Mike Volschenk's Library Story

I have taken up many temporary jobs for financial survival. I worked as a steward for the railways and served food and drinks to travellers. I had to do compulsory national service and I got involved with the Weather Bureau and did a basic three-month course in Meteorology to supply weather information to pilots in the Airforce. I worked as a bus driver for the Municipality of Pretoria on a full-time basis and on a part-time basis when I became a full-time student.

At the end of 1982, I was busy with a BA degree that would grant me admission to study theology. I was in conflict about the values of non-inclusiveness of the church that I attended and had been part of since childhood. I was in emotional turmoil as to what I wanted to do with my life. Given the spiritual conflict I had, I decided to make a few changes in my choice of subjects for my BA degree and rather pursue a career in teaching. My parents could not afford to support me, so I had to support myself financially.

Word on campus was that you could work in the library and also attend class on campus, on a flexible basis. I started working in the library on 1 February 1983, with the intention of finishing my BA degree and then completing a teaching qualification. I started in the journal section and my task was to receive paper-based journals and manually check them in on a card-based filing system. Electronic journals were not part of the library collection. Computerised library systems were in their baby shoes. The card catalogue was the main source for locating books. The library had just started to catalogue books on a computerised system called Dobis/Libis.

I moved from the journal section to cataloguing and had to print barcodes for new books that were added to the new electronic catalogue. During this time a new course was introduced, a 2-year postgraduate course for library science. The Deputy Director at the time asked me if I would be interested in doing this course and eventually convinced me to do the library degree (B.Bibl). I then completed my BA degree and completed the library degree on a part-time basis. I moved to the counter while completing my studies as I enjoyed the interaction with clients and got involved with the training of staff and students on the new computerised catalogue and lending system. Initially, we worked on a terminal and not on a PC.

In 1994 I moved to the Medical Library. The Medical library had a total of 3 computers. We did literature searches with a dial-up modem that connected via a telephone line and it was very expensive and intricate. A lot of the searches were done on paper-based indexes. The area that housed the paper-based indexes was later transformed into a computer lab. More than a ton of paper-based indexes were recycled. The indexes became more user friendly and easier to access and use with the introduction of personal computers (PC). Each information specialist (then called a librarian) now had their own PC.

During the past 39 years, I have stayed in my “temporary” job and have seen changes in the way we handle, process and access information. During my 39 years in the library, I have worked with people that became more than colleagues through the years. I would like to thank each person that worked with me in various sections. Each person touched my life in their own special way and contributed to the totality of my being. I am grateful that I could be a part of the Merensky 2 Library at the University of Pretoria.