We librarians are easily exasperated by our patrons. There are entire online communities devoted to anti-patron sentiments, such as The Society for Librarians who Say MotherF***er and Library Workers Against Stupid Patrons. I’ll admit I read these blogs daily, and have on occasion contributed to them. While some patrons really are horrible and toxic, most are simply people who are not familiar with the library, through no fault of their own. I think that many librarians have lost the ability to empathize with the people we serve.

We get a lot of inane questions like, “Where is the bathroom?” and “Where are your DVDs?” The answers seem so obvious to us. Everything is exactly where it has always been, not to mention that there are squillions of helpful signs to point the disoriented patron in the right direction. Do we think patrons are numbskulls? Many times, yes. In my opinion, this is partly due to the fact that we don’t view them as individuals, we see them as branches of the same entity. Surely if we tell one patron where the New Fiction Section is in the morning, we shouldn’t have to tell another patron the same thing in the afternoon. Didn’t they get the memo?

I think we lose empathy for our patrons because we forget what it is like to be one of them. I don’t know many librarians who visit other libraries as a patron. To see how they do things at that library, sure. But to check out a novel? Use the internet? Sit around and read? Of course not. We can do that at work.

Recently I was forced to be a library patron. It was Tax Day, and I had yet to make photocopies of my W-2s to send in with my forms. Unfortunately, it was also my day off from work, and it didn’t make sense to make the 20-mile round trip commute to use the copying machine when there was another library (that likely had its own copier) less than two miles away. So what did I do? I went to my neighborhood library for the very first time.

I walked through the doors and scanned the area hoping the photocopier would be obvious, but after a few seconds I gave up and went up to the information desk. When it was my turn, I politely asked if the library had a copier. The staff person just pointed wordlessly over my right shoulder. Oh. It was right behind me.

But it was not the same kind of photocopier that I was used to! It was completely different! The staff person had to leave her desk and (patiently, to her credit) show me where to insert my coins and where the copies would come out.

Thoroughly embarrassed, I quickly made the necessary copies and left. Spending forty hours a week in one library did not mean that I could find my way around any library. Who knew? Taken from my home turf, I was just like the people who make me want to tear my hair out on a daily basis.

To serve the community well, library employees need to be library patrons too. The extra time and effort will be worth the understanding we will gain. Maybe then there will be less fodder for angry, patron-dissing blogs.

Posted by: Eva Mays

Library patrons are a very diverse bunch. Stand any two next to each other, and nine times out of ten the only thing they will have in common is that they both patronize the library. The characteristic that varies the most is age—most libraries profess to serve infants, senior citizens, and every age group in between. In my time as a librarian, however, I have noticed that “Generation Y”, or people between the ages of 18 and 30, make up a very small amount of the people I serve every day.

It’s not that twenty-somethings aren’t using the library. In fact, some research suggests that they are more likely than the older generations to use library services to find solutions for problems they encounter in life. What concerns me is that, while they may drop by for help finding a job or to pick up tax forms, they aren’t using the library for its most basic service: access to free books.

As an eighties-baby myself, I see this in my personal life as well as my professional life. None of my friends get their reading material from the library. My own sisters, avid readers all, buy their books at chain stores and politely refuse when I offer to teach them to use Inter Library Loan! Not only that, but I am convinced that twenty-somethings who read for recreation are in the minority. This is probably because those who are in college view reading as a chore (I know I did), and those who are just entering the work force are too busy submitting resumes and worrying about paying off student loans to spend time on any luxuries, least of all cozying up with the latest NY Times Bestseller.

I like to argue that checking out books from the library not only saves the environment, but it also saves the library user a good chunk of change. I try to keep track of how much I read with GoodReads.com, and recently I thought it would be a fun experiment to add up all the books I had read in the last year and calculate the amount of many it would have cost me if I had bought them at Barnes & Noble instead of checking them out from the library. I would have spent about $1,300 on my reading habit last year alone. Yikes.

My husband thinks this a terrible argument; because as a librarian, I a) am required to read more than the average person, and b) as I work in a library, I have easy access to library services like interlibrary loan and am free of hassles like late fines. I simply have easier access and more incentive to read for fun than the average person my age. While I’ll admit he is right on that point, I won’t back down from my stance that my peers are simply not reading for fun, and when they do they are purchasing books with money that could be better spent elsewhere (i.e. those pesky student loans).

