Kofi Bart-Martin
Dublin Core
Title
Kofi Bart-Martin
Subject
PGCMLS Oral History
Description
An interview with Kofi Bart-Martin about his time working in the library system in Adult Services and with the Sojourner Truth Room
Creator
PGCMLS
Publisher
Special Collections Staff
Date
Dec 12, 2023
Rights
Format
Mp3
Language
English
Type
Digital audio
Coverage
200008
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Original Format
.wav
Duration
43:48 min
Transcription
roject: PGCMLS Oral History Project
Chapter: Kofi Bart-Martin Interview
Date: Mar 6, 2024
Participants:
Interviewer: Paul Moreno.
Interviewee: Kofi Bart-Martin.
00:05 Paul: Today is March 6th, 2024, at the Hyattsville Branch Library of the Prince George's County Memorial Library. My name is Paul Moreno, Librarian I, and I'm here with Kofi Bart-Martin, Library Associate II, at the Sojourner Truth Room. We are recording an interview with Kofi as part of the PGCMLS Oral History Project. Welcome Kofi.
00:27 Kofi: Thank you very much.
00:28 Paul: Ok, Let me ask you, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself, your roots, where you start to work, what are your preferred readings, whatever you want to say?
00:43 Kofi: Good. Thank you for that. I'm Kofi Bart-Martin. I was born in Ghana, and I have had so many incarnations. I went to school in Ghana, trained as a teacher, went back to the university, then came to the U.S. I was still very young. I didn't even have a single gray hair, came to the U.S. to study for graduate school, and originally I studied the religions: theology, philosophy and religion, so I was coming to get my PhD. and go back to teach in Ghana at the university, and then I got stuck in America doing all kinds of things. I taught in an Afrocentric school in Washington, D.C. I taught languages and social studies. I used to teach, there was a weekend program at Howard University Divinity School that I used to teach Hebrew scriptures to them. I've done my own business. I worked in distributing. I've done all kinds of things, and I kept going back to school. I end two Masters degree that I have paper to show for it but I did about three other Masters. I finished the coursework. I never did my comps to get my degree, and then I started a Ph.D. I didn't have money, so I abandoned it. But then I came into the library system in 2000, December 17th. They interviewed me at Old Hyattsville, which AO was, at the Old Hyattsville branch. They interviewed me, and about two hours later, they called me and offered me a position at the Oxon Hill branch to be part of the Sojourner Truth Room because of my background, and I said, I'd love it. Since then, I've been at the Oxon Hill branch and at the Sojourner Truth Room. So this is basically part of me.
03:31 Paul: Okay, so you have a lot of experience teaching in the university, so but can you tell us about your early experiences working in the library, or this is your first time working in a library?
03:43 Kofi: When I was a student in college in Ghana, I was a student librarian. An American librarian had come to reorganize our college library, and I was her assistant in helping reorganize the library. So when I came for the interview in 2000, I told them about that. They said, good, so you have library experience. And I said, yes. So basically, I had that experience before I even came to this country.
04:24 Paul: So you have to sort the collection over there, or something related to the catalog, or what was your experience?
04:30 Kofi: Yeah, Basically, we were, we were changing the catalog and system. Those who set it up had a different catalog and system, but our new librarian from America wanted to make it simpler, I think probably it was Library of Congress, but those days I wasn't so versatile with the Library of Congress system. But she wanted to make it an easier system, so she used Dewey, the decimal system. So that's my first encounter with Dewey, the decimal system, and so we were changing everything. We didn't have a computer, so everything we wrote down and then sorted the books according to that.
05:29 Paul: Yeah, I remember when I was in the college, it was the same. So it's more related to Dewey, but all the collection was in little cards that we need to go to the reference room and try to find what is the title, what is the order, and try to find the book that we are looking for in that little cards. Good. Ok, good. So, what is the most, what is the most challenging aspect of working in adult service?
05:57 Kofi: I love working in adult services. It's more fun that way because intellectually you can relate to people, but it also changes from branch to branch. When I came into the system, it was system-wide, so system needs came first. So they used to ask for subs from any library. Most people didn't want to come to the south, but I lived right here in Hyattsville, and so any time any of the northern branches needed a sub, and they brought a sub request to Oxon Hill, and I said, I'll go. And so by the time I was six months in the system, I had subbed at so many of the northern branches. And those days we used to have Staff Day in the evening, and it was a time of fellowship and eating. And so many people knew me, and so somebody said, you must have been in this library for a long time. And I said, no, I've only been here for six months. And she said, how do all these people know you? And I said, if I come to your branch, you'll know Kofi has been there. So, down at Oxon Hill and compared to somewhere like Bowie or Laurel or Hyattsville, because right now the Hyattsville area, many immigrants have moved to this area. But when I first moved to this area, down where I live, West Hyattsville, there were mostly white people who lived there. But then as the immigrant community started moving there, included a large Latino community, most of the white people moved away from the area. We used to have Koreans there. They even had a church in West Hyattsville, but they also sold their church and moved to Rockville. So that is the movement of the people. So those branches, in terms of the intellectual challenge, challenge you as a librarian to search for information through reference work, it was more exciting. Whereas down at Oxon Hill, it was not at that high level, but it was in terms of your ability to help customers seek the information and sort it out and help them move it to wherever they want to. So that's the difference between the system as I came into reach.
