Working at the Parliamentary Library was very special, due to both the physical building we moved around in and the people we worked for and with. The Reference Room team was the best – lively & social. All in all it was a great place to be practicing librarianship in the 1980s.
Spending one afternoon a week in isolation, sequestered in the small Clippings Room (to the left of the main entrance), was not my favourite duty.
Nor was serving time in the Media Room (on the right, off the long hall-way down to the tea-area), always holding my breath first thing in the morning hoping I had timed the 24 hr clock correctly and that all the recordings had been made in their entirety without the video or cassette tapes running out.
Manipulating the huge, wooden spined newspaper folders onto the impossibly small photocopying machine was frustrating and seldom successful.
Morning tea from ‘Art Craft’, a bakery across the road, was eaten in a leaky, glass-roofed corridor on old sofas with compromised suspension.
Some of the simpler things I appreciate now after having lived in London for 10 years – free parking in the angle car parks right outside the front entrance to the library and the sash windows we could open for immediate fresh air.
Wendy (1986-87)
