Janice Scammell

For the last fifty years since my initial graduation with a Honours degree in English, I have been very fortunate to be able to maintain a strong involvement with literary studies and to keep English as an integral part of my career as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Carleton. The decision in 1970 to continue with graduate studies in English from 1970 to 1973 helped to foster a strong research orientation even through very normal life events, including starting a family and working at various government jobs. I continued to visit the Carleton Library to read at the long wooden tables on the 3rd floor, to keep abreast of events and activities through the Carleton newsletter and then to establish a reading/research agenda incorporating topics in literary criticism and the philosophy of science. In the early 1980s I wrote an essay on the Hundred Years of Solitude, which my former thesis professor and supervisor Ben Jones graciously read…and I was back!

The 1980s launched with my enrolment in graduate studies in English at Carleton and also in Library and Information Science at Western (through an extension program in Ottawa and with a short residency requirement in London, Ontario). To these formal studies were added a TA appointment in English with Tom H. Coulson and two MLIS co-ops at the National Library (now Library and Archives Canada). By 1989 I was ready to step forward with a professional career…not surprisingly my long engagement with Carleton’s English Department was one key in securing a librarian position at Carleton (Professor Ian Cameron always remembered me as one of the cohort of students that he taught in his first year and thus I had a lineage!).

With the 1990s my library career began in earnest, with opportunities for liaisons with English faculty both in terms of support for collection development and for library instruction and special events. In 1995, as a librarian in Special Collections and Archives (now Archives and Special Collections), I was able to mount an exhibition of the department’s impressive collection of William Blake facsimiles and to follow up with a seminar on Blake for graduate students in Professor Ben Jones’ class. Blake had been my thesis area (political and philosophical context) from 1970 to 1973 and from this point onward my focus incorporated the artistic and bibliographic elements in Blake studies. In 2002, I became the official liaison librarian for English (along with Philosophy and Art History) until 2017 and my stepping away from Reference Services prior to a final sabbatical and then retirement in 2020.

Fittingly, the conclusion of my formal career brought me full circle back to my English Studies beginnings and that is reflected in my final sabbatical project. The project proposal was for an investigation of the possibilities for the development of “a community of scholars, an intellectual community, inclusive of English Department faculty, students and librarians.” My final report is the result of many English Department faculty interviews including with Dana Dragunoiu, Brian Greenspan, Julie Murray, and Janice Schroeder and a meeting with a small group of then graduate doctoral students.

Documents accessible through the Library’s Institutional Repository and Google Scholar include:

• “Graduate Students and the Academic Library: What does the Future Hold?” Sabbatical Report, 2009.
• “Elizabeth Smart: The Shifting Boundary Between Nature and Art” Carleton University, Master’s Research Essay, 1988
• “A Community of Scholars …” Sabbatical Report, 2020, to come.

How has your English degree informed your career path?

First and foremost, my English degree became inextricably intertwined with my MLIS degree, inclusive of both bibliographic methodology and library instruction. Ironically, at my first graduation in 1970 I declined to pursue either a career in Library and Information Science or formal teacher training. There was a strong attraction to English Studies and to William Blake scholarship, in particular (this was the sixties!). The academic journey would last three years before life’s exigencies intervened…not the least of which was also the sheer complexity and unorthodoxy of Blake’s life, publishing practices, poverty, and revolutionary times.

When I returned to my studies in the 1980s there were pragmatic demands that had to be met…career goals reset (English employment options had shut down in the early 70’s) and paths were drawn towards librarianship. English and Library Science began to inform and enrich one another’s practices, their evidence, and interpretations. A wonderful display of bibliography’s “faces or directions” in a seminar by Jeremy Palin, Head of Special Collections and Archives, for our graduate class was both impressive and instructive, bringing to life different elements of literary study. My academic endeavours in this respect informed my career path by strengthening my commitment to scholarship in conjunction with other public-service and administrative roles.

This is best reflected in my academic writing — both literary and also non-literary or report style. In fact, both writing styles flow quite naturally and have been effective—my Elizabeth Smart reflection which Rosemary Sullivan, whom I met at the National Library in 1988, and who wrote By Heart, the Elizabeth Smart biography, read my small piece and attached a very positive note to my work and especially my writing. My first sabbatical report on Graduate Students (2009) was well received by the Dean of Graduate Studies, John Shepherd, and the University Librarian at the time, Margaret Haines. The report led to my participation on Grad Faculty Board from 2009-2017.

Why Carleton?

For me the primary concerns when thinking of attending Carleton for both undergrad and grad levels was having a quiet place to study, read, and write. As an English major with a minor in History I found excellent opportunities for academic growth, stimulating professors, and smaller class options even in the early undergrad years. There have been exceptional students in English over the years and opportunities to engage in theatrical productions and other events. In the early sixties, the English Department hosted numerous poet readings, including readings with Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Phyllis Webb, Basil Bunting. Professor Bob Hogg brought American poetry centre stage at Carleton. There was also an Old Norse Club. Professors in the early days had large personalities and intimate knowledge and commitment to their subject areas (Trevor Holley, Munro Beatty, Douglas Wurtele, Charles Haines, T.H. Coulson, Gordon Wood, and George Johnson). Professor Ben Jones and a number of undergraduate students hosted a Blake Reading of the entire poem Jerusalem, one amazingly cold January, that concluded at Professor Jones’ home, where his wife had prepared a warm stew for dinner. Such events were common occurrences in those times and one was happy to be part of it all. Ben Jones, as my thesis supervisor for both Blake and Elizabeth Smart, gave me the guidance that I needed to be successful in my writing and my speaking (he often asked me to read in our poetry classes) and he brought to light many artists and authors that I was not acquainted with, including the Powys brothers, and for me, particularly T.F. Powys. I really had no desire to search out another university.