09:17 Paul: If someone is interested in working in libraries or adult services, what would you say to encourage them to start their career?
09:29 Kofi: It's often people have come to me and I say, how do you get a job here? And I said to them, well, never worry about the type of job. Do you have a college degree? Some will say, yes, that's good. If they don't have a college degree, some say, oh, I'm still going to college. I said, you know, we have, depending on our schedule, we have pages and we have clerical aides and we have clerical assistance. Those are high school basis for employment. But then if you have a college degree, and a library and library associate position is not open, you can still come through the clerical aid or clerical assistant position because when there are openings, they advertise it first internally. And if they don't find anything, then they advertise it externally. And so, and then in the meantime, know how to organize and if you have customer service experience, it helps in your interview because some of you taught class or worked in the daycare center dealing with people. It helps you interview that you can easily transfer those skills into the job place and be sharp on your feet as they interview you to answer those questions by adapting your experience to the question. Okay, so a few people who asked me, got jobs in the system.
11:29 Paul: What words of advice would you give someone who was starting out and wanting to follow the current path similar to yours, for example, to someone that immigrated or someone that wants to start a professional path here in America because it's difficult for people as an immigrant to start a professional path. So, tell us about your experience?
12:02 Kofi: Okay, when I came into the system, we had a few immigrants, but not that many. The manager at Beltsville was from the Caribbean. We had somebody from Ghana who was the circulation supervisor at Largo, and I was at the Oxon Hill branch at the Sojourner Truth Room. We were the only literally and then we started getting some Latinos and some Asians in the system. And so, it's all your willingness and openness to deal with people because people will infuriate you. Some people will insult you. Whenever new younger librarians come to the Oxon hill branch, they often ask me, people tell you the Oxon Hill branch is very difficult. How come you’ve survived there so long? And I say, it's not that it's a difficult place. It depends on you, the person, because you don't come to work to take things personally. I don't go to work to make friends. I'm friendly with everybody in the branch, but nobody is my friend that, oh, let's go and hang out here. No, but I'm very friendly with everybody in the system, they know me, people who have been here, they know me. And so, whenever they see Kofi is here, Kofi is here, they see it. And so, some people say, well, I say, how did they know you? And I said, I make them laugh. You see? And it is not easy coming in and just trying to throw your weight about. You have to be humble to learn, one, If you are humble to learn, now, computers came after I had grown up. I learned people over the years when I'm teaching people, when we do the computer classes for people. And they asked me, how do you know so much about computers? Did you study computers? No. But those days, when the kids come to the library, between 2002 and 2005, I spent a year and a half at Bladensburg, and six months at Glenarden, and when they were renovating the Oxon Hill branch. And kids will come and I'll be walking around, and I see them doing something, and I go, how did you get there? And they show me, I learned a lot about computers from kids. And then, as soon as I walk away from there, I go and sit at the staff computer, but nobody is coming. And I say, okay. Then I take notes. That's how I got to know a lot about computers that people often think I’m a computer geek. No. I learned a lot of people watching people asking questions. I say, so that's basically some of the things that if you come, you are humble enough, and don't think you know it all. From others, ask for help. Always ask for help. It won't kill you. It will never kill you to ask for help. And then if somebody knows more than you know, I acknowledge them, it's okay. Yeah, no, you don't. So can you help me? And I think you'll make it if you do it that way.
16:09 Paul: Yeah. It's a learning experience. It never ends. So yeah, we learn from the patrons and from the kids. The best teacher is the experience, definitely. You have worked for quite a while with a special collection called Sojourner Truth Room. Would you tell us about this collection and your experience working with it?
16:38 Kofi: Yeah, the Sojourner Truth Room was one of the four collections we used to have. They let me start from the north. Bowie had a special collection on horses. Greenbelt had a special collection on planned communities because Greenbelt was one of the first planned communities after the Second World War, when the soldiers were coming back and they needed to build houses. Hyattsville had the Maryland Room, and Oxon Hill Library was built in the mid-60s, and that was the height of the civil rights movement and the Black and Proud. Now, the grounds where the Oxon Hill Library stands, there used to be a school, a black school, called the, actually it was a Negro school, those days it's called a Negro school, called the Sojourner Truth School. Post Brown versus Board of Education, when integration came, most of those Black schools closed down and they were integrated into the majority white schools. But the county decided to place a library in that location because it was also the height of the civil rights. They decided to put a collection on African-American life and thoughts and name it after, the collection after Sojourner Truth because the Sojourner Truth School used to be at that, leaving some of the old wall of the school were left in the building of the new library. And so we have people who come thinking it's all about Sojourner Truth, and I explain it to them that it's not about Sojourner Truth, but because of the school we named the collection. It wasn't a small room, smaller than this room. But when council members, they got us, they helped us to get a grant and the money to renovate the branch, they would decide to renovate and have the Sojourner Truth Wing. The new wing, I don't even know, a lot of the staff don't know that it's called the Sojourner Truth Wing, but the new wing is the Sojourner Truth Wing. So we have the Sojourner Truth Room. We originally were going to have our staff through staff area there. After we renovated, so you go into Polaris*, it looks like it's a separate branch. And so we had a staff of four. Right now I'm the only staff person left in the truth room. 2001, I joined the *Truth Room. We were only two. We had a huge budget. They gave the branch staff $20,000 dollars a year. And we used to order most of the materials. Then as the money got tighter, we went to $10,000 a year. Then we went to $5,000 and went to $1,000 and now we have zero. Materials Management* orders books, and these days they don't even order any books for us. So that is the arc of the change we have experienced. But it's been an exciting time working in the Truth Room. I've done so many things. Genealogy workshops that I've done, I've had people come in and do talks about DNA. I've done like a reading marathon of the Truth Room materials, people come and they read only a few pages of their favorite. So many things. And then when they decided to add the Prince George’s incorporated towns, African American incorporated towns, we did oral interviews of the people, some of the people in those incorporated towns to learn about those incorporated towns. They also added a STEM section to the traditional Truth Room. That is we did the Hip Hop Architecture. We have got people to come and help us. And the young people who may be interested in architecture from the high schools, middle school and high school came and they went through the Hip Hop Architecture. I'm trying to find resources to redo the Hip Hop Architecture phase two, one of these days, if I find the money.
