A story of meaning

Here's one of my favourite stories from my research on reference service that I think illustrates the difference between value and meaning, and the difference between an individual borrowing a book or two individuals learning more together about how to deal with a common and uncommon everyday experience:

Librarian: Yeah, oh yeah. It is so funny, how you’re like the confessor, you know you are the priest, or the bartender, like a guy today starts spilling his guts. It was a good one, I wish you’d been there. He was having a spiritual crisis. He’s very well dressed, economically very well off, middle aged. It’s so funny what people will tell you, you know they almost have to tell you because they’re like … A lot of times they’re researching something that’s very private and he wanted this book, “What should I do with the rest of my life?” by a self-help author that’s really popular. And he just started talking to me – he said, “My sister died 2 years ago and my brother died the year before that” – and he’s like “You know, I’m starting to have some questions, you know I’m a chef, I know what I’m doing with my work life but I just have some bigger questions.” And he wasn’t upset, though. He wasn’t upset – he was ready to start thinking about things. And I just said, “You know death’s like that, you have to start thinking about things, you know you can’t put things off.”

Interviewer: You said that?

Librarian: Yeah. It was a serious conversation.

Interviewer: Why would you say that? Why do you feel like you can and want to?

Librarian: Because he was reaching out, you know, he’s opening up and that sometimes is a little uncomfortable. It can be, but at the same time, in modern life people are very isolated sometimes. And it’s a public library and it’s some place they can be out in public. And I do think people do feel isolated and it’s a way for them …. And if they’re going to open up, you know, I don’t think you should go “oh --- get back, get back, too much” And sometimes yeah, but death, you know, death you’re not supposed to talk about in public. And I’ll talk about death, I’ll talk about that. And his point was, he says, to me, “You know my sister died, and my dad, he thought it was nothing. Get over it. Just get over it. … And I don’t think so. Death – something like that you shouldn’t just get over it.” And I thought, you know that’s a very wise thing to say, and so he wanted to get this book to help explore that.

This is a great story - however it's only a single story in one time, place and space. Somehow we have to find ways to transpose every story of meaning into a symbolic representation of the "meaning of library." Still a big problem, still lots of work to do.