I think it is important for libraries to market more to the twenty-something crowd. Libraries tend to pay a lot of attention to the extremes—early literacy and services to senior citizens. All age groups both need and deserve a daily dose of free reading, and we need to find ways to convince Generation Y to take advantage of what their public library offers!  

Posted by: Eva Mays

How much is a Master of Library and Information Science worth?

In my opinion, not much more than the vellum the diploma is printed on.

Here’s the thing: When I encounter a problem or challenge in my work life, I don’t close my eyes and try to recall a reading or lecture I imbibed while in graduate school. Instead, I call on my on-the-job experience or consult with co-workers and peers. Library Science is not something that can be taught in a lecture hall; it can only be learned in a library!

This realization makes me a little bit cranky (as it does many other degreed librarians) because no one likes to admit that they wasted tens of thousands of dollars and several years of their life on an education that does not prepare them for the career they chose. An MLIS is useful for exactly one thing: landing a dream job in a well-funded library. The degree is nearly useless when actually doing that job.

Here’s another thing: While so many companies now require advanced degrees of their employees, libraries cannot afford to be so selective. Many will fill a vacant position with an un-degreed librarian as long as the price is right. I think it is because, deep down, library administrators know that an MLIS-less librarian can do the same quality of work as one who spent an extra year or two in the halls of academia, but can be paid a lower salary and given the unflattering title of Library Assistant.

I have met librarians with degrees who look down their noses at those without; as if no matter how many years of experience they may have they will always be thirty-six credits short of being a true librarian. I hold to the belief that anyone who works in a library is a librarian. Enough quibbling over titles like library assistant, library worker, library support staff, library technician, and clerk. There are so many better uses of our time!

I have come to the conclusion that the MLIS degree was created by a group of overworked and underpaid librarians who were sick of being disrespected in the professional world and tired of the public ignoring their efforts to contribute to society. What better way to boost confidence and morale than an impressive-sounding acronym to clip onto the end of one’s name? I wish I could tell all librarians not to be so insecure. We are superheroes, with or without the acronym. It’s the wonderful things that we do that make us librarians, not how much money we forked over for a piece of fancy paper.

Posted by: Eva Mays

I decided to become a Youth Service Librarian because I wanted to share my love of reading with young people. When dreaming of my future career while slogging through my MLIS program, I envisioned myself quietly overseeing dedicated young readers as they pursued knowledge, enlightenment, and entertainment. I am a tad embarrassed about how naïve and old-fashioned I was. Luckily, my misconceptions about the librarian job description did not survive my first week on the job in a real-life public library.

Most of the children I work with come from troubled homes. Their parents are usually unwilling or unable to provide any kind of guidance for their children, so the parental duties are left hanging until a responsible adult decides to take them up. Most public libraries are awash with unsupervised children and teens, and librarians are obligated to assume to role of caretaker and disciplinarian in order to keep the peace. That is just one of the many things they don’t think to tell you in library school.

During the course of my employment at the library, I have had to do some things that my pre-librarian self would never have guessed. I have had to pull brawling kids off each other on more than one occasion. I constantly admonish teenagers for calling each other “ugly”, “ignorant”, or a variety of other names that I don’t recognize but am pretty sure are derogatory. I have tried to explain why violence is wrong and why every person should be treated with respect. I have launched a campaign to reinstate “please” and “thank you” into their vocabularies. I have tried to instill a sense of self-worth in them all. And all the while, I have tried to inspire in them a love of reading. Not an easy task!

Contrary to the two-dimensional librarians of yesteryear, today’s librarians have a responsibility to foster not just the intellectual development of children and teens, but the social and emotional development as well. While most librarians take up this mantle willingly, I think the job would be that much sweeter if we could know for certain that our considerable efforts have the power to turn a life around. Do they listen to us? Do they remember what we say? Does our good opinion factor into their decision-making process? And most of all, will we ever convince them that reading is fun?

