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Oh! The Places Librarians Go!
A recent ad in Elsevier’s “Never underestimate the
importance of a librarian.” campaign features
deep-sea divers
The opening line of one of our current ads reads, “Okay, chances are you won’t find a librarian on the ocean’s floor.” But, we’ve learned recently to expect the unexpected, and chances are good that you may find librarians Nyle Monday and Peter Brueggeman there. They shared with us some of their experiences from the top of the library stacks to the bottom of the sea.
Nyle Monday is the Reference Librarian for the City of Santa Clara Public Library. And, he is an experienced diver. A founding benefactor and five-year board member of the U.S. Historical Diving Society, he has more than 40 years of diving experience - in modern-day scuba gear as well as the traditional surface-supplied helmet and suit.
Nyle describes his life’s work as the preservation of history. Beginning his career as an anthropologist, he has worked in a variety of museums including Hawaii’s Bishop Museum, renowned for its rare books and manuscripts collection. There, he found his responsibilities evenly divided between the archeology department and the research library, which ultimately led to his current career in librarianship.
As a member of the Historical Diving Society, Nyle has found a way to combine his passion for diving and for the preservation of archival materials. He’s regularly called upon to write articles and book reviews for the society’s journal, Historical Diver. His most recent project is an outreach program to donate the journal’s back issues to marine-related research facilities, such as Moss Landing Marine Lab, Stanford’s Pacific Grove Lab and, most recently, the U.S. Navy’s experimental diving school.
Nyle Monday, Reference
Librarian, City of Santa
Clara Public Library, in a
traditional, surface-supplied
diving helmet and suit
Nyle believes in the importance of educating people through the preservation of history. He explains, “Every aspect of life has history to it. To understand the present, you need to look to the past and this is particularly true for diving. It’s not just a sport; it’s also an occupation. A lot of good work has happened that is worthy of being recorded and recognized for its significant contribution to the science of today.”
Peter Brueggeman, Library Director at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), shares Nyle’s love of the ocean. Peter graduated with a degree in microbiology, but his love of working with people rather than in a lab led him to a career in librarianship. Attracted by the stature of UCSD’s collections and his personal interest in the ocean and its ecology, Peter began work there in 1984 as the public services/reference librarian for the Scripps Library. Peter credits his participation in several underwater research expeditions to his work at Scripps which has put him “in the right place at the right time” to make interesting connections with the diving world. One such expedition was a National Science Foundation sponsored project to photograph marine life under the Antarctic ice. At Scripps, Peter had met the expedition’s lead photographer, and the Scripps Library, rich in Antarctic scientific literature, provided a rich learning environment for this exciting endeavor.
Peter Brueggeman, Library
Director, Scripps Institution
of Oceanography, UCSD,
under the ice in McMurdo
Sound, Antarctica Photo
courtesy of M. Dale Stokes
In addition to a PBS Natureshow, a University of California Press book, a traveling photo exhibition and a National Geographic article, the expedition also resulted in a project close to Peter’s heart: the Underwater Field Guide to Ross Island and McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. Building on an existing German language guide containing black and white line drawings, Peter developed an online field guide that, for the first time, provides scientists with full-color pictures and the latest scientific nomenclature, as well as clarification of alternate names by which organisms may previously have been known.
“Scientists regularly use outdated names of organisms for years following a change,” Peter explains, “because they are, understandably, not aware that a name change was published in the voluminous literature. This creates considerable confusion for the later scientist. I ferreted out many changes and documented them in the field guide. In doing so, I provided an authoritative set of names for usage in the years ahead.” Peter continues to update and maintain the guide which is freely available at
http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/nsf/fguide/index.html. This resource is widely consulted by researchers and divers worldwide.
Although Peter wouldn’t describe himself as adventuresome by nature, his diving has taken him to some exciting underwater worlds from under the Antarctic ice to deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea. Still, he thinks of himself as just a regular person and assures us that there are indeed several other librarians participating in underwater research.
Library Connect wishes Nyle and Peter many successful dives in the future, and thanks them for sharing their underwater experiences with us. 
