1997 - Document Center - Claudia Bach

Claudia Bach
Document Center

Interviewed by Doreen Cohen, February 28, 1997

This is Doreen Cohen interviewing Claudia Bach. It’s Friday, February 28, 1997, and we’re at the Document Center in Belmont.

What would you say to the person who is entering a program in library and information science today? I know your background is in music, but you’ve been working with this profession.

For a person who’s entering the library sciences, I think that I would say that there’s probably no more exciting time or difficult time to be in the profession. And that I…in my opinion, some of the most interesting challenges facing us as we learn to live with what I call computer aided communications, are questions that have to do with skills that are normally assigned to librarians. That is, how do we store information, how do we retrieve information, and how do we know that the information that we’re going to be retrieving is actually the information that’s pertinent to our query at the moment. For me, those questions are some of the most challenging questions of the new era. And ones that I think librarians are right in the middle of. So, it’s a very exciting time to be in this occupation, even though it’s a very miserable time because the way you’re used to doing things is being superceded by an entirely different methodology.

Do you think that the library schools can address that? Can they offer the students what they need to come into this changing environment?

It’s very hard for me to discuss with authority about library school, but certainly what I see when I go out into the world at large—I do a lot of work with the ANSI Committee that’s putting together a standards network—and in my own business, the considerations I’ve had as I’ve tried to move my business forward with regards to technology—the community at large is really focussing on these issues. But whether or not they understand that these are traditional library issues is another question. But the community at large, the information technology community is grappling with these issues, and they seem not to be aware of the fact that these are traditionally the domain of librarians. And, in fact, some of the most interesting thinkers on these topics come out of the library community.

The challenge for the student, then, is to find a way to get into that…

Right…to bridge that gap…

Anything different to the June graduates that you might add?

I think that, frankly, the other thing that heartens me, I guess, is that…you know, I read so many technology magazines, I go to CommerceNet, etc., etc., …and you’re constantly bombarded with the latest and greatest technologies, the Java this…constantly the technology is just racing forward at breakneck speed, that you become terrified that it’s going to scoot away from you. And it’s going to go someplace, and you’re not going to be there. But the fact of the matter is, ordinary, everyday life moves at a much slower clip. And so, therefore, I think that on the one hand we have this tremendous challenge of technology. And yet, on the other hand, we have the mundane day-to-day that moves along and doesn’t appear to be really impacted that much. It just doesn’t seem to change that much. Certainly, for a business person, the challenge is to kind of straddle two worlds. One foot in the fast-moving technology, to try to understand what little bits and pieces of it you ought to be adopting when, and the other foot in the real, day-to-day business lives of the community at large, so that you don’t find yourself expending a lot of expense in a technology that really is ahead of where most people can comfortably accommodate in their normal, everyday world.

So, for a June graduate, they shouldn’t be afraid that technology is going to move so fast that they can’t jump in…is that what you’re saying?

Right. That’s exactly what I’m saying. That there’s a normal, everyday world and it involves really mundane, traditional stuff. And that the technology is going to intrude in your life, and I hope you’re comfortable with that. But that all the ordinary things that you learn how to do have a substantial place in your day-to-day life.

I’d like to hear a little bit about how you got into setting up your business and how did it become the Document Center.

A very interesting story. You know, there are times when I’m absolutely amazed myself that it has managed to do as well as it has done. And has been so gratifying for me personally. They will often say that if you’re going to have a business, that it ought to be a business that is well suited to your own personality since the two things are so closely related. I just didn’t realize going in just how well suited this business was for me personally. My husband and I used to both work in television. When we worked in LA, that was really quite lovely. But when we came up to San Francisco, it wasn’t so good. A difference in the two centers is striking. And so we had both gotten the best jobs that we could find in town, which was working for Channel 4, KRON. And they decided to shut down their production arm, and so we were both out of work at the same time. Well, his family are all emigres from Russia. And out of the eight kids, there are something like five millionaires out of these people who came over one at a time using the same twenty-five dollars. And the way that they managed that was through business ownership. So, I had started to think that it was going to be very hard for me to achieve the kind of success that I craved working for somebody else. And that that kind of model, of business ownership, might really be a good one for me personally. So, I looked around for a business for a year, as did Kerry, and Gilbert, who now works for me, had this business in his house. And he had actually been looking for somebody for a year. And so, I went over at the end of October 1984, and I looked at the business. And there were some librarians, local librarians, who used his business. Now, it wasn’t really a business. It was more like a hobby.

