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How Hugo Christiansen's Professional Background Makes Him a Novel Volunteer
After four years of teaching, Hugo Christiansen decided he had had enough.
“So I walked into the Library of Congress one day and asked them if they needed a researcher,” Hugo says. “I was tired of working with people and wanted to work with books—after all, books wouldn’t talk back.”
Besides having a double-majored undergraduate degree and a masters degree acquired in the United States, Hugo had grown up in Denmark where students were required to learn a new language every year. “So by the time you got to high school you knew at least Swedish, German, English, French, and Latin,” he recalls.
As soon as the Library grasped the vast scope of Hugo’s skills, they jumped on the opportunity to employ him. At first he came on as a cataloguer of Scandinavian, but gradually his responsibilities were expanded to include cataloguing fifteen different languages ranging from French to Eskimo.
For a while, from sunrise to sunset, Hugo was immersed in books. Then, the unthinkable happened: he was promoted to a supervisory role. “And then eventually to administration, where I had to do the very thing I’d been trying to evade by coming to the Library: deal with difficult people,” he remembers.
Even so, he carried out his duties well, and it wasn’t until he had been at the Library for 33 years that he decided it was time to retire and move from Maryland to Tennessee. Once here, his wife Muriel began volunteering at the Center. When she heard that the Center’s volunteer librarian would be leaving, she couldn’t help but think of Hugo.
With his love of books, his knowledge of languages, and his sorting and cataloguing abilities, Hugo saw immediately that it would be a good match. “I believe that retired people need to stay active in the community, handling goods and working with people in activities they enjoy,” Hugo explains. “Volunteering is a productive way for me to do that.”
Sure, the Samaritan Center is no Library of Congress. Even so, Hugo knows that his interactions here with books and with people make a big difference.
“I’m busy, I’m active, and I’m using my life skills to support a great organization,” Hugo says. “It fills a tremendous need in our community, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”
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