IN a former life I was a librarian in a public library. As I recall, the duties included cataloguing, classification, manning the information desk and checking the toilet in case the bloke who entered it half an hour earlier had passed out or passed away.

The eclectic nature of the job is much in evidence in this fascinating collection of interviews with Scottish librarians, the majority of them public librarians from working-class backgrounds.

The National:

They were conducted from 1996 to 2002 under the auspices of the Scottish Working People’s History Trust which was committed to “recording the recollections of working people about their lives and their housing, educational, cultural and other experiences”.

It is not clear why it has taken so long to publish the interviews, but they are now informed by developments in librarianship since they were first conducted.

The implications that modern technology would have for libraries were just beginning to dawn on some of the subjects who share their fears for the future of their profession as well as their past experiences.

Libraries have a long and storied history in Scotland. From Innerpeffray Library and the “Publeck Liberarie” of Kirkwall, both founded in the late 17th century, to the Public Libraries (Scotland) Act of 1853, to the benefaction of Andrew Carnegie in Dunfermline and around the globe, Scotland is rightly proud of its support for universal access to books and reading.

One exception were the citizens of Edinburgh who, true to stereotype, initially rejected the Libraries Act as it would have raised their taxes.

Carnegie had to assuage their fears with £50,000 before laying the foundation stone for the library on George IV Bridge.

Many of the people interviewed here worked in library systems for up to half a century in an era when books and other printed materials were still the undisputed foci.

They lived through the professionalising of librarianship and changes of authority from library committees and council control to regionalisation.

Some of the eccentricity of the “old” ways is captured by Tom Gray, who was appointed Chief Librarian of Ross and Cromarty in 1961, succeeding an unqualified Army captain who had been in charge since the war.

The council in neighbouring Inverness-shire was dominated by Lairds intent on keeping the rates down. But his was generous, perhaps because the Library Committee was chaired by “Mrs Linklater, wife of Eric Linklater”.

Andrew Fraser’s job as an assistant librarian in Midlothian included dropping books off at schools in the Borders from the back of a flatbed lorry.

His unofficial duties included delivering “parcels o’ eggs or somethin’” from a “wifie” in Heriots to her friend in Stow. His description of the provision of information before Google is one for the ages: “The books at the lending section in Headquarters were issued by anybody who was knocking around... but if there was any query or somebody wantin’ help or advice we [the professional staff] were whistled through.”

The interviews blend amusing anecdote and social history. Joe Fisher spent most his career in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and records the job of the book hoist.

It transported slips with book requests to the upper floors on a rope and pulley and the books were lowered by the same method. Occasionally they would make their way down accompanied by the false teeth of the “old lad” who manned the first floor stack.

Fisher, however, also has interesting things to say about the Mitchell’s hiring practices. Hiring was largely internal and promotion was “dead man’s shoes”.

They wouldn’t “take” women librarians in the Mitchell, ostensibly because the work involved heavy lifting, and the women who worked in clerical positions had a separate staffroom “about the size of a scullery”. According to Fisher, the Mitchell also had a proscription on Catholics: “Roman Catholics were excluded. I should imagine that they would look at the name of your school and if you came from St Philomena’s or St Augustine’s you kicked wi’ the left foot... Do you know how many Catholics were in the Mitchell? Three.”

Fisher, like several interviewees, is concerned about the future of his profession. He sees library “managers” with MBAs but no qualifications in librarianship and he worries that librarians are not properly trained in modern methods of storing and disseminating information.

At the same time, he is seduced by a new technology which can provide 16 pages of information on a hotel in Paris before he arrives at it. “Librarians”, he concludes rather glumly, “act as a gateway so that the readers can make their way to information. What if the readers don’t need the gateway? What if the readers can ask a computer?”

It may not be of much comfort to librarians that the Trust that made these recordings focuses on professions that are rapidly changing or disappearing, or that the volume that preceded this one featured journalists.

However, these interviews show that librarianship has faced serious challenges in the past and has had to prove its worth in a variety of ways. In austere times, libraries are an easy target but even the most casual visit to one today demonstrates that concerns about librarians being under-trained in modern technology are being addressed.

Above all, the imminent demise of the book, widely predicted when these interviews were first recorded, has not yet come to pass.