Providing documents…

Right. Exactly right. I cringe to tell you this, but what he did was, his dad worked for Lockheed, and they knew the competitor in Southern California, and they thought oh, that guy’s charging so much money when this stuff is free from the government. We’ll just write. We’ll get these things for free. We’ll keep them in the garage and when somebody wants one, they can call us up and we’ll drive it over and they’ll give us some money. Ah-hah! Instant money out of nowhere, you know. All you had to do was send off the letter and get the things to be in your garage and you’d turn this into cash. Oh boy. Well…it’s a little questionable, I must admit. But, it seemed to me that, actually, what you could do is get one copy of everything and have a photocopy machine. And then you’d have some kind of basis for charging. You’d be actually offering a service. And, little bit by little bit, as I listened to these librarians, what they wanted…and I, you know, asked around…it dawned on me that it was going to be a business! It was going to be a very successful business! I can remember being in his garage in the spring and just realizing that the business was just really going to be successful. It was such an odd moment. So vivid. But the way that I had been presented, the way that Gilbert and his dad saw the business versus what people really wanted out of it was actually different. And it took me awhile to realize that I could actually do what people wanted me to do. And that that was what was appropriate. Thank goodness for librarians. Librarians as a rule are some of the most vocal elements of my customer base.

What was it…was it a little different…what was it that they wanted you to do that you weren’t doing already?

OK. Number one—they had no desire to ever make a photocopy. To me that was an untenable situation. It was not appropriate that you would take something for free from the government and turn around and sell it. That was inappropriate. But I could see gathering it all together…they provide you with one copy, you could set up your own collection. But for your customers, to just sell something that you got for free from the government—it didn’t strike me as being right at all. And so we don’t do that. Then the other thing is that they had the idea that the business should only address high tech. OK. So there were a few customers in Silicon Valley and they would get only those standards that those people might want, and that would be the end of it. Failure Analysis was one of the first customers. And they would call and they’d ask me, you know, it was the time that the huge crane fell down in San Francisco, "Oh, I need crane specs." Well, who would ever guess that anyone would ever need crane specs! Another time they wanted an oven spec. It dawned on me that business is business. People need the specs they need and you can’t say in advance, "tomorrow Doreen is going to need ASTMB1234 tomorrow—she’ll need it tomorrow." You just don’t know. So, you put together the collection first, and then you let people choose what they want out of the collection. You can’t pre-choose. Now, over time, certainly with experience I can say, "I know, that it’s more likely that Doreen’s going to use AA3 than she’s going to use the AA125." Because I know buying patterns. But, still no way to know what segment of the market place might suddenly wake up and say—golly gee whiz—all of a sudden it dawns on us, because of this event that no one would ever have guessed about, that we will all get these standards. People are driven to standards by a lot of different reasons. Sometimes it is a catastrophic instant that makes certain parts of the…

So you were willing to go with a broader customer base…

Exactly right. And I guess I have a lot of patience for doing a lot of repetitive work over and over again. In the early days, you know, I’d do all the filing, all the ordering, all the filling of the orders, and I’d do all of the mailing. I’d take these directories of manufacturing firms or local businesses and I’d turn them into mailing labels and send out flyers and stuff like that. So, in the early days, it was just a lot of routine work, over and over and over again. Cataloging, filing and filling orders. And then advertising—the rudiments of business. It took me two months of work, actually, to get to the first month when it was really mine, and I invoiced $475 worth of business. Two months worth of work to get to that point.

Did you call yourself the Document Center from the start?

It was Document Center when I took it over. So that’s how it got that name. There’s another company that has a similar name, so I’m sorry that I have a name that is not that differentiated. But, there it is.

When did you move it out of the garage, so to speak?