22:07 Paul: Good, interesting. In your perspective, what is the coolest item in the Sojourner Truth Room collection?
22:15 Kofi: Gosh, I can't just mention just one thing, but for instance, during the times of slavery, when the master gave a slave his freedom or her freedom, they were given what is called Manumission Paper. We have a slave's Manumission Paper that somebody in New York donated to us. So it's been put on a glass, it's in a locked cabinet. So and then we have a collection of music from slavery times to modern times. And recently, we've got the Grand Piano move to the Sojourner Truth Room. So I'm working on having some piano recitation by musicians as a program with the music in the Truth room, not just any music, but the sheet music in the Truth room. I've already got one retired concert pianist who's willing to do that for me. And we have a good collection of slavery and the slave trade. We have, in the 400s, we have a good collection of African American vernacular. And we have a good collection of poetry and drama. So the Truth Room has almost everything that is exciting is then in a locked cabinet, we have some very rare books, some are from the, they are fragile, but some are from the 1700s in the Truth Room. So if you come there, you will get, you will never be disappointed, you'll get excited to see the material we have, and we are always willing to help you discover the materials we have.
24:42 Paul: In your opinion, what makes the Sojourner Truth collection important in our communities?
24:52 Kofi: Definitely, the Sojourner Truth Room is very important in terms of the collection and what it contains. It chronicles the earliest African American history. We have, I mean, some books, if you know the transatlantic slave trade, and several people who ended up in Euro-Britain and in the Caribbean and South America passed through Ghana, what the so-called slave castles, philosophically I call the captive castes because when they were the castles, they were not slaves, they were captives. They ended up as slaves when they entered this country and the Caribbean and South America. And so I've even bought a few books when I've gone to Ghana and donated to the Truth Room I sent to my friend and they catalog it and we put it in the collection. So one can find all those things. I've been lobbying for more than 10 years that the room should be changed to an African heritage collection, so that because we have Afro-Latinos, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Canadians, we have the largest number of Africans who are not on the continent in Brazil. And so it will be great. There's a library in New York, called the Schomburg. Schomburg is an African heritage library. If we could do the same for the Sojourner Truth Room, then we can also collect the historical materials of all these hyphenated African people who are in the diaspora. It will be great to move the Sojourner Truth Room to that place. But as even as it is, in terms of the African American heritage, it covers a large swath of information from the African American information, religion, social sciences, language, the 500s, applied sciences, 600 business, 700 arts and crafts, 800 literature, 900 history, and the biographies. So we cover all the gamut of the Dewey Decimal system. Almost everything we have. Then we have very rare materials. We have some artifacts. We have a collection of African American commemorative stamps that I've been pushing to get a display case for a long time so I could display some of those. So it is probably, and it's also the largest special collection in the county. Okay. Two, the Pratt has an African American collection and then the Sojourner Truth Room. I think those are the only African American collections in Maryland. And so, it makes it significant that those of us in this southern part. But even we often get calls from outside, I've taken reference questions from Indiana, from Texas, from Wisconsin, from Illinois. The people looking for information and now copy, scan it for them. These days with email, I'll email the oldest. I'll tell them I'll send it to you and you send me the postage payment and people will actually send the postage payment. So we don't even serve just Prince George's County. We serve across the bridge to Virginia, Northern Virginia, District of Columbia, and other parts of Maryland and other states. So I think it's still a very important collection that if we were to get more money, I hope we can continue to buy books and resources, databases for the collection, and probably continue to have a dedicated staff, if we wouldn't have the four we had, at least two or three who fully take charge of the Sojourner Truth African-American collection, or if it becomes the African heritage collection too, I'll be so glad.
30:22 Paul: Good. And based on that, so can you tell us about a special program or activity that you had led in the library related to the African American collection?
