Leaving behind a skeleton crew to staff the public areas, nearly all UC Berkeley Main Library workers took a 15-minute coffee break every morning at 10:00 on the dot. We filed upstairs to the Library Staff Room, where an aproned server with a pair of tongs scooped up our selections from trays of pastries of every description. Cake donuts, glazed donuts; chocolate, maple, vanilla with sprinkles, cinnamon. Bear claws, greasy beyond description.

We gathered around tables to gossip, whine, complain, and share our adventures with one another. I usually joined my librarian friends Cathy and Linda. (Why do certain moments in our lives come to our memories so readily? I recall a Monday morning when Linda described for us a movie she’d seen over the weekend, Cotton Comes to Harlem; Redd Foxx in the role of Uncle Budd.)

But technology soon entered our Library’s world, even in the Staff Room.

From the Library newsletter, CU News, March 1961:

“A new hot drink machine is now in operation in the Staff Room. Installed
yesterday, the new device brews good cups of coffee by jetting very hot water
through individual pods of ground coffee. Whatever new deficiencies this
vending contrivance may develop in the future, it eliminates the deplorable
tastes of either powdered coffee or coffee syrup. Buttons on the side permit
the user to get extra portions of cream and sugar. The machine also produces
whipped chocolate, tea and soup. It is situated in the same spot where the
antique it now replaces for so long stood.

New Hot Water Urn. No longer will tea drinkers in the Staff Room have to hoist
an oppressively heavy hot water kettle. No more will they run the risk of dripping
scalding water on their toes from its leaky spout or burning their fingers on the
large hot plate. All that obsolete equipment has been replaced by an up-to-date
hot water urn. It is similar to the two coffee urns we now have but is distinguishable
from them by its small size. Like the other urns, it is on ‘extended loan’ to the
Staff Association from the MJB Coffee Company. Joan Angel, Chairman of the Coffee
Committee, negotiated the loan.” Automation. It was happening everywhere, even in the Staff Room.

My supervisor, who was fighting the approach of the online catalog every step of the way, worked straight through coffee breaks. She never set foot in the Staff Room. She frowned with displeasure when I told her I was going on my break. Tensions were building, as I, a member of the Library Advisory Committee, became more closely involved with planning for retrospective conversion. I began to feel ill-fitted for my job in the Catalog Department. I was excited for the future; she was struggling to remain in the past. Something had to change…

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