Well, you know, I was bound and determined that if I was going to take on the expense of the rent, paying rent, utilities and so on and so forth, that I should have billings of $5,000 a month. And that’s really what I wanted. Well, in the meantime, I had started to actually get the collection together and I had started to write away for standards as frequently as I could. And the mailman was bringing sacks and sacks and sacks of mail over to Gilbert’s house. I was in his garage still. And it was summer time, and so I found myself, having filled up the garage with paper—and I would open the garage door in the morning. And I would roll the typewriter stand with the typewriter on it, and the chair and the phone out on the driveway!

You can do this in California!

You can do this in California, and I was doing business on the driveway. And Kerry came over one day and said, "You know, I bet you’re losing business because you can’t find stuff!" And I said, "yeah, but, you know, I’m only up to $3,000." So, he went and found me that space over there [interviewer’s note: the Document Center occupies several warehouse-type units. The interview took place in Claudia’s office across the driveway from the original warehouse space rented.]. And July, when I moved, I billed $3,500 worth, which from $475 in January to $3,500 in July is not bad. I borrowed $5,000 from his sister to buy a photocopier, and I was off and running. That’s when we finally moved over here and been here ever since. The worse part of it all…well, I think that it’s very difficult to avoid all the common pitfalls of business ownership. And the first pitfall that they tell you about is the pitfall of having an employee. For one year I had just a lot of first employees, right? It was really awful, because Kerry insisted that if I was going to have an employee, I had to start paying myself, too. Because all this money had just been going straight back in, right? So then, there I was. Not only was I going to have to pay and employee, but I was going to have to pay myself. Misery! I got employees, but I was just terrible because the way that I had run the business was successful, obviously. The business was growing, so what I did must be good. So I just couldn’t bear that somebody else would do it differently than me. They had to do it exactly like me because this is what was working. Then finally my brother came. And when my brother came and started to work for me, then it dawned on me that people were going to do things differently than I did them. But that was not going to be worse or better, it was just going to be different. That was all. And then at that point I was able to start hiring employees. And it turns out that that is one of the biggest challenges that faces women business owners—the idea of having employees. Accepting the additional responsibility above and beyond yourself.

Do you think that’s unique to women?

Well, probably not. When I was active in National Association of Women Business Owners, it was something you saw over and over again. Women stayed in their homes. They did not get offices outside of their homes and ran their businesses from their homes. When they had an employee, all of a sudden they were cleaning up their house, making coffee and snacks and stuff—entertaining instead of employing. And so this is, I think, the dividing line.

Did it take at some point any kind of a different direction or has it just grown?

The business always grows just about as fast as I can handle the business to grow. It has had plateaus. It had a plateau when I computerized the business and had Kyle. I did that in the same year. And then it plateaud this last year when we switched our computer systems. OK—but other than that, it’s always grown. Thank goodness, because I like a business that grows. To me, that’s a thriving business. If it’s not growing, you’re in trouble. The other thing that has gradually moved into the business, I think, is the issue of being able to deliver electronic documents.

So, that’s where it changed?

And we haven’t got to the point where we can do that yet. So, we have what I consider to be the traditional Document Center, which is a paper-based service, and then we have this new Document Center that’s going to be this electronic document service. And, really, if the trick to it is to leave the core, traditional business in a healthy fashion and yet be able to invest in this new business that’s going to be electronic documents. Very, very difficult to keep that balance, right. Certainly, now that I have Anne [Everett] as a general manager, it’s been one of my big challenges during the last year to two years, to try to develop a real strong business plan and to actually go out and look for funding and strategic partnerships. This has been very challenging for me within the last year to two years, because it’s kind of business on a different level. That’s been the latest change in the business.

You may have touched on this a little bit, but what would you say is the thing that excites you about your work?