30:38 Kofi: Oh, yes. I alluded to some before. For instance, when I did genealogy and DNA as an integrated system, I got a professor from University in Virginia who had done his genealogy and traced his ancestry to his mother, grandmother or great-great-great-grandmother because her great-great-grandmother passed through Canada. Canada, they have more accurate slave records than the U.S. So because after tracing, they discovered and so she discovered the ship, exact ship her great-grandmother came on. And so his knowledge and skills and this doing that helped a lot of my patrons who came to the genealogy. Genealogy workshops used to be the most favorite because people keep asking me and I said I'm going to plan a new one. When the COVID came, it messed up a lot of the planning because I had some that were supposed to come but hopefully later this year I may do at least one before this year is out. I've had choral groups come and perform for the branch including there's a very big youth choir from Ghana. They were traveling in this country and made arrangements with the friends of the library to sponsor them to come and they came to perform Ghanian choral music. I've had another Ghanian, about two different Ghanian choral groups perform at the library. I've had a Cameroonian group come and perform at the library. So we've had fun with our program. Not everything is basically intellectual. We used to have done some writing projects. They brought in a part of our online thing to help people write. So I did a workshop to help people learn the system and we tried our hands up on writing but that system didn't stay long and it took it away. So these are some of the stuff that I've done for the…
34:00 Paul: Wow, a lot of programming. Good, good. So you have a good relationship with your embassy and with another country's embassies to bring some cultural choral performances. Or they are part of the community close to the library?
34:24 Kofi: No, the embassy is all the way in the northwest DC but when they have had events that they open it to outside, they have always publicized the information at the branch so that people, some of our customers have gone to those events and some of the staff. In the past, I've also done during the time of the COVID. In 2019 was the 400th year of the first Africans who were brought from West Africa to North America. And so our president of Ghana declared it the year of return, the 400th anniversary so that Africans in the diaspora can come back home. And so some Africans from the Washington area went, African Americans. So I interviewed two of them for the system as a program during the COVID when we were closed but we were still working online. So it's one of the interviews I did for the system and it's online. And in the past, people have always expressed interest in African Americans so I've taken people on tour to Ghana several times since 1996 but only two staff persons have gone with me on tour. They were both branch managers. Roy used to be the branch, was a branch manager at Bladensburg and at Largo, at Oxon Hill, at Laurel. And I think Roy was also at Fairmount Heights. He was branch manager until he retired when they brought in the area manager system.
36:51 Paul: Okay. Can you tell us about a special memory or anecdote in your works?
37:01 Kofi: My first branch manager was probably the best manager one could have. And she used to say it when I came in and the staff meeting and she would tell the staff, don't be afraid to take risks. If you make a mistake, we will discuss it to learn from it. Evelyn Tchiyuka, she became the acting director for several years until she retired. And so that has always been at the back of my mind and so when new customers come and I've helped train a lot of our new staff, especially everybody who has been at Oxon Hill, I have trained them in the Truth Room procedures and I always told them the same. My first branch manager told me, don't be afraid to take any risk. If you make a mistake, we will learn from it.
38:39 Paul: Good. Wise words. In your perspective, what makes PGCMLS libraries different from other libraries, if anything, or what makes libraries here in America different from libraries in Ghana or in your experience as a teacher? What is the most interesting thing about the PGCMLS libraries?
39:07 Kofi: When I've taken, when Roy went with me and Faye went with me to Ghana, I took them to see the public library and the books we were weeding because they've been on the shelf for two years or something and they saw encyclopedias on the shelf in the library in the second larger city in Ghana, Kumasi. And they both, I took them on separate trips but they saw and they both said, oh gosh, if we had money to ship books, all these books we get rid out of because the books were ancient from the, they were, and there was an encyclopedia from the late 50s. You see, and in the 2000s when I took them on the tour. So these were the information in it totally useless but they were guarding it. So that's in terms of the, my own hometown in Ghana, the, we have one central library, the central library which is like the original library. It's as big as Glenarden. Have you ever been to Glenarden?
40:47 Paul: Yes, yes.
40:48 Kofi: So it's as big as Glenarden library. It's not, you see, but that's the original library which is like equivalent to what, Pratt. And the books there, the shelves there are like the weeded collection at Oxon Hill right now. And so they are hungry for learning and books. People in Ghana say young people don't want to learn anymore. People there are really hungry except when the money is there, the books are not there. Excuse me, and if you found the materials you mean to ship to them, the books, how to, the money to ship is the problem. Other than that, we could easily buy, like even in our bookstore, because when they put the books in the bookstore, they are very, a dollar for the hardbacks and the paperbacks, 34 a dollar. If I found money enough, I could buy a lot too. But if I bought them, even the shipping, that's the problem. And so, but even in our own county, each library has its character. I worked in all the branches except the prisons. And I go to each branch. There's no branch as exciting as Oxon Hill, I tell people. That's why I've stayed there all these years. But I've been to libraries in Montgomery County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, and Northern Virginia. And they are all unique in their own ways because of the area, the funding, and the clientele.
42:48 Paul: Okay, so finally, is there anything that we didn't ask you about today that you want to share, some relevant experience we didn't get to?
43:00 Kofi: Hmm. I think we've covered a lot. And so, people who will listen to this, will take a gem of wisdom and knowledge out of it. And if it doesn't happen, it's not the interviewer. It's me. And maybe my brain fogged up, didn't recall a lot of things, but I think it's been a good time together.
43:39 Paul: Okay, thank you for being with us, to share your experience with us, your personal history. Okay, bye-bye.