There are times when it seems that the kids see me as a piece of furniture, but I have to remind myself that because of my close involvement it is difficult to see clearly. Several times in the past year I have had to take a step back from the situation in order to look at the big picture and make sense of it all. When the times get tough and I begin to forget why I ever chose to become a librarian, I reflect the times when I have succeeded (although they are always fewer than I would prefer). I remember all the times when I have been able to get a reluctant reader to sit down with a book, all the times that a child has asked me “please” when before they would have demanded, and especially all the times I have seen some of the local children “play librarian” when they think I’m not looking.

Someone recently reminded me that small adjustments are the least painful and the most successful. Although this person was not referring to library services, I think all librarians should take this aphorism to heart. It is the little changes I see every day, even the ones so subtle they are barely noticeable, that convince me that librarians have the power to inspire, teach, and lead in many different ways (not just by shelving dusty tomes and memorizing the Dewey Decimal System).

Posted by: Eva Mays

I am magic. I can make books disappear.

My magic isn’t always strong. It ebbs and flows with the seasons and even the days of the week. My magic isn’t all-powerful. There are books that continually resist my charms. My magic isn’t reliable. It sometimes works or fails when I least expect it.

But I am magic, and I am not alone.

My skills can be taught, and I am breaking the great vow of the magician to share my secret. It’s astonishing simple, yet can make books disappear from shelves and into the hands of readers more than anything else.

Pull a book from the shelf. Tighten up the shelf of books to leave a six-inch space at the end of each shelf. Put the chosen book in that space with the cover facing outward. Stand back and allow the magic to do its work.

As I mentioned earlier, this particular strain of magic isn’t always strong, powerful, or reliable. In the summertime, the books that face out disappear off the shelves quickly. In the week before Christmas, I could tape Fun-Dip to the covers and they still wouldn’t go out. For me, the early parts of the weeks see more books finding their just-right reader. On Fridays the books may spend the weekend staring out into the library zone dreaming of being read by a warm fire or under a down comforter.

Also like many a great magician, I do have an assistant. Actually, I have three assistants who do their jobs long before the books come gently into my hands. I have no communication with them unfortunately, but as I reveal my secrets today I can also implore them to make my magic – our magic – stronger.

It starts with the author. I wouldn’t even presume to tell authors to write good books, though that does help books find readers. I know that the author is putting her heart into her writing and believes that she has put together the best book that she can. But I would suggest that the author really really think about the title of the book. A great title can move a book. Do you think Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love stays on the shelf? Not a chance.

The publisher has a huge impact on the book by creating the cover art. A good book with a boring cover will sit on the shelf forever. Not even my librarian magic can move it. An interesting, funny, and/or kid-friendly cover can make that book almost jump off the shelf and find a new best friend. Before the publisher signs off on the cover or title (because they can help here too), someone should find about twenty kids of the target age and find out if the cover and title grabs them. The plain cover of The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs was a killer for that book. But lesson learned, as the paperback has a more engaging cover. The girly-looking unicorn on the cover of The Prophecy by Hilari Bell may be keeping the boy readers away from this otherwise boy-friendly book, but the publishers are staying the course with the paperback. (By the way, maybe the book could have had a title that isn’t the tile of say, forty other books. Just saying.)

Online and print reviewers have their own magic to create. By promoting books that may fall under the radar, those titles become prime choices for librarians to pull out from the rows of books and set out for others to find. By interviewing authors, a personal connection is formed that makes it a notch easier to select a title from a new author to display. By promoting special topics or events, they create a reason for special displays and lessons. The kid lit bloggers’ love for Babymouse turned me on to the series and to the author Jennifer Holm (Maybe “turned on” isn’t the right phrase in the context of the author, but she is a very nice person and great writer.)

Here’s how it works for me in a day at the library. I straighten the children’s fiction shelves and pull out The Naked Mole-Rat Letters because the title is cool. At the next shelf I pull out the classic Jenny and the Cat Club because we have two copies and I believe that adults would love to know that it’s there to read to their kids. The next shelf is some book by Avi, because there are so many and they all beg to be read. Then an Ivy and Bean book because girls always grab it within a day or two. Through the rest off the shelves I go selecting books that I like, that have great covers (How to Steal a Dog), that have great titles (My Sister is So Bossy She Says You Can’t Read This Book), and that have great and/or likeable authors (Grace Lin’s Year of the Rat). Then I stand back and let the magic take over.

