6
Friday, October 26, 1973
University Daily Kansan
Kansas Staff Photo by MATT TOTTIEN
Staff Has Vital Role at KU
Staff Has Vital Reference Librarian Is Authoritative Source
Marilyn Clark Aids Student Researcher
By BILL JONES Kansan Staff Reporter
Gangster movies, Acoustic tingling. A character in Islamic literature. Costuming in medieval drama. Mrs. Marilyn Clark is constantly confronted with questions about
Students who need help are sometimes laid up in front of her desk, she says, but they have to be ready.
Clark, the director of the reference department at Watson Library, and her staff of seven have about 10,000 books at their fingertips to help faculty members and students find information on any imaginable subject.
"I like reference work very much," says Clark. "I interested in a lot of things, and I think it makes me feel well."
"I like students probably better than faculty. Faculty members are sometimes uplight about asking a question. Students are a little more relaxed—more open."
Clark and her staff specialize in specific areas, particularly social sciences and humanities, so that almost any question can be answered.
STUDENTS ARE also usually very polite, she says, and are thankful for help.
"Sometimes a student feels frustrated."
"Clark says, and feels like he's getting the job wrong."
Campus Cop Enjoys Work
Ticket Writing a Way to Meet People
By PAULA CHRISTENSEN
Kansas Stuff Reporting
At 7:30 each morning Bill Morrill of Security and Parking gets into a little three-wheeled Cushman and goes to work.
Morrill writes parking tickets and checks
on student gatekeepers and ticket writers during his daily rounds.
Bill Morrill
Each morning he bounces down Jayhawk Boulevard from Hoo Auditorium, headquarters of Security and Parking, in
orders and checks on the first student
gatekeeper.
On the morning that I accompanied him, Morrill decided to take a coffee break just as the sun was beginning to rise. The darkness had made us tired, and we stopped at the Murphy snack bar. Morrill knows the women who work in the bar. He says jokingly that the coffee break is the part of the job he does best.
WHEN WE came out the sun was fully risen, but the campus was still quiet. It was only eight o'clock. Classes had not started—we were just trying to get ready. Merrill checked the parking lots anyway.
Morrill usually covers south campus parking areas by foot, but luckily that day he had the Cushman. He traveled down to the lots next to Allen Field House and checked windshifters where were doing their job. He is supposed to cover the areas where students are late or absent. Sometimes he ends up covering half of the campus.
Morrill is friendly to the student employees. He stops and visits with them whenever he sees them. He likes his job because he gets chances to talk to the employees and pass-by, "which many maps imply into very interesting conversations."
HE ENCOUNTERED one student ticket writer who writes tickets because "cars take up space where trees and buildings could be and cars cause pollution."
During the ride up Naisimh Drive to Jayhawk Boulevard, Morrill found a car
parked in the road. Two persons were kissing inside. Murrell bricked the horn of the Cushman, but the car was not moved. He got out and asked them to move on.
Clark, 35 years old, is friendly and energetic. She began working at Watson Library eight years ago and worked in the department for about a year and a half.
different places for the information he needs. But usually we notice this and follow him through until he gets what he is looking for."
Morrill says 'the first things you develop on this job are skincism and ulcers.'
AT ONE point during my tour Morrill was writing a ticket when the car's owner came up and tried to drive away. Morrill tapped on the window of the violator's car to give him the ticket, but he would not take it. He sat on the windshield wiper and walked away.
He explains that "people ask to leave their car just for a minute in order to do an errand and end up taking an hour or two." He rarely excuses errands anymore. Each day he shoops several people away from parking during errands.
"It was a little too teddy for me," she says, "but it's good for librarians to do a while, because it gives them a clue as to how the cataloging in that library is done.
"People should realize that it is not the policeman's job to tell you whether you can be arrested."
Morrill also has other jobs. At football games he keeps watch in the stands for fights. Morrill and others in his department are employed by the Kansas and Lawrence governments and are authorized to make arrests.
"It's an occupational disease for librarians," she says.
During the last football game here someone threw a whisker in his back.