43:45 Kofi: Thank you, and you're welcome.
Chapter: Kofi Bart-Martin Interview
Date: Mar 6, 2024
Participants:
Interviewer: Paul Moreno.
Interviewee: Kofi Bart-Martin.
00:05 Paul: Today is March 6th, 2024, at the Hyattsville Branch Library of the Prince George's County Memorial Library. My name is Paul Moreno, Librarian I, and I'm here with Kofi Bart-Martin, Library Associate II, at the Sojourner Truth Room. We are recording an interview with Kofi as part of the PGCMLS Oral History Project. Welcome Kofi.
00:27 Kofi: Thank you very much.
00:28 Paul: Ok, Let me ask you, could you introduce yourself and tell us a little about yourself, your roots, where you start to work, what are your preferred readings, whatever you want to say?
00:43 Kofi: Good. Thank you for that. I'm Kofi Bart-Martin. I was born in Ghana, and I have had so many incarnations. I went to school in Ghana, trained as a teacher, went back to the university, then came to the U.S. I was still very young. I didn't even have a single gray hair, came to the U.S. to study for graduate school, and originally I studied the religions: theology, philosophy and religion, so I was coming to get my PhD. and go back to teach in Ghana at the university, and then I got stuck in America doing all kinds of things. I taught in an Afrocentric school in Washington, D.C. I taught languages and social studies. I used to teach, there was a weekend program at Howard University Divinity School that I used to teach Hebrew scriptures to them. I've done my own business. I worked in distributing. I've done all kinds of things, and I kept going back to school. I end two Masters degree that I have paper to show for it but I did about three other Masters. I finished the coursework. I never did my comps to get my degree, and then I started a Ph.D. I didn't have money, so I abandoned it. But then I came into the library system in 2000, December 17th. They interviewed me at Old Hyattsville, which AO was, at the Old Hyattsville branch. They interviewed me, and about two hours later, they called me and offered me a position at the Oxon Hill branch to be part of the Sojourner Truth Room because of my background, and I said, I'd love it. Since then, I've been at the Oxon Hill branch and at the Sojourner Truth Room. So this is basically part of me.
03:31 Paul: Okay, so you have a lot of experience teaching in the university, so but can you tell us about your early experiences working in the library, or this is your first time working in a library?
03:43 Kofi: When I was a student in college in Ghana, I was a student librarian. An American librarian had come to reorganize our college library, and I was her assistant in helping reorganize the library. So when I came for the interview in 2000, I told them about that. They said, good, so you have library experience. And I said, yes. So basically, I had that experience before I even came to this country.
04:24 Paul: So you have to sort the collection over there, or something related to the catalog, or what was your experience?
04:30 Kofi: Yeah, Basically, we were, we were changing the catalog and system. Those who set it up had a different catalog and system, but our new librarian from America wanted to make it simpler, I think probably it was Library of Congress, but those days I wasn't so versatile with the Library of Congress system. But she wanted to make it an easier system, so she used Dewey, the decimal system. So that's my first encounter with Dewey, the decimal system, and so we were changing everything. We didn't have a computer, so everything we wrote down and then sorted the books according to that.
05:29 Paul: Yeah, I remember when I was in the college, it was the same. So it's more related to Dewey, but all the collection was in little cards that we need to go to the reference room and try to find what is the title, what is the order, and try to find the book that we are looking for in that little cards. Good. Ok, good. So, what is the most, what is the most challenging aspect of working in adult service?
05:57 Kofi: I love working in adult services. It's more fun that way because intellectually you can relate to people, but it also changes from branch to branch. When I came into the system, it was system-wide, so system needs came first. So they used to ask for subs from any library. Most people didn't want to come to the south, but I lived right here in Hyattsville, and so any time any of the northern branches needed a sub, and they brought a sub request to Oxon Hill, and I said, I'll go. And so by the time I was six months in the system, I had subbed at so many of the northern branches. And those days we used to have Staff Day in the evening, and it was a time of fellowship and eating. And so many people knew me, and so somebody said, you must have been in this library for a long time. And I said, no, I've only been here for six months. And she said, how do all these people know you? And I said, if I come to your branch, you'll know Kofi has been there. So, down at Oxon Hill and compared to somewhere like Bowie or Laurel or Hyattsville, because right now the Hyattsville area, many immigrants have moved to this area. But when I first moved to this area, down where I live, West Hyattsville, there were mostly white people who lived there. But then as the immigrant community started moving there, included a large Latino community, most of the white people moved away from the area. We used to have Koreans there. They even had a church in West Hyattsville, but they also sold their church and moved to Rockville. So that is the movement of the people. So those branches, in terms of the intellectual challenge, challenge you as a librarian to search for information through reference work, it was more exciting. Whereas down at Oxon Hill, it was not at that high level, but it was in terms of your ability to help customers seek the information and sort it out and help them move it to wherever they want to. So that's the difference between the system as I came into reach.
09:17 Paul: If someone is interested in working in libraries or adult services, what would you say to encourage them to start their career?
