By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Talking to Bill Schurk is a trip down memory lane, and that lane leads through the byways of Cleveland, especially its libraries and thrift shops, as well as through byways of American popular music.
Schurk is set to retire at the end of the year after almost 50 years of service as a librarian and archivist at Bowling Green State University’s storied sound recordings archive and popular culture library.
He arrived just as BGSU turned its attention toward popular culture – “the cool stuff,” as he said they called it then. His job interview, he said, revolved more around jazz recordings than any library pursuits. Of course, he was already a known quantity having worked in the library as an undergraduate.
And while Schurk career path wasn’t straight, it seems in retrospect to have been pre-ordained, bringing together his love of librarianship and his passion for collecting the arcana of popular culture. If you need information on an obscure popular song, he can find it for you, and then tell you all about the B-side.
That all stems back to his childhood. He remembers collecting stuff as far back as age 5. There were magazines, bottle caps, stamps, even cigarette packs. His family had an old wind up record player, and he controlled that. He knew all the gift shops and thrift stores, where he could get the best buys.
“I know how to acquire things,” he said.
His parents, he said, were supportive, allowing him ample space in the house to store his treasures.
Schurk’s first library job was at the Cleveland Public Library when he was in junior high school. Since then he always found himself working in some sort of library.
Those ranged from a variety of positions in the Cleveland Public Library, including in the library for the blind.
But it also involved working in the tool crib of a General Motors plant during his ill-fated stint as an engineering student. That, too, he said was a kind of library. And later back working in a Cadillac plant in Cleveland, he managed the room that stored the blueprints, yet another kind of library.
It was while working at the Cadillac plant that he decided to go back to college. The Vietnam War Era draft was starting to breathe down his neck, and he saw even engineers getting call up. So he decided student deferment would be a good idea.
Through a friend he met a young woman who attended BGSU. They hit it off. Schurk remembers the precise date of their first social engagement, Dec. 27, 1962, a church outing to go toboggan riding. He has a photo and knows most of those in it, and he remembers the bruises they suffered.
That sold him on BGSU, and he and Bonnie married in 1968.
All this led eventually to studying library science, first as an undergraduate at BGSU and then as a graduate student at Western Reserve.
He returned to BGSU to head the new audio center in the recently opened Jerome Library in July, 1967. He was active as the Popular Culture Library took shape. He worked with Ray Browne to help put BGSU on the map as a center for studying popular culture. He and Browne were frequently interviewed, including being featured in a page 1 story of the Wall Street Journal.
In 1980 when the Moore Musical Arts Center opened, the music library moved to Jerome. Within that is housed Schurk’s passion, the Sound Recordings Archive.
Now at 76 he wants to have time to spend with his wife, three grown children, and grandchildren – “the light of my life.”
He’ll also have more time to spend with his personal collections of Key yearbooks, old National Geographics (including the back covers which often get discarded), and, of course, recordings, some 35,000. He expects to return to the library as well to help on projects.
Even in retirement, Schurk is unlikely to stray from all the “cool stuff” of life.
