Ellen Bryant’s flashing smile has greeted patrons at the Glencoe Public Library for nearly 20 years.
“She’s very helpful with people, and she’s very quick to say, `That’s not a problem. That’s why we’re here,’ ” says Peggy Hamil, the library’s executive director. “Oftentimes people will say their question is a dumb one and they hate to ask it, but Ellen always smiles and reassures them there are no dumb questions.”
While sitting on a park bench behind the library, 320 Park Ave., one afternoon, Bryant settles back, wrapped in an air of calm assurance. As the library’s head of reference, Bryant has built a career on answering all kinds of questions.
“The most common questions I’m asked are, `What are your hours?’ or `Do you have a certain book?’ ” she says. “But the most unusual question came from a journalist in Hawaii last spring who was trying to trace the origin of the speed bump.”
Bryant laughs. She had heard that question before, when Norris McWhirter, then founding editor of the Guinness Book of World Records, wrote the library in 1994, asking for verification that the speed bump originated in Glencoe in 1907.
“Then out of the blue, Will Hoover from the Honolulu Advertiser calls this past March and asks the same question,” she says. “Apparently Hawaii has an overabundance of speed bumps, and Mr. Hoover wanted to know where these pesky bumps came from. We weren’t able to find the answer in 1994 for the Guinness Book of World Records, but I decided to give this question one more try.”
With the help of other library staff members and the Glencoe Historical Society, Bryant found that in the early 1900s raised brick walks were installed at every crossing on Sheridan Road to slow down people speeding by in automobiles. Evidently, this was the first time any sort of speed bump was used, she says.
“But when I told Mr. Hoover there were no speed bumps in Glencoe today, he generously offered to send us one from Hawaii,” she says with a smile.
Whether the questions are mundane or unusual, what she enjoys most about her job is getting to know the residents of Glencoe, Bryant says.
“I get to see all ages come through the door, and I get to be a part of their special interests and subjects they’re studying,” she says.
“We have one patron who is close to 100 years old. She broke her hip and had to go to a nursing home. But she still sends letters filled with questions she needs answered, like which city in the world has the highest population. Or she remembers parts of a poem but can’t remember the rest, and I get to figure out which poem she’s writing about. It’s so exciting that she thinks of the library. This hunger for knowledge is keeping her alive and interested in the world around her. What a role model.”
Libraries always have been a part of Bryant’s life, and she loved visiting them as a child. Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side in the Woodlawn neighborhood, she graduated from the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago in 1954. She received a bachelor’s degree in education and library science in 1962 from the U. of C. and a master’s of arts and library science degree in 1973 from Rosary College (now Dominican University) in River Forest.
Bryant married in 1959 and followed her husband, Robert, overseas to Germany in 1962 while he was in the military.
“The Berlin Wall had just been set in place and I had just had our first child,” she says. “I vividly remember having no diaper service, so I hung diapers on a little line by a gas heater. I look back now and wonder how I did that.”
When the Bryants returned to the U.S. in 1963, they lived on Chicago’s South Side. He became a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she stayed home. They had their second child in 1965 and moved to Glencoe in 1968. While she was getting her master’s degree, she worked at South School in Glencoe as the assistant librarian.
After the birth of their third child in 1973, Bryant volunteered at the Glencoe library, then began working there part time in 1978. It wasn’t long before she was working full time, cataloging books for young adults.
“Cataloging is the most expensive part of the library system,” she says. “You have to become familiar with the contents of a book so you can properly catalog it, such as getting cards prepared, getting the book into the on-line system. A lot of intensive work goes into getting a book ready for a patron to read it.”
Twenty years ago, Glencoe was one of the first libraries in the area to join a consortium that now includes 23 other libraries, Bryant says.
“And even though we had an automated system then, where we could share books from other libraries, nothing has been as drastic a change as the emergence of the computer and the Internet,” she says. “The card catalogs are gone, something I never would have thought would happen. And once patrons get to know what the computer system can do for them, such as searching for a title they only remember part of, or part of the author’s name, they appreciate it. But it’s been quite an adjustment.”
Hamil says, “Making the transition from print sources to the Internet has been a huge one for most librarians. Now a librarian has to think about what format provides the best access to information.
“This is the challenge going on in reference right now. While most people think they’re having trouble using computers, we have to learn how to access new information, yet make sure it’s reliable at the same time. Ellen has made this transition very well.”
Although Bryant has tackled the computer age, her co-workers say she has never forgotten the art of giving one-on-one attention.
“She’s inordinately cheerful and upbeat,” says Paula Orellana, a part-time reference librarian. “I’ve worked with her for 15 years, and I’m always impressed that when anyone’s sick on the staff she’s calling or asking how she can help.”
When Orellana was sick once, Bryant stopped by her home and ran several errands, Orellana says.
“And because she lives in Glencoe and is active in her church, she knows just about everyone who comes through the library door,” Orellana adds. Then she laughs.
“But she’s not the stereotypical librarian, with her hair done up in a bun. She’s very proud of her five-on-the-floor sports car–and she has a very heavy foot.”
Bryant says she looks forward to each day at the library. “I get to meet a whole range of people, learn something new, and I can be a detective when the questions are tough. I think, `Where in the world am I going to get this information?’ Eventually, I find something. It’s quite exciting.”