"I like working in the reference department and having contact with students."
Morrill says he came to Lawrence because he wanted to work on a college campus, so his children could go to college. He had no familiarity with Kansas State University but had visited the University of Kansas once-40 years ago. When he moved here he hardly recognized the campus, he said.
No Problem Trivial to Policeman
Kansan Staff Reporter
By DENIS ARMSTRONG
Sgt. Wilt Durrant, an officer with Security and Parking, says a big part of his job is being concerned and sympathetic even when a person's problem is trivial.
"If it wasn't a big problem to them they wouldn't come to you in the first place. You can't shrug the problem off; you have to be concerned and sympathetic." Durrant says.
SHE ALSO plays the lute, a medieval stringed instrument, studies French medieval history and Russian, travels and interminds with an art historian, Mark, associate professor of music history.
Durrant patrols the campus five days a week from 4 p.m. to midnight. He sits in his car amid a variety of police radio equipment, waiting for the call that may send him to the scene of a robbery or vandalism on campus.
"Police work is not the type of work where you can open a book and get answers. This is a type of work where you take your knowledge of the law and apply it to different circumstances. There are so many variables." Durrant says.
"I was taking industrial management courses, but I just couldn't take being in a limited number of feet, five days a week, eight hours a day." Durrant says.
DURRANT, A 1953 graduate of the University of Kansas, worked for 13 years as a construction worker before joining the Security and Parking force in 1967. A Bachelor's degree from various variety his job provides are the primary reasons Durrant enjoys his work.
One of the most difficult aspects of police work, according to Durrant, is that no two police cases on campus require the same type of action.
Major theft and vandalism account for the majority of calls to Security and Police.
Durrant says that Naismith and Oliver halls have a yelling contest every week and that an occasional call will be received by the hosts of the bees that may be carrying on a small feud.
The number of calls greatly increases on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday nights, Durrant says. These nights seem to bring increased activity from students.
When the campus is quiet, Durrant patrols the streets to make sure that buildings are secure and to check obscure University property. He sometimes will stop by the store for a cup of coffee and the day's receipts from the business office in Carruth-O'Leary Hall to a local bank.
*WEDNESDAY AND FRIDAY*
even to the international out-and-drink
party.
In addition to taking care of routine calls, Durrant works during all the football games, which he says present a special problem for police.
"WE HEAR THE BLAST and ran out to our cars without even knowing where the bomb had exploded. When we got there everything around was like a nightmare. It was afterwards before we realized what had happened," he says.
"It's a potentially dangerous situation when you only have 150 police to control a crime."
- Michael Kovacs, New York City Police Department
Despite the reluctance of people to get involved, Durrant sees a change for the better in the area of student and police relations on campus.
Durrant says the experience he most remembers since joining the campus police force was the explosion of a bomb in Summerfield Hall in 1970.
Clark is concerned with the usefulness of the library and is promoting several ideas for future use.
The most frustrating aspect of his job, Durrant says, is the reluctance of people to get involved when their assistance is needed.
"The student attitude in the past year is completely different from two or three years ago. The student has seemed to change. We're both changing. There's a better relationship all the way around." Durrant says.
One of the ideas under study, she says, is the possibility of using video tape machines or cablevision monitors to acquaint people with the information staff to answer more complex questions.
Sgt. Durrant Patrols Near Broadcast Hall
One of Clark's own ideas is to have an inward WATS line for the library so that people in other parts of the state could call the library, rather than having them find unavailable in their local libraries.
"They could call the reference desk and ask for a call form," she says, "or ask for a call from a company."
USING A WATS line, a person could receive a book in four or five days. It now takes almost twice that long because a written request must be mailed.
Clark, like many librarians at Watson, is concerned about rising costs of books and other materials because costs limit the improvements and innovations that can be
"You feel strapped at every turn," she laughed at me, and then asked what we'd do but, to our feel, we had to move.
Clark has worked in the reference department for three years and has directed the department for about a year. She plans to stay at least several more years after she leaves.
"A person who has been the head of a department for five to eight years has probably done all of the innovations he's made," he said. "It's time to move on to something else."