For me, personally, I am the kind of person that wants to constantly challenge oneself. And I like evolving, as it were—I don’t like to be a static personality. I like to be a personality that is forced by circumstances to better itself. I prefer to be forced to change who I am rather than to remain the same old way year after year after year. So, this is one aspect of business ownership that I especially enjoy—is the fact that you’re in control of what you choose to do. You can leave yourself stable, or you can force yourself to change. Business ownership has given me a good playing field because there’s a lot of indicators I can use to see, am I staying at the same place or am I able to challenge myself to try something different and new. Other than that, the other thing that I really like about having a business is having such a positive impact on so many lives. I used to have that focussed only on my customers. Then I would think to myself, you know, boy—this customer called, they had this crisis on their hands and, thanks to us, their crisis was averted. Isn’t this wonderful that we have a business where people are so gratified to find us and so pleased with the service that they get from us. Not everybody has a business where people are number one, glad when they find you and, number two, enthused after they find you and use the business, the service. But then it dawned on me that I actually had other relationships that were actually very important and very gratifying. Having employees is a very positive experience, although it can be challenging at times. And then the relationship that one has with organizations whose information we sell. So, there are three kinds of relationships that are going on on an everyday basis. To me, those relationships are really at the core of what’s going on with business.

As you get new vendors, that changes—you get different people…

It has been surprising, because our relationships with the various standards-writing organizations develop over time. And I wouldn’t have thought that those relationships would turn out to be so important to the company, but actually, those relationships are just essential for our company. Always, I didn’t really start out with the intention of having good relationships with various standards organizations. It’s kind of a by-product. So, it’s been really astounding to me that by number one, that by doing what we do naturally that the relationships would evolve and be so strong, but also it’s been very surprising to me that the relationships got to be so beneficial to the company. When we got the IEC collection, for example, and the ISO collection, which are the international standards, boy, it just made a tremendous amount of difference in our revenues. And it wouldn’t have been possible were it not for some of the other stuff that we did before, like the Web site, for example.

Can you think of anyone in particular, or several people, who have influenced you in your professional life?

Well, that’s a good question. I always laugh about my husband because he tends to be a pessimist, and he has influenced me a lot because I tend to be optimistic. And when I talk over my business plans with him, it forces me to really be able to justify whatever it is that I want to do. And that really ensures that my schemes are well thought out! Well, I will say that there’s not really very many people doing what we do here. That was one of the reasons I joined National Association of Women Business Owners. I was really looking for other people like myself, and I hadn’t found so many. It’s been very hard to find peers.

…a new area…

Now, I don’t know if that’s just because I’m so busy with having a son and having a business, that I really…you know, my social life is somewhat limited. I’m sure there’s a few peers around, but I haven’t had that much of a chance to really be able to establish strong relationships that I think would influence me.

So, you couldn’t really say, for instance, that there was a particular teacher because your training was not what you ended up doing?

Well, I do have one teacher who I constantly rely on that you’ll laugh at the story. After I graduated from college, I was able to study piano with Mary Boling. And I’m now teaching my son how to play the piano. So, poor guy, he hears about Mary Boling all the time. Mary really forced me to stop trying to rush ahead into things. When I played for her, she would force me to play my pieces only as fast as I could do the most difficult parts. And, really, I must admit that for someone who had studied piano as much as I had studied piano by the time that I got there, I didn’t really think that anybody was going to be able to give me something that would so fundamentally change the way that I approached things. But, Mary Boling actually, when she forced me into only doing things at a pace at which I could actually do them correctly, influenced me in a tremendous way. Because I really think that you want to do a thing correctly. And you want to not move faster in error. You want to move faster when you’re able to move faster. And so, that is actually one of my teaching lessons.

Something that you’re able to apply…

Yes, to everywhere else. That’s right. Poor Kyle—he wants to go through something, and then he hits the hard part and he slows way down—well, you know what Mary Boling would say!

We can all learn from that one.

Really, you know, when you have these very hard piano pieces to play, it drives it home.

Can you look back and pick out one particular time or situation that you would consider to be the most rewarding experience so far in your professional life?

