Twelve Angry Librarians

I examined his job experience a second time. As Lisa Krause told me during our phone conversation before lunch, Fong’s career began on a high note with a position at an Ivy League university library. He stayed there for nearly five years, but I noticed when I read further down the list that those five years constituted his longest tenure of any position. He changed jobs about every three years. Again, as Lisa told me, the prestige of the institutions declined steadily from the first job, even as the level of responsibility of the position rose.

Red flags went up for me whenever I saw such frequent job changing, especially on such a consistent schedule. I counted, and Fong had worked at ten different libraries including his present one since leaving graduate school in Texas. The fact that several of the job changes resulted in higher-level positions didn’t seem to me sufficient motive—not when the schools were all small, relatively unknown ones.

I, on the other hand, spent twenty-five years in the city public library system in Houston. I worked at several different branches over the course of those twenty-five years, but I ended my career as a branch manager, a position I held for seventeen years.

In my reply to Forrest Wyatt, I cited this job-hopping as a major negative. I did say that I had gone to library school with Fong but that I’d had no contact with him since. I concluded by saying that I did not consider his application worth further consideration.

I sent the message and leaned back in my chair, eyes closed. My head ached, and I tried to relax. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d become over this one e-mail message.

My brain wouldn’t let go of the fact that Gavin Fong applied for the position I currently held. I wasn’t sure I really wanted it myself. I had doubts whether the search committee would consider me qualified for the position permanently, but I certainly didn’t want Gavin Fong to get the job. If Forrest and the rest of the committee decided to ignore my recommendation and Fong somehow ended up in the position, I would retire. I wouldn’t work for him. I would be able to travel back and forth to Virginia when I wanted.

I checked Fong’s references again to see if any of the names rang a bell. He listed four people, three women and one man. I didn’t recognize any of them.

With only a vague purpose in mind, I went through the list of Fong’s publications again, more slowly this time. Most of them were coauthored, I saw, and among his coauthors I spotted two names I knew. We had all gone to library school together. Marisue Pickard and Randi Grant.

As I recalled, Marisue Pickard was my own age, early fifties. Randi Grant was possibly a decade older. Unlike Marisue and me, she had come to library school for a second career. Randi, Marisue, and I shared many classes together, along with Gavin Fong. Among the students in the program with whom I shared classes, the only two I came to know more than superficially were Randi Grant and Marisue Pickard. We kept touch in desultory fashion over the years, and I ought to have e-mail addresses for them. They had both migrated east in recent years, Randi from Colorado and Marisue from Kansas, and had ended up working together in Florida. I checked the conference program again and saw that I remembered correctly. They were giving a presentation on Sunday morning, and the affiliation listed was the same institution.

I opened the browser on my computer and typed in the URL of my webmail account. Once I logged in, I checked the address book and found the two e-mail addresses I wanted.

Then I paused. What was I doing? What was the point of e-mailing Randi and Marisue to ask for dirt on Gavin Fong? They had coauthored articles with him, one apiece, and I suspected that meant each had worked with him at the time.

I included them both in one e-mail message.

Dear Randi and Marisue, I’m delighted to see that you are both attending the SALA meeting this week. I look forward to catching up with both of you and hearing about life in Florida. Will you have time in your schedule for dinner with me? If not, I understand, but I’d love to spend an evening with y’all. I see another of our classmates is attending—I was surprised to see that Gavin Fong, of all people, is giving one of the keynotes. I haven’t thought about him in years. Well, safe travels, and I’ll see you later this week.

I signed it and then hit Send. That was subtle enough, I thought. Mentioning Gavin Fong opened the door for one or both of them to respond with a comment about him. I wondered whether their opinions of him had changed since library school, enough so that they had felt comfortable coauthoring articles with him.