does a college degree qualify one to do? All it got me was Boonville and bankrupt. Forsooth (I learned forsooth in high school), I consider the four years I spent roaming the halls of higher learning almost a total waste of time. I had exactly two profs I learned something from in all that time, and one of them was locked away in the drunk tank at Atascadero more than he was in the classroom. Many of my classmates could not read or write, a startling fact I learned one day in a drama class when the teacher called for volunteers to read a little Chekhov out loud. Only two of us could. (So what does California's Superintendent of Instruction want to do? Force all California teenagers to pass a college prep-type test before they get a high school diploma! What we need is less college prep and more vocational ed. I, for instance, wanted to be a longshoreman. Then the work went container and there was no demand for longshoremen. I like outside work, but here I am completely out of my depth with a newspaper! If I couldn't use this thing as a weapon, I'd have been outta here a long time ago.)

I WORKED my way through college playing sports and doing odd jobs on the campus that the coaches arranged for their neediest jocko-s. I was motivated solely by a vague career goal of, well, a Bookmobile-like job; I wanted work without work; work without a boss; work that paid enough to live on but did not involve other college graduates, if you get my drift.

THINK OF IT! Your very own mobile library; no supervision; the most beautiful scenery in the world; quick dips in the Eel out by Dos Rios on hot summer days; coffee and rum with Covelo outlaws on winter afternoons; long chats with erudite old beatniks come down out of Mendocino County's endless hills for their one day of re-supply and human contact, and wrestling in the stacks with the fetching Susan Sparrow. Are you kidding me? THE BOOKMOBILE IS THE BEST JOB IN AMERICA! There are thousands of people who would pay Mendocino County to drive the Bookmobile!

OPPOSITION to de-mystifying the Bookmobile job has been whipped up by persons unhappy that a non-credentialed and male-type person presently occupies the position. Unhappiness focused on the male-type Bookmobile guy is also an oblique thrust at Erika DeMille, the capable County Librarian. The Library's internal personality clashes are intensified by the usual lib treachery at the higher levels of County government. Colfax, Joe Wildman and Shoemaker are in the mix, as usual shoving others up front to carry out liliputian vendettas they don't dare fight themselves. The libs, of course, wanted their person as County Librarian, but the job went to the auslander Ms. DeMille, at whose heels the vipers have nipped ever since. The Bookmobile hassle has zero to do with the Bookmobile.