Library Experiences!!

Since we are doing oral knowledge, I woud like to tell a story with my post, that has to do with the Phoenicians, education, and unfortunate events.

A couple of days ago, I did a little research on the subject librarians at the Harold B. Lee Library (I learned that they existed through my honors writing class last year).  I found one that dealt with ancient history and the middle east, a Mr. Ryan Combs, and I thought 'perfect'! Yesterday, I got up the courage to go ask for help on my research about the Phoenicians and I am so glad I went.  I had to nervously stand out side his office for a few minutes after I realized that he was actually in there, studying the books on a nearby shelf and telling myself that I was silly not to ask for help.  Finally, I went and stood in the doorway and knocked lightly on the metal door frame. He looked up, turned off whatever game he was watching, and invited me in.  I stepped into the room and explained who I was and what I was looking for, all in a crazy rush, hoping to convey in as few words as possible the topics and assignment that I was trying to learn about.  He immediately turned back to the computer and started typing,  then almost absent-mindedly invited me to sit down.  I got out a pen and a notecard, and we started our discussion on the library's resources on the Phoenicians.



He first led me to an online encyclopedia about the ancient world, and we discovered some articles on the civilization, but not much mention of oral traditions, or folk knowledge, or myths even, confirming my belief in a society that wasn't so focused on the religious.  Then we used the library's catalog to uncover where most of the books on the Phoenicians were hiding: DS 81, in the history stacks.  Go figure.  But we used a different search engine, the books and more tab, which made it so much easier to wade through the results.  Finally, he showed me some encyclopedia entries from a huge biblical work, that related what we knew about the Phoenicians through the Jews.  Throughout all this research finding, we discussed the difficulty of finding exactly what I was looking for: knowledge on the oral culture of the Phoenicians.  He made some interesting points that I would like to repeat to stimulate our discussion. 

We talked about the fact that much of what we know about the Phoenicians is based off the writings of other civilizations, such as the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Persians.  It is difficult to synthesis a oral tradition of a nation from what other nations wrote about it.  Back then they weren't really concerned with understanding, learning and recording someone else's beliefs or knowledge.  They were struggling just to write their own. Then, we recognized that another stumbling block is that the oral tradition, and even the cohesiveness of the people, does not exist today.  No one in the Middle East still calls themselves Phoenicians, even though they might be descendants of the inhabitants of those ancient city-states.  The individuality of the city-states in ancient times might have added to the disunity, and they weren't even collectively called a people except by the Greeks and other nations.  Among themselves, they answered to the King of their own city, and only respected others so they could trade with them.  During all the conquests of this region, the name and oral history of the Phoenicians was lost, and not saved or rescued by natives, like the Mayans have done for so many years.  Parts of their culture were salvaged by other nations (such as the Greek myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, which first came from Lebanon), but others were demonized and forcefully forgotten (Jews destroying the worship of Baal).  They truly are an ancient civilization, that does not have a living connection to the past.

After all this stimulating discussion, I went to the stacks on the first floor and explored DS 81.  There were several books that I found that I thought would be very helpful and explained more about the little we know about their myths and religion and oral traditions.  But while I was exploring these books, I lost track of time in that underground world of knowledge, and when I finally checked my watch, I realized i was goiing to be late for my next class if I didn't leave RIGHT NOW.  I returned the books to the shelf quickly, because I didn't have even enough time to check them out and almost ran to my next class.

Here is where the unfortunate events comes in:  after scarcely two hours, I returned to the library and the DS 81 section.  All of the books that I had been looking at previously... were gone.  I searched for them, on the return book shelves, on the sorting shelves, at the circulation desk.  No where.  Someone had come inand checked out or moved to a hidden place, all the exact books that I had wanted and were researching out of.  It was terrible.   I will have to go back and look another time for them, but that is the sad ending to my story now.