Certainly a decision that has impacted us, was the decision when we decided to put the database up on the Internet. And that decision in retrospect was years in the making. So, it happened quite easily and quite quickly. And then it had such large repercussions that it was astounding to me because it seemed like such a simple and small thing to do at the time. I started becoming interested in electronic documents, and sending and receiving electronic documents probably back in about ’88 after I’d had the business only a few years. I followed a development that’s called CALS within the military, CALS—it was originally computer-aided logistics support—it was the government’s way of, in military contracts, of trying to develop a scheme so that they could manage large procurement programs using electronic information delivery rather than paper-paper-paper. And the early schemes were really remarkable but also extraordinarily expensive, just a lot of SGML—oh, my God. So, when I was introduced to the Internet, it seemed so attractive and so reasonably priced that it was just a non-issue, really, that this would be the thing to do. It also, I think, allowed me to start thinking of some of the things that we’d been doing internally as creating electronic assets. And I had never thought of electronic assets before. As we started to put the database on the Internet, it dawned on me what a lot of electronic assets we already had as well as electronic assets that we were going to have to invest in in the future when we talk about converted documents or whatever. And I guess, when we did that in 1993, it was just before everything happened and made me look like such a visionary. And it got the article in Forbes and got ongoing attention from larger companies that I would not have normally expected. When you’re a million, million and a half, two million dollar company, you just don’t expect the kind of attention we’ve gotten through that one, simple decision. So that, probably, as far as business moments—that business moment is probably one of the more significant business moments that we had.

We’ve talked about this a little bit, but do you see today’s challenges as being different from those when you graduated from college and were out looking for what you were going to do?

Certainly, in this business right now, we’re in a transitional period. The time before was very stable, and the time after will be very stable. Now, right now, is unstable. And that’s positive because in a business environment, that’s when you have most opportunities. But, also, it’s the time when you have the highest risk. The best of times and the worst of times all at the same time. I would have expected when I took over the business that we could have that business, and that business would never, never, never be changing. And now I think about the business, and I know that the business is destined to change. It must change. It absolutely can’t stay the way that is used to be. That’s the only guarantee. That certainly the way the Document Center is today is not the model on which you’ll see Document Center twenty years from now. It really is a miserable situation because what you know how to do and you know how to do so well, you have to abandon. And you have to move out to something that you don’t know at all, right? So, that is the real challenge. Sure. When I took over Document Center, I thought to myself, boy, self, I’m going to have a little home-based business, and some day it might do a quarter of a million dollars worth of business and I may take home 50k and wouldn’t that be grand! Oh—end all and be all! I passed that a long time ago. And now I recognize that the business is only limited by my perception of what the business is capable of. But at the same time in today’s environment it really is possible to spend a lot of capital and not be assured that after you spend all that money, that you’re really going to have some kind of return.

That’s the other side…

That’s right. So, that makes life very miserable.

If you were trading places with me and choosing someone to interview in Silicon Valley in our profession or somewhat related to our profession, who would you choose?

There are a lot of people to interview and it would be very, very interesting. You could interview the two guys from Yahoo! Wouldn’t that be interesting. So fascinating to me. There they did all this work creating this humongous directory, and then they decided that they’re going to use the search retrieval system AltaVista, which is like about 180 turn and even, what is also very fun about them, is—I can remember when they talked at one of our meetings—and they’d just gotten a million dollars from VCs—and they hadn’t even thought about how they’re going to get revenue. That’s a very close link even though not librarian per se, but certainly librarian in achievement. The idea of directory. In a wider view—Martin Andreson from Netscape. I don’t know how much he’s really interested in issues that have to do with information retrieval. I met a very interesting guy from Hewlett-Packard that is very interested in information retrieval. I can’t remember his name right now. Finding the people that are interested in the broader issues of information retrieval more in the IT community, the information technology community. Then the other person that would be really interesting to interview would be Cindy Hill, having taken over the technology library at Failure, and find out from her experience.

Actually, we did that last year.

And then, I have Janet Vratney on my Board. I’m always delighted for her counsel. She’s a librarian that does a lot of the Internet stuff.

Who’s she associated with?

Apple. She’s on of the technology evangelists over there.

That’s a good list right there. I think I sort of know the answer to this.

It’s too late. It’s on your list, you gotta ask it…

I can ask it this way. If you had not gone into the Document Center, down the Document Center path, which happened to present itself, what would you be doing?

Something awful.

Teaching music?

No. No. Definitely not teaching little kids to play. Probably in some accounting department somewhere.

So, thank goodness for the Document Center. Back to the subject of change. You brought it up. How do you go about coping with changing times? Dealing with changes? Do you have a strategy?