09:29 Kofi: It's often people have come to me and I say, how do you get a job here? And I said to them, well, never worry about the type of job. Do you have a college degree? Some will say, yes, that's good. If they don't have a college degree, some say, oh, I'm still going to college. I said, you know, we have, depending on our schedule, we have pages and we have clerical aides and we have clerical assistance. Those are high school basis for employment. But then if you have a college degree, and a library and library associate position is not open, you can still come through the clerical aid or clerical assistant position because when there are openings, they advertise it first internally. And if they don't find anything, then they advertise it externally. And so, and then in the meantime, know how to organize and if you have customer service experience, it helps in your interview because some of you taught class or worked in the daycare center dealing with people. It helps you interview that you can easily transfer those skills into the job place and be sharp on your feet as they interview you to answer those questions by adapting your experience to the question. Okay, so a few people who asked me, got jobs in the system.
11:29 Paul: What words of advice would you give someone who was starting out and wanting to follow the current path similar to yours, for example, to someone that immigrated or someone that wants to start a professional path here in America because it's difficult for people as an immigrant to start a professional path. So, tell us about your experience?
12:02 Kofi: Okay, when I came into the system, we had a few immigrants, but not that many. The manager at Beltsville was from the Caribbean. We had somebody from Ghana who was the circulation supervisor at Largo, and I was at the Oxon Hill branch at the Sojourner Truth Room. We were the only literally and then we started getting some Latinos and some Asians in the system. And so, it's all your willingness and openness to deal with people because people will infuriate you. Some people will insult you. Whenever new younger librarians come to the Oxon hill branch, they often ask me, people tell you the Oxon Hill branch is very difficult. How come you’ve survived there so long? And I say, it's not that it's a difficult place. It depends on you, the person, because you don't come to work to take things personally. I don't go to work to make friends. I'm friendly with everybody in the branch, but nobody is my friend that, oh, let's go and hang out here. No, but I'm very friendly with everybody in the system, they know me, people who have been here, they know me. And so, whenever they see Kofi is here, Kofi is here, they see it. And so, some people say, well, I say, how did they know you? And I said, I make them laugh. You see? And it is not easy coming in and just trying to throw your weight about. You have to be humble to learn, one, If you are humble to learn, now, computers came after I had grown up. I learned people over the years when I'm teaching people, when we do the computer classes for people. And they asked me, how do you know so much about computers? Did you study computers? No. But those days, when the kids come to the library, between 2002 and 2005, I spent a year and a half at Bladensburg, and six months at Glenarden, and when they were renovating the Oxon Hill branch. And kids will come and I'll be walking around, and I see them doing something, and I go, how did you get there? And they show me, I learned a lot about computers from kids. And then, as soon as I walk away from there, I go and sit at the staff computer, but nobody is coming. And I say, okay. Then I take notes. That's how I got to know a lot about computers that people often think I’m a computer geek. No. I learned a lot of people watching people asking questions. I say, so that's basically some of the things that if you come, you are humble enough, and don't think you know it all. From others, ask for help. Always ask for help. It won't kill you. It will never kill you to ask for help. And then if somebody knows more than you know, I acknowledge them, it's okay. Yeah, no, you don't. So can you help me? And I think you'll make it if you do it that way.
16:09 Paul: Yeah. It's a learning experience. It never ends. So yeah, we learn from the patrons and from the kids. The best teacher is the experience, definitely. You have worked for quite a while with a special collection called Sojourner Truth Room. Would you tell us about this collection and your experience working with it?
16:38 Kofi: Yeah, the Sojourner Truth Room was one of the four collections we used to have. They let me start from the north. Bowie had a special collection on horses. Greenbelt had a special collection on planned communities because Greenbelt was one of the first planned communities after the Second World War, when the soldiers were coming back and they needed to build houses. Hyattsville had the Maryland Room, and Oxon Hill Library was built in the mid-60s, and that was the height of the civil rights movement and the Black and Proud. Now, the grounds where the Oxon Hill Library stands, there used to be a school, a black school, called the, actually it was a Negro school, those days it's called a Negro school, called the Sojourner Truth School. Post Brown versus Board of Education, when integration came, most of those Black schools closed down and they were integrated into the majority white schools. But the county decided to place a library in that location because it was also the height of the civil rights. They decided to put a collection on African-American life and thoughts and name it after, the collection after Sojourner Truth because the Sojourner Truth School used to be at that, leaving some of the old wall of the school were left in the building of the new library. And so we have people who come thinking it's all about Sojourner Truth, and I explain it to them that it's not about Sojourner Truth, but because of the school we named the collection. It wasn't a small room, smaller than this room. But when council members, they got us, they helped us to get a grant and the money to renovate the branch, they would decide to renovate and have the Sojourner Truth Wing. The new wing, I don't even know, a lot of the staff don't know that it's called the Sojourner Truth Wing, but the new wing is the Sojourner Truth Wing. So we have the Sojourner Truth Room. We originally were going to have our staff through staff area there. After we renovated, so you go into Polaris*, it looks like it's a separate branch. And so we had a staff of four. Right now I'm the only staff person left in the truth room. 2001, I joined the *Truth Room. We were only two. We had a huge budget. They gave the branch staff $20,000 dollars a year. And we used to order most of the materials. Then as the money got tighter, we went to $10,000 a year. Then we went to $5,000 and went to $1,000 and now we have zero. Materials Management* orders books, and these days they don't even order any books for us. So that is the arc of the change we have experienced. But it's been an exciting time working in the Truth Room. I've done so many things. Genealogy workshops that I've done, I've had people come in and do talks about DNA. I've done like a reading marathon of the Truth Room materials, people come and they read only a few pages of their favorite. So many things. And then when they decided to add the Prince George’s incorporated towns, African American incorporated towns, we did oral interviews of the people, some of the people in those incorporated towns to learn about those incorporated towns. They also added a STEM section to the traditional Truth Room. That is we did the Hip Hop Architecture. We have got people to come and help us. And the young people who may be interested in architecture from the high schools, middle school and high school came and they went through the Hip Hop Architecture. I'm trying to find resources to redo the Hip Hop Architecture phase two, one of these days, if I find the money.