Scene: From my vantage point at the information desk I see a boy. He’s drawn to the shelf. The cover grabs him, the title reels him in, he picks up Whales on Stilts! by M.T. Anderson. He skims the inside cover. He takes it away with him.

Magic.

*title credit to Steven Colbert’s book, I Am America (And So Can You!)

Posted by: Pam Coughlan

A man goes into a sub shop — let’s call it Subdays — and finds that they have his favorite deli meat there. Liverwurst. He’s thrilled to find it served and goes back to that sub shop frequently. But one day, he’s in a different area and goes into another Subdays shop and finds that liverwurst is not offered there. They have hummus, but no liverwurst. He’s annoyed at this inconsistency and writes to the head of all Subdays expressing his aggravation. (Stay with me here.)

The president of Subdays can basically do three things. She can thank the man for his opinion, but let him know that the Subdays franchises are run independently and can serve what they choose to serve. She can commission a survey of customers and franchises on the feasibility of serving liverwurst and hummus at Subdays, and turn the data into a sophisticated algorithm showing in which locations liverwurst and hummus should be served. Or she can order the Subdays franchises to stick to the original menu with no substitutions or ethnic variations. Oh, and menus should be displayed four inches from the cash register. (Almost there.)

Now suppose that the managers of the various Subdays earned their graduate degrees in delicatessens. How would they respond? Maybe they’d chose to run a deli in an office building, where they’d have some guidelines, but not so many hard rules. Maybe they’d take their degrees elsewhere — supermarkets perhaps, or entirely unrelated businesses.

Without fitting the analogy too tightly, this is where the public library system finds itself today. They want professional librarians trained to make decisions, but the greater library system holds onto the power. The problem may be less prevalent in smaller library systems, but as the number of branches in a system grows, so does the need to exercise more control over collections, policies, and initiatives. If there is a goal of more consistency for the sake of the patron — and at some level, for the sake of the employees — what happens to the librarians trained to run the show?

Well, some of them leave. The school system can offer a huge competition for librarians who want more authority in their library, with the bonus of better hours and summers off. The most energetic librarians may find the public library system too stifling, and look for work where the fold of the brochure doesn’t need to be a matter for committee. The new graduates may skip the public library altogether and use their degrees in business.

In my large, suburban (unnamed) library system, centralized ordering for books and media seems essential. The job would be too big for any particular branch. However, ordering by the numbers results in some waste and lost opportunities. For example, my branch will get new Magic Tree House books because other libraries had worn-out copies, or because the two-year ordering cycle for the Magic Tree House series indicates that it’s time. But our branch gets lots of donated, new copies of books in this series — certainly enough to replace old or lost copies. Perhaps we’d rather use our funds in this area to replace other titles instead, and in doing so, become more involved in the process.

Brian Kenny, Editor-in-Chief of School Library Journal, recently talked about the issue of centralized ordering in his December editorial. As he says, “There’s no greater experience for new librarians than being responsible for buying front-list titles. It engages them in a continuous learning process as they grow familiar with the review literature, publishers, and trends, on the one hand, and their community and its evolving needs on the other.”

A larger library system can become overly dependent on administration initiatives based on research instead of front-line experience. Even small decisions turn into matters for committee, not individual librarians or managers. Again to offer a true example, while it can be helpful to have a “Lost and Found” policy that covers the entire library system, it also slowly chips away at the authority of professional staff.

The library’s connection to the county or city government can add extra layers of bureaucracy and control. That fold of the brochure issue I alluded to before is real. Our government has determined the acceptable brochure folds allowed by the agencies under its jurisdiction. Single-page flyers are fine, tri-folds are taboo. The paper airplane fold is cause for immediate dismissal. (Okay, I made that one up.)

Consistency does provide benefit and comfort. To return to the Subdays analogy, you know what you’ll find at each sub shop, whether as a customer or an employee. But in submitting the hummus to surveys and the liverwurst to public polling, we’re leaving out not only the diversity of the library, but also the power of making decisions that makes a job feel worthwhile. The public is important, no doubt, but there should be a balance between the desires of a demanding public and the needs of an educated staff. Ultimately, the customer will want both specific services and excellent staff. He’ll want to have his liverwurst and eat it too.

Posted by: Pam Coughlan

In October 2007 a report published by Booktrust found that 92% of UK secondary schools and 61% of primary schools were spending far below the recommended figures per head on books for their libraries.