Well, I like change, first of all, so that’s a positive. Change usually doesn’t bother me too much, although certainly in this area you are constantly bombarded with all sorts of latest and greatest. And you have to kind of temper that constantly. Because I’m the kind of person that when I hear about something and I see that kind of kernel of a solution to problem, oh—that’s a really elegant way to do that. I really like that. Then I want to take action. You can’t constantly be doing that. You have to only just go so far as you can handle at any given time. So, what I do, actually, is I do a certain amount of reading all the time, and usually technology kinds of things. Sometimes I read a lot of PC magazines—Byte, and the Wired. So that’s kind of constantly washing over—this idea of exactly all the different things that are going on. And I try to do some CommerceNet stuff and some Internet stuff on a regular basis. So, I’m constantly having lots of new stuff thrown at me. What ends up happening is that you try to push the people around you into change. And the people around you resist change. They don’t want change. So, actually, more of a strategy for change is how fast can you push the people around you into accepting new ideas. Are they going to find that the new idea is going to be acceptable to them or are they going to offer a lot of resistance? Other than that, the other things that I really found, though. That if you want to be able to achieve, you have to really narrow yourself down. You can’t be constantly flailing in a lot of different areas. You have to narrow where you’re going to put your energy. If you apply a lot of energy in a ver narrow place, you can get a lot of forward motion. So that means, that I have a whole life with a nine-year-old and I have the business. And then I usually do about one volunteer activity, and then that’s it. That’s what my life is. It’s not too far afield from those things because there is just not enough energy left over to go any place else. So, that’s the other way of coping with change, is that you really have "blindered" yourself to a lot of things that are extraneous to where you’re really interested. And you really just concentrate yourself. Of course, sometimes, that makes you a very dull and boring person. You go places, and people want to talk to you about things, and you really have only about three things that you’re really interested in talking about. And the rest of life you know nothing about. So, I’ve had people offer to buy the business already. And I think to myself, what, if somebody would buy the business, and you would not have the business to go to, what would you do with yourself? It dawned on me why people that used to own businesses go and join golf courses, country clubs or whatever. It’s everything all in this little wrapping. I’m not ready for that.

You may or may not have and answer to this next one, but what would be the most important elements of your epitaph?

Oh, heavens. You know, I constantly tell my son, that if he wants to be successful in life, really the challenge is to be useful. Useful to other people. The more useful you are, the more successful you’ll be. So, I suppose mine could say, "She was a very useful person." Other than that, I don’t know. Sometimes you have the feeling that you have an accomplishment, and other times you have the feeling you’re so insignificant. It’s very hard to judge what one has done so far, I must admit. Certainly, there are times when I’m really impressed that I’ve made the business as big as it is. And then other times I realize other people have –you read business week, you know—so-and-so did what!…with what! Nail polish! And did it in a year! Oh, my gosh! So, it’s hard to be too over-inflated with oneself.

I like useful—that’s a new one. Imagine that you are a library historian a hundred years from now. What is it that you would want that person to know about our period? In other words, if you could reach across a hundred years—this is what’s really important for you to know about us.

Well, I think it’s going to be really just the opposite. They’re going to tell us what’s important about us. Because we can’t see it. You can’t see the forest for the trees. I think that’s very true. And that’s the thing that I hate most about now, is that you have –it’s wonderful the way that it happens. It is also very difficult. A period like this, I think, operates the best—is a period when there are a lot of different kinds of experimentation going on. Which is why I’m always so distressed that it takes money to experiment, and we don’t have enough money so we can start to try some of this stuff. Because, I really think you need the freedom to fail. You need to have any number of different trial runs going on. Because we really don’t know how we as people are going to really end up using computers to help us communicate with one another. Even now, we see the wonderful things they can do. And we recognize that ten years from now they’re going to be just that much better than they are today. Right? So, it won’t be until far later that we can look back and say that at this moment this little thing happened which really was good because it opened the door for people to help them see this capability that they really couldn’t recognize prior to. The first people with cars had no idea that there would be freeways some day. And the impact of the freeways would be Los Angeles, San Francisco, the metropolitan areas the way that we have them now. There’s no way to know that, but in retrospect you can look back at it. It is true. It would be really wonderful to be able to look back from a far distance and see how we were striving to get into the future. You try so hard to get yourself into the future, and yet you just have to wait around for it to be there.