22:07 Paul: Good, interesting. In your perspective, what is the coolest item in the Sojourner Truth Room collection?
22:15 Kofi: Gosh, I can't just mention just one thing, but for instance, during the times of slavery, when the master gave a slave his freedom or her freedom, they were given what is called Manumission Paper. We have a slave's Manumission Paper that somebody in New York donated to us. So it's been put on a glass, it's in a locked cabinet. So and then we have a collection of music from slavery times to modern times. And recently, we've got the Grand Piano move to the Sojourner Truth Room. So I'm working on having some piano recitation by musicians as a program with the music in the Truth room, not just any music, but the sheet music in the Truth room. I've already got one retired concert pianist who's willing to do that for me. And we have a good collection of slavery and the slave trade. We have, in the 400s, we have a good collection of African American vernacular. And we have a good collection of poetry and drama. So the Truth Room has almost everything that is exciting is then in a locked cabinet, we have some very rare books, some are from the, they are fragile, but some are from the 1700s in the Truth Room. So if you come there, you will get, you will never be disappointed, you'll get excited to see the material we have, and we are always willing to help you discover the materials we have.
24:42 Paul: In your opinion, what makes the Sojourner Truth collection important in our communities?
24:52 Kofi: Definitely, the Sojourner Truth Room is very important in terms of the collection and what it contains. It chronicles the earliest African American history. We have, I mean, some books, if you know the transatlantic slave trade, and several people who ended up in Euro-Britain and in the Caribbean and South America passed through Ghana, what the so-called slave castles, philosophically I call the captive castes because when they were the castles, they were not slaves, they were captives. They ended up as slaves when they entered this country and the Caribbean and South America. And so I've even bought a few books when I've gone to Ghana and donated to the Truth Room I sent to my friend and they catalog it and we put it in the collection. So one can find all those things. I've been lobbying for more than 10 years that the room should be changed to an African heritage collection, so that because we have Afro-Latinos, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Canadians, we have the largest number of Africans who are not on the continent in Brazil. And so it will be great. There's a library in New York, called the Schomburg. Schomburg is an African heritage library. If we could do the same for the Sojourner Truth Room, then we can also collect the historical materials of all these hyphenated African people who are in the diaspora. It will be great to move the Sojourner Truth Room to that place. But as even as it is, in terms of the African American heritage, it covers a large swath of information from the African American information, religion, social sciences, language, the 500s, applied sciences, 600 business, 700 arts and crafts, 800 literature, 900 history, and the biographies. So we cover all the gamut of the Dewey Decimal system. Almost everything we have. Then we have very rare materials. We have some artifacts. We have a collection of African American commemorative stamps that I've been pushing to get a display case for a long time so I could display some of those. So it is probably, and it's also the largest special collection in the county. Okay. Two, the Pratt has an African American collection and then the Sojourner Truth Room. I think those are the only African American collections in Maryland. And so, it makes it significant that those of us in this southern part. But even we often get calls from outside, I've taken reference questions from Indiana, from Texas, from Wisconsin, from Illinois. The people looking for information and now copy, scan it for them. These days with email, I'll email the oldest. I'll tell them I'll send it to you and you send me the postage payment and people will actually send the postage payment. So we don't even serve just Prince George's County. We serve across the bridge to Virginia, Northern Virginia, District of Columbia, and other parts of Maryland and other states. So I think it's still a very important collection that if we were to get more money, I hope we can continue to buy books and resources, databases for the collection, and probably continue to have a dedicated staff, if we wouldn't have the four we had, at least two or three who fully take charge of the Sojourner Truth African-American collection, or if it becomes the African heritage collection too, I'll be so glad.
30:22 Paul: Good. And based on that, so can you tell us about a special program or activity that you had led in the library related to the African American collection?