Murphy Hall Pleasurable For Janitor
Murphy Hall is special to Alice Knight, one of the jailers in Murphy. Knight has worked in 10 buildings on the KU campus, but she says that Murphy is quite different.
Her work is the same as a male janitor and she gets no special treatment because she is a woman. "Equality" is the word, she says.
The University provides good equipment to help her, she says. Although it breaks down sometimes, she has found that the equipment is always fixed in a relatively small space.
SHE RECEIVED many compliments on her work- from personal remarks to letters of recommendation. People are what she likes best about her job, says Knight. The personal relationships in Murphy make it a great place to work.
The only job she really dislikes is waxing the floor when school isn't in session. The wax has to be stripped, the floor scrubbed and put on it. It is her harbored job, saws Knight.
She says she finds it easy to leave her work behind when she goes home, unless something goes wrong at work. She says she worries about whether people lose things from their offices while she is on duty. She isn't responsible for lost or stolen items but she says she feels the loss because of her relationship with the people involved.
Knight feels she is "part of one big family." She says the faculty, secretaries, students and other janitors get along uncommonly well.
THE STUDENTS are very nice, she says, and not too messy. Occasionally new students are sloppy, she says, but an older student always straightens them out.
Knight began working at KU a year and a half ago on her doctor's orders. He suggested that she take the hardest job that she had, as she'd a depressed feeling that had planned her.
Her day begins at 4:30 a.m. She must be at work at 6:00 a.m. and she works a 40-hour week. She gets overtime only when a special job comes along, like cleaning Allen Field House after the Sonny and Cher Concert.
Holidays and regular vacation time are the only breaks in her routine.
Kansan Staff Photo by DAVE REGIER
Carol Spears Prepares Roast Beef Sandwich
Delicatessen Worker Finds Time for Music
At the delicatessen in the basement of the Kansas Union a hungry student can gorge himself on the usual roast beef sandwiches, dill pickles, and colas.
Carol Spears, 996 Rhode Island St., works behind the line in the delicatessen. She is a dark-haired, pretty girl who likes her job. There are 13 lineworkers, and she is one of two who aren't students at the University of Kansas.
She says she doesn't have any particular job in the delicatessen. "Everyone is trained to do all the jobs, including me," she says.
The main reason Carol is employed in the delicatessen is that her father is Billy Spears, Union Foods Director. She works whenever needed, usually between 25 and 30
She has worked in the Union Food Services for seven years, since she was 13.
THE DELICATESEN has 350 to 400 customers a day. She says that besides students and professors, the delicatessen recently has been getting customers who are visiting the campus and older town-snecole who want to go out to eat.
"I started by working on drinks in the cafeteria night-line," she says, "and finally ended up doing whatever was necessary." "You're a little older now, young, and it's like a second home to me."
Carol says she enjoys the people she sees every day. She says about 97 per cent of the customers are polite but there are a few who take workers for granted.
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Carol says she thinks that by working in the technical environment, she is getting an idea of the whole process.
"I've met a lot of friends in the Union, and we are always something going on," she says.
Carol's main interest when she isn't working is music. She sings and plays the guitar and the fiddle. She says her interest in music comes naturally, because everyone in her family is musical. She is a singer who loves to play the drums, which performs in the Lawrence area.
SHE SAYS she particularly likes country, folk and bluegrass music.
"I spent all of last summer going to festivals in the East and in the Deep South. That's why I'm working now, so I can go again next summer," she says.
Carol graduated from Lawrence High School where she says she has considered going to college.
"If I go to college, it will be here. KU is a good school." she says.
Carol says that in the future she would like to join a jazzed-up bluegrass band and that she usually practices when she doesn't work.
"If my music doesn't go over, I'll probably be a midwife," Carol says. "I can get my R.N. in two years at a nursing school in Kansas City, and then I will have to have a child." And the midwife's straining Hopefully, by that time modulation will be legal in most states."
Kansas Staff Photo by DAVE REGIER
Alice Knight Works on Doctor's Orders