Can you tell me a little bit about your involvement with the San Andreas Chapter? When did you first join it and how have you participated?

Be delighted. You will understand that I carry a debt of gratitude to librarians because right from the very beginning it was librarians who told me what kind of business I ought to have. I wound up joining SLA in, I bet, 1988-1989. And the reason that I did, was that one of my customers, I know her face but I can’t think of her name, came back from SLA and she phoned me up and said, "Claudia, I went to the roundtable again, and everyone was talking…and I told them about you, but next year you’re going to have to go and tell them yourself." So then, I went to New York, and I can’t remember whether it was the national convention in 1988 or 1989…and I went specifically for the standards roundtable. And I didn’t stay very long because Kyle was quite young at that time. So I flew and stayed maybe overnight two nights mostly so I could go to the roundtable. And then after I went to the roundtable, it dawned on me that this was the group of people for me. And so I joined the San Andreas Chapter. I phoned up and I asked Bonnie Shipper. I said, I’ve joined, and I’d like to do something. What do you think I ought to do? And so she said, well, I think you should do tours. And Lynne Bidwell was doing the dinner meetings…right?...in charge of hospitality. And I was in charge of tours. And she came up to me, and she said, "I think what we should do is have the dinners at local businesses and have the tour at the same time." And so we did that and it was very successful. Very fun. And we had really a great time. After that I did the secretary, and then a little bit of FaultLine—not very long. Because I didn’t realize what had happened to me. I’d put the business on the Internet, and then that just was like--just from out of nowhere—that was really staggering. And that’s when all my travelling began.

You’ve also taken on this participation in all the standards. What kind of a commitment is that?

It means Washington, DC, usually for about a week usually about once every three months. So, that’s fairly rigorous. You know, these things are always so hard because in the things that I participate in at that level, I’m about the only small business person in the room. And probably the only woman-owned business. Very, very challenging to get the respect that one deserves. It’s shocking, really, at that level how much of this type of business is politics. Isn’t that something? This has been a real eye-opener for me. And, again—politics and relationships are very, very close. It has been thrust in my nose—this constant nurturing of relationships. Where do we position ourselves--one of the most important aspects of this—it’s unbelievable how important it is. To somebody with an analytical mind like myself, a music major, somebody who can do accounting, everything in a little box, neat, tidy, ABCD, 1234. And then, oh—messy world. All this maneuvering around, always trying to position ourselves so that we get in this place at this time. So-and-so doesn’t step on our feet over here. Oh, my gosh!

So, working on those national level committees has been a real eye opener…

Yes, it has led me to redefine what standards is all about from a realistic point of view rather than an idealistic point of view.

So, do you feel like the things that you have done within the Chapter—have you gotten a return on that?

Yes. Well, first of all, you can’t participate in something without having it be a positive experience. But, you know, that’s the other thing, too—I work, and I go home. There’s nothing else. So, my volunteer life is a way for me to force myself out of what would otherwise be a dreary little rut. That’s been very positive for me. I have lots of friends that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

The difference, I think, is that when you joined, you contributed.

Sure—is there some other way? Well, one has a choice. One can either throw money at a thing or one can put oneself into it. I, myself, like to give of myself. That’s much nicer.

Well, I have one last question, and that is, is there a question that I should have asked that I didn’t ask or that you wish I had asked?

I’ll think of it tomorrow! I guess, the thing that I mull over most when thinking about librarianship and its relationship to information these days is something that’s quiet un-knowable. And that is, where will librarians find themselves as the technology impacts the way that we deal with information? I could sit and talk with somebody about that forever, and I’d just love to sit and talk with people about that forever. I think that that is such an interesting question.

Where should we be talking about that? In the Chapter? Universities?

Oh—I don’t know. Probably, people are talking about it all the time. That’s what it really amounts to because it’s such an essential question. My viewpoint on information is such a dollars-and-cents viewpoint, and yet the business of information is still a very human business. So many of the business issues that I face, really, still revolve around some very simplistic questions—and try to find answers to some very simplistic questions. How can we find the right answer to a question when we have to work through a computer? So, in that way, I really look to the profession of librarianship to help shed light on some of those questions.

We’ll have to turn the tape and have another session entirely on that. But, thank you very much.