30:38 Kofi: Oh, yes. I alluded to some before. For instance, when I did genealogy and DNA as an integrated system, I got a professor from University in Virginia who had done his genealogy and traced his ancestry to his mother, grandmother or great-great-great-grandmother because her great-great-grandmother passed through Canada. Canada, they have more accurate slave records than the U.S. So because after tracing, they discovered and so she discovered the ship, exact ship her great-grandmother came on. And so his knowledge and skills and this doing that helped a lot of my patrons who came to the genealogy. Genealogy workshops used to be the most favorite because people keep asking me and I said I'm going to plan a new one. When the COVID came, it messed up a lot of the planning because I had some that were supposed to come but hopefully later this year I may do at least one before this year is out. I've had choral groups come and perform for the branch including there's a very big youth choir from Ghana. They were traveling in this country and made arrangements with the friends of the library to sponsor them to come and they came to perform Ghanian choral music. I've had another Ghanian, about two different Ghanian choral groups perform at the library. I've had a Cameroonian group come and perform at the library. So we've had fun with our program. Not everything is basically intellectual. We used to have done some writing projects. They brought in a part of our online thing to help people write. So I did a workshop to help people learn the system and we tried our hands up on writing but that system didn't stay long and it took it away. So these are some of the stuff that I've done for the…
34:00 Paul: Wow, a lot of programming. Good, good. So you have a good relationship with your embassy and with another country's embassies to bring some cultural choral performances. Or they are part of the community close to the library?
34:24 Kofi: No, the embassy is all the way in the northwest DC but when they have had events that they open it to outside, they have always publicized the information at the branch so that people, some of our customers have gone to those events and some of the staff. In the past, I've also done during the time of the COVID. In 2019 was the 400th year of the first Africans who were brought from West Africa to North America. And so our president of Ghana declared it the year of return, the 400th anniversary so that Africans in the diaspora can come back home. And so some Africans from the Washington area went, African Americans. So I interviewed two of them for the system as a program during the COVID when we were closed but we were still working online. So it's one of the interviews I did for the system and it's online. And in the past, people have always expressed interest in African Americans so I've taken people on tour to Ghana several times since 1996 but only two staff persons have gone with me on tour. They were both branch managers. Roy used to be the branch, was a branch manager at Bladensburg and at Largo, at Oxon Hill, at Laurel. And I think Roy was also at Fairmount Heights. He was branch manager until he retired when they brought in the area manager system.
36:51 Paul: Okay. Can you tell us about a special memory or anecdote in your works?
37:01 Kofi: My first branch manager was probably the best manager one could have. And she used to say it when I came in and the staff meeting and she would tell the staff, don't be afraid to take risks. If you make a mistake, we will discuss it to learn from it. Evelyn Tchiyuka, she became the acting director for several years until she retired. And so that has always been at the back of my mind and so when new customers come and I've helped train a lot of our new staff, especially everybody who has been at Oxon Hill, I have trained them in the Truth Room procedures and I always told them the same. My first branch manager told me, don't be afraid to take any risk. If you make a mistake, we will learn from it.
38:39 Paul: Good. Wise words. In your perspective, what makes PGCMLS libraries different from other libraries, if anything, or what makes libraries here in America different from libraries in Ghana or in your experience as a teacher? What is the most interesting thing about the PGCMLS libraries?
39:07 Kofi: When I've taken, when Roy went with me and Faye went with me to Ghana, I took them to see the public library and the books we were weeding because they've been on the shelf for two years or something and they saw encyclopedias on the shelf in the library in the second larger city in Ghana, Kumasi. And they both, I took them on separate trips but they saw and they both said, oh gosh, if we had money to ship books, all these books we get rid out of because the books were ancient from the, they were, and there was an encyclopedia from the late 50s. You see, and in the 2000s when I took them on the tour. So these were the information in it totally useless but they were guarding it. So that's in terms of the, my own hometown in Ghana, the, we have one central library, the central library which is like the original library. It's as big as Glenarden. Have you ever been to Glenarden?
40:47 Paul: Yes, yes.
40:48 Kofi: So it's as big as Glenarden library. It's not, you see, but that's the original library which is like equivalent to what, Pratt. And the books there, the shelves there are like the weeded collection at Oxon Hill right now. And so they are hungry for learning and books. People in Ghana say young people don't want to learn anymore. People there are really hungry except when the money is there, the books are not there. Excuse me, and if you found the materials you mean to ship to them, the books, how to, the money to ship is the problem. Other than that, we could easily buy, like even in our bookstore, because when they put the books in the bookstore, they are very, a dollar for the hardbacks and the paperbacks, 34 a dollar. If I found money enough, I could buy a lot too. But if I bought them, even the shipping, that's the problem. And so, but even in our own county, each library has its character. I worked in all the branches except the prisons. And I go to each branch. There's no branch as exciting as Oxon Hill, I tell people. That's why I've stayed there all these years. But I've been to libraries in Montgomery County, Anne Arundel County, Howard County, and Northern Virginia. And they are all unique in their own ways because of the area, the funding, and the clientele.
42:48 Paul: Okay, so finally, is there anything that we didn't ask you about today that you want to share, some relevant experience we didn't get to?
43:00 Kofi: Hmm. I think we've covered a lot. And so, people who will listen to this, will take a gem of wisdom and knowledge out of it. And if it doesn't happen, it's not the interviewer. It's me. And maybe my brain fogged up, didn't recall a lot of things, but I think it's been a good time together.
43:39 Paul: Okay, thank you for being with us, to share your experience with us, your personal history. Okay, bye-bye.
43:45 Kofi: Thank you, and you're welcome.
Interviewer
Paul Moreno
Interviewee
Kofi Bart-Martin
Location
Hyattsville Branch LIbrary
Citation
PGCMLS, “Kofi Bart-Martin,” PGCMLS Special Collections, accessed February 11, 2026, https://pgcmls.omeka.net/items/show/37.