Meanwhile, a third of respondents reported that the person who ran the primary school library did not have specialist knowledge of children's literature. In secondary schools, 22% of respondents had no special knowledge of children's literature.

When I was nine I was banned from the library. It was my school library, run primly and properly by a Head Librarian - with a little bit of help from a slim cohort of my fellow boarding school peers. They, however, were also School Prefects, and therefore just as much held in awe by me as the Head Librarian herself. It was the fault of Franklin W. Dixon that I was banned from this library. For upon closer inspection, it had been discovered by said Head Librarian that I had a distinct predilection for The Hardy Boys. Distinct, as in, by age nine I had already amassed a personal library of forty of these titles and was well-prepared to stick with brothers Frank and Joe through thick and thin to the end of my days. Not in and of itself such a terrible thing for a nine year old girl - one might think - but au contraire according to my Head Librarian. For in her steely eyes (or I should, technically, say 'eye' as one was definitely glass!) they were deemed unworthy of my budding pre-pubescent mind. Consequently, one fine summer day, as I dawdled at her desk with the latest Dixon title under my arm, I was alarmed to be told in no uncertain terms that I was to be banned from the library on sight. Unless, "UNLESS" she re-iterated - looking straight at me with a small but solid smile - I agreed to take out from the library any other book.

As any parent, and child-acquainted adult knows, challenging a child can be a dangerous thing if you are not fully prepared for the consequences. Luckily, my Head Librarian was a Librarian Extraordinaire and what it meant was this: we resolved our differences by rising to the challenges we set each other. In immediate retaliation (at being told what to do, rather than any sense of loyalty to old F.W.D. it has to be said) I resolved to borrow from this library simply the biggest book I could find. The Complete Penguin Book of Detective Short Fiction, at one thousand and seventeen pages, was not only the largest thing I could find, but the longest thing I'd ever attempted to read so far in my nine year life. So I stormed back to her desk, slammed it down and gave her my own small, solid, smile back. What, of course, I wasn't prepared for was the reaction she then gave. This steely Librarian, all polished and perfect and perfectly stern suddenly lifted both hands off her desk, and after slightly skimming the cover of my book - as if, almost, in admiration - she then gave me a thumbs up, not with just one hand, but with two.

Although I did not, it has to be said, actually enjoy reading this book, what it marked was a true turning point in my reading habits - which had, up until that wonderful intervention, somewhat stalled in Dixon-Blyton-but-not-much-beyond land. A conversion to a whole new wonderful literature world soon found me welcoming the advances of Rosemary Sutcliffe, Robert Cormier, Robert Westall, Michelle Magorian, Alan Garner, Jan Marks, Susan Cooper and Ursula Le Guin (to name just a few of the amazing authors who filled me brimful with imagination at that age and beyond). I, of course, never looked back, but looking back now I recognise the importance of that Head Librarian intervention, and I am thankful that she was so knowledgeable, as well as so kind and so, so wise.

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray

One of the downsides to carrying around everything you need to live on your own back is the fact there's not really very much room for fitting in a nice, big fat hardback of your latest favourite author's work. Carting a poetry library around too, alongside these banal life accoutrements (which include socks, a sleeping bag, and the indispensable goose feather stuffed booties, amongst many other things) does little to negate this fact, as no matter how much of a poetry fan you are, there are just some times when you want to slip in to something a little more, well, substantial - and even the best beast of a poetry anthology behemoth just won't do. So when the wonderful world of fiction strikes, and I need to find a worthy tome to idle my hours away, it is, of course, wherever my 'local' library is that I inevitably find myself wandering down to. A quick stroke of the shelves, a perusal of the 'new fiction / just in' section and after a mere five minutes often my arms are full of affable, amusing, and downright tasty nuggets of nutritious, creative works ready for me to dive in to. But what happens when I'm in a non-English speaking country, as I found myself in 2006?

