COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Carrie Ingle started working at the downtown Columbus library in March 1956, she used a manual typewriter to prepare each catalog card and meticulously glued protective jackets to new books before they were shelved. Banned from the modest collection in those days was J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” deemed too crude and racy.
Sixty years have come and gone, and the 77-year-old Ingle still is working full time behind the scenes, surrounded each day by stacks of brand-new books in what is now one of the country’s busiest big-city library systems. The card catalog cabinets are long gone, and patrons can now log in to the library’s online system and reserve one of 139 copies of “The Catcher in the Rye” or download an electronic copy to their phones.
When Ingle was hired on as a high school senior for $75 a week, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president; Elvis had just pushed “Heartbreak Hotel” into the Top 10; working women dressed in skirts, men in suits; and the downtown library didn’t have air conditioning but did had a baby grand piano that anyone could walk in and play.
Ingle is one of probably fewer than 25 people who have worked at U.S. libraries for more than a half-century and is among the longest-tenured ever, according to Julie Todaro, president-elect of the American Library Association. That Ingle is still working and adapting to today’s technology makes her longevity, in Todaro’s words, “incredible.”
Other than some brief time off for surgery, she’s called in sick only twice. She’s never wanted to do any other job in the library than this one.