When did you quit librarianship to become a full-time writer?

Well I always like to say that one never actually stops being a librarian, you’re either practising or not practising. I’ve gone back and forth, but I stopped being full-time – my gosh, I guess it’s been almost eleven years. And after the Giant’s House I actually went back and did job-sharing at my old library and did the circulation desk. And I was a part-time audio-visual librarian for a while, which was a lot of fun.

What do you think is the difference between being a writer and being a librarian? Is it just a completely different world?

Well, I worked in a fairly phenomenal academic library at the University of Pennsylvania for a while, as an intern, but my heart was really in public libraries. Specifically my heart was really in circulation – I would cover the reference desk, but I just really loved being part of the circ desk. And the reason I loved that was because I got to see everybody. When you’re a writer, essentially the job description is you don’t get to see anybody. You sit in a room and don’t talk to anyone. What I miss about being a circulation person is just the dozens and dozens and dozens of happy transactions a day.

The protagonist of The Giant’s House, Peggy Cort, sounds like a bit of a stereotype at first, a single female librarian who is reserved, stand-offish. Why did you choose to portray this character?

You know, I sometimes get upset with myself for having done that, and I certainly once got a letter from a librarian who was furious with me for doing it. Although it was so persnickety, and she sent me a typed letter written as though it were a review of the book, and she didn’t do anything for the stereotype of librarians as being antisocial people. All I can say is that Peggy Cort was a twenty-six-year-old single librarian when the book starts. So was I. Unfortunately I do think that it was more what was in common with me than what I think would be in common with other librarians. I certainly know that most librarians were not that.

Peggy believes that knowledge is not power, knowledge is love. Do you believe that?

I do believe that. Although it’s frankly ripped off from the fact that the library that I did my apprentice work at – I started shelving books there when I was fifteen and stayed there for seven years, worked behind the circ desk when I was in college – they sent out automated dot-matrix reserve and overdue notices, and for a while they all said at the top, “Knowledge is power”. Like their little slogan. People were always coming into the library and saying, “I never took out a book called 'Knowledge is Power!'” over and over again. But I do believe it, I do believe it. And I do think that that is one of the things library work has in common with fiction writing – the immense love of knowledge, and knowing that as much as you know about a human being, or a subject, or a reference source, there is more to know. And the finding out of that knowledge is a great joy. I mean, I sort of think all of life is research, in a way.

Did you also think of library school as an alphabetized wilderness, like Peggy?

I hated library school! I love librarians and I love library work. I did have some fantastic courses and fantastic teachers, but the courses that were great in library school were all taught by people who had been practicing librarians for a long time. My frustration in library school was that many of my classmates and, frankly, some of my professors had never worked in libraries. Some of them had the joy of organization, which is important. But they didn’t have the joy of the work, because it was all theoretical to them. And it is such a tremendously practical line of work that I sometimes got impatient with the theory. I mean, I met very dear friends there, and as I said I took some courses that were absolutely fantastic. But I do remember sitting in some classes and despairing.

One of the things we hear a lot about in our program is how technology is revolutionizing the profession, and what we need to know and what we ought to do. Do you think this is really changing what librarians essentially do, or is it just a different way of doing it?

I would think it’s probably mostly just a different way of doing it. When I went to library science school – I went, when was it, 1991-92 – in fact, I did Internet documentation back when you really needed Internet documentation. That was for my internship. It was before the World Wide Web. My education was just at the start of the great change.

I was a public librarian, and I think that that has changed a lot less than archives work or academic reference or something like that. But it does, to me, seem to be the same thing, which is giving people access to books and DVDs and information. I hate that word "information", there should be a more romantic word for it. Something nicer than resources, something, you know…

Have you ever looked up your own books in the catalogue?

Do you know, it’s funny, I thought that was such a great question, because I haven’t. Sometimes if I’m in a public library I will plug my name into the online catalogue and see if [my books] are there. But I’ve never actually gone to the shelf, and it may be because I know what a total mess, in collections that put fiction alphabetically as opposed to being Library of Congress sorted, what a mess the Mc’s can be. I mean, I remember as a shelver my beat was shelving fiction A through SM, and it was a library that decided to shelve Mac’s and Mc’s as though they were spelled the same, at the very start of the M’s. Which I actually in retrospect think is a terrible idea. I think you should just do it strictly alphabetically, and put the Mac’s first, and then everything intervening, and then the Mc’s. But I think that must be why I’ve never gone to the shelves to look, because I think that it will only break my heart. I mean, it’s nice, I’m frequently snuggled up next to Carson McCullers, which is a very fine place to be if I’m there, but…

Do you feel bad for the shelvers, for giving them another Mc to shelve?

Well, you know, there are so many things that drive shelvers crazy, one of which is being driven to distraction by people with pseudonyms. Because sometimes – the writer John Creasey, a writer of mysteries, had so many different pseudonyms, and the library I was at decided to shelve all of his books together, but sometimes they would miss them. And I remember continually taking books to the technical services and saying, "You have to be consistent!"

Peggy is a librarian in the fifties, which you obviously never were. But there are some nice little touches, like for instance, she has Mark Twain filed under Samuel Clemens, which is generally no longer done.

I think that there’s also some Library of Congress subject heading in there. I can’t remember what it was. There was one that was changed, and I had the old one, and I was very pleased with that. I’m so pleased you picked it up.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.