Hopping from Amsterdam to Berlin, thence to Dresden, Prague, Vienna and Budapest, operating my travelling poetry library in each of these cities, there were some nights, after a good, long hard day slaving away at my own library, when I just wanted to switch off and jump in to a good book. Of course, many libraries in capital, or metropolitan cities, have a 'foreign language' section, but it's never as good as the main collections of the library overall: so often, when out wandering the vast plains of Europe, I have found myself making use of the British Council Libraries. In particular, I made distinctive use of the BC's Berlin headquarters and library back in June 2006, not only borrowing some enticing reads from their collection for myself, but also installing my library itself too. A week based in their library's space saw me signing up new members to my library within the environs of their own, providing my first (and soon to be favourite) shot at operating perhaps the quintessence of library service itself: two libraries in one!

What also always astounded me about the countries and cities I visited was the extent to which the English Language had permeated beyond borders, boundaries and well, books. It was a welcoming surprise to find the English language reaching the parts other tongues might not dare speak (so to speak) and a number of independently published English Language Literary magazines stand out as championing poetry and literature in translation.

'Blatt' in Prague, 'sub dream' (Vienna's English Language Literary Journal) and 'Pilvax' (Budapest-based) are three great reads for the English reading and writing connoisseur, specializing in publishing writing in English and translations from or to the original language alongside (which might include Czech, Austrian-German, Hungarian and indeed any other European tongue that makes it through the editorial process). Similarly, many poets I met - and especially in Budapest - were keen to emphasize their multi-lingual skills, and from speaking to two Hungarian poets living there it was clear that writing in both Hungarian and English was, for them, an obvious choice - so it seems that English as a global language may well indeed have got a glottal stop or two ahead of the game.

The British Council's longstanding and exemplary teaching of English programmes, as well as the wonderful resource that is their many and manifold English Language Libraries, have, no doubt, played a huge part in this process. Reading recently of another British Council Library closure in Europe however, reminded me of the first story I read last year about the BC's new 'development' programme: reallocating funding from their EU, India and Africa based Libraries to a new priority of, yes you guessed it, the Middle East. While I can't argue that providing an English Language Library service in such places as Iraq, Afghanistan and Bangladesh is anything but an illustrious idea, what is incongruous about it is the perceived need to give with one hand on one side of the world, while taking away with the other, on the other.

I'll leave it to ole Aristotle to have the last words: "One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day."

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray

Visiting some UK libraries this week, I was struck by the vitality of each distinct location. An excited, and excitable, post-Christmas throng of teenagers armed the Teen section of the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, lolling on sofas to the side of the main entrance, eyeing up the latest graphic novel and manga additions, and, no doubt, each other.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a minor mini-crisis was being swiftly averted by that day's Duty Manager Librarian: within minutes the public printers were back online, tannoy announcements informed everyone of the solved situation, and the East Anglian public happily continued tapping away on their terminals out front.

A visit with two under-tens to their local branch library, south of the river Thames in London, conjured a completely different scenario: piles of children's books spilled over the soft floor coverings as the silence of a small branch library was suddenly perforated with delighted shrieks. Small hands skimmed the shelves with haste, pulling out new books by favourite authors until we'd created our very own overspill too. A hop, skip and a jump (well, several jumps for the six year old) over to the circulation desk, to take out our books, also gave me a chance to observe another librarian's stamping technique. Visiting the library again meant another stamp on our special children's library card and we'd only one gap left to fill. So now it was complete. There were more delighted shrieks. A completed card meant we got to choose a fee-free DVD to borrow alongside our reading material. Decamping back to home base the chants of "SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob SquarePants" caused puffs of hot breath to shimmer like frozen jellyfish in the cold air of our London street.

Whether serving a whole city's community as a central information point, or a small, diverse local clientele as its nearest accessible resource, a library functions best responding directly to the needs of its specific user group, its patrons, who place trust in the library's ability to gauge their needs, their knowledge-acquisition requirements. Knowledge, trust, friendliness, vitality: these are words I value, traits I look for in the people I meet, and, I'm happy to report, ably on offer at these two libraries I ventured into while enjoying the season's holidays.

I am always surprised by the diversity of library experience, whether it's visiting libraries on home ground, or venturing further afield to explore what Barcelona, Berlin, or San Francisco offer in the library exploration stakes. I wonder what other interesting community libraries are out there I have yet to visit - certainly the mule libraries of Venezuela (known as bibliomulas) are top of my list, and I'd love to hear from readers about their own interesting library experiences, so do get in touch if you've one special library place that should just not be missed!

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray