My dad has a heavy old, four-drawer metal filing cabinet. When I was a kid, that filing cabinet was one the most fascinating things for me in our entire house. Many times, when my sister and I would play school or store, the filing cabinet had a part in the story. And it's probably not too much of a stretch to say that my early fascination with that filing cabinet – the various folders holding different papers on all manner of topics, the most important items in the top drawers, the least in the bottom, those topics sub-sorted by drawer, not alphabetically but in a system that made sense to my dad – played a role in a fact that I became a librarian.
To be a librarian (or at least a good one), you should have a certain love of order. For the non-politically correct, that's a nice way of saying “you should be anal retentive”. (To put it yet another way, you should be the type of person who would find a filing cabinet fascinating.)
Not everyone understands this so I suspect it was a bit of a shock when my mother asked for ideas for a graduation gift and I said “I'd like a filing cabinet, please.”
“We're not getting you a filing cabinet,” she replied, in a voice that suggested I'd voiced my desire to have a human skull as a graduation gift.
“I can get it engraved,” I added hopefully.
“No. Your dad and I want to get you something that has meaning. Not something that holds papers.”
I didn't try to explain why a filing cabinet would have as much meaning as pretty much any gift they could get me, especially to commemorate my graduation from the MLIS program. Besides the connection I already mentioned that it would have to my childhood and why I wanted to become a librarian in the first place, it would also be a daily symbol of much of what libraries are about – classifying, organizing and making accessible all of the information you need in a convenient fashion.
Beyond these obvious (to me) reasons, a filing cabinet had other features that made it an appropriate gift. Like a fridge, a filing cabinet has an aesthetic value achieved by the artwork, clippings and other ephemera you can stick on it. And of course, it has a practical utility for the effective storage that it provides in its very small footprint.
I brought the idea of a filing cabinet gift up again during a subsequent conversation with my mom and the utility argument swayed her this time. I explained that I'd brought home all of the books and papers I'd accumulated over the year but sold off everything that held them – two bookshelves, a desk, even a couple shelves I'd rescued from the dumpster (each went for $10!) A filing cabinet was something I was going to have to buy no matter what and if her and dad picked up the tab (a decent filing cabinet isn't cheap!), that would be a big help.
So I now have a filing cabinet in my office and have been working to get everything organized. Connected to the “must like order” aspect of the librarian-type personality, there's also a related sentiment for some of us that says “must be a packrat”. (But not for all – for some, “love of order” trumps “love of keeping items around” and some librarians take an almost ecstatic joy in weeding their collections to make sure only the most popular, most useful and most engaging books remain.)
My problem is that I constantly struggle to find a balance between my love of order and my love of holding on to otherwise useless items. And often, the packrat side of my personality wins out, especially if I can somehow impose order on things that suggest no order in and of themselves (“Okay, these maps of Ontario that I'll never need again – or which I could easily get replaced by CAA or at a tourist booth or pretty much a million other locations if I do – will go in a folder called “Ontario Maps”. Ahhh, sweet order.)
That's just one example. I have trouble recycling old magazines and papers. After all, who knows? I might need our July 2005 London Hydro bill sometime in the future for something. 
In a weird way, I think part of the reason I have trouble throwing things out is that all these scraps of paper are like photographs of our year. Looking at the receipt for a meal we had at Under the Volcano soon after Shea arrived in London helps bring back the evening as easily as if I was looking at a photograph of us sitting there. A ticket stub from Cedar Point takes me back to that amusement park as much as any overpriced souvenir I might've bought on its midway.
I think the other reason for my packrat nature is the connection it gives me to both the past and the future. Just as dad's filing cabinet provided so much curiosity when I was a kid (I honestly have no memory of whether I was forbidden to look through the filing cabinet or not – but suspect I did anyhow!) I like to think that someday Oscar will look through the papers and files I've accumulated and get a picture of who I was (and am) and who is parents were (and are.)
The receipt for our hostel in Montreal might tell something of either Shea's and my values or our lack of money (or both) during a trip we took. Those Ontario maps might provide hours of imagining future trips of his own. A thank-you card given by a classmate might show the type of friend I was to others. Even that London Hydro bill might provide wonder in ten or twenty or fifty years when electricity is provided by technologies we can't even yet imagine, just as looking at old issues of Life magazine in my grandparents' farmhouse provides a picture of their lives then.
As I said, I really struggle with how to organize information – both in the “real” world and online. I keep something I call a “memory box” where I store all sorts of items that have special meaning to me. But then, where does something like that receipt for our meal at Under the Volcano go? In the Memory Box? In the London box? In the Visa file folder? (It went in the London box if you're curious.)
The same thing happens online. I recently came across an article (which I of course can't find again!) which says people approach the web in two ways – there are the “settlers” who have their regular stops – Google, e-mail, online banking, perhaps a newspaper site and one or two other favourites – and rarely venture beyond this. Then there are the “explorers” who lose hours browsing various sites, sampling all types of unique sites and making heavy use of “aggregators” like MetaFilter and Digg to keep up on the latest trends, ideas and memes online. I think I fit firmly in the latter camp. But now, if I could just find a way to keep track of all of that so, like that article, I can retrieve it again when needed. (Edit: Found it – it was an article in the Globe & Mail a few days ago. And the author didn't use the terms “settler” and “explorer” – I just made that up. Uhm, anybody know a good trademark lawyer?)
(In the interest of creating order but also collecting information, I have done some tweaking on this blog. I've dropped the link to my personal bookmarks from the header of this site and you'll now find a list of my most recent Delicious bookmarks on the righthand side instead. There's now a link to the most recent comments on the left side and there's
also a “log-in” form at the bottom right column where you can create an account if you want and which, in turn, will make it quicker and easier to leave comments.)
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