Back in early November, while library worker June Hicks was busy organizing the stacks in the aquaculture section of the Ralph Pickard Bell library, she happened on something unusual: an enormous can of beans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for students to leave stuff around,\u201d says Hicks. \u201cBut this is kind of unusual, a big can of beans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hicks says she was doing routine work in the agriculture and aquaculture section over the course of a few days, and one day happened upon the giant can, \u201con the bottom shelf, just as cozy as it can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just working away,\u201d says Hicks, \u201cwhen I got down off my stepstool one time, there were these beans staring at me, just like that. And I thought, what is this?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hicks didn\u2019t just happen upon any old can of beans. This was a 2.84 litre (100 ounce) monster can of beans. \u201cI don\u2019t know who\u2019d want to carry it around because it\u2019s so heavy,\u201d says Hicks.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, none of Hicks co-workers were able to guess what she found before she revealed the hefty can on her library cart. \u201cWe\u2019re still laughing about it, because it\u2019s so unusual to find it in here,\u201d says Hicks.<\/p>\n
Hicks\u2019 coworkers also had a surprise for her, as the colossal can got catalogued in the library system complete with a sticker normally reserved for book spines.<\/p>\n
Mount Allison\u2019s dean of libraries and archives, Rachel Rubin, says the beans sparked a debate among staff, as they discussed how to catalog the donation. \u201cWe had an aboutness problem,\u201d says Rubin. \u201cWhat is a can of beans about?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo catalog something you have to know what it\u2019s about,\u201d says Rubin. \u201cSo we were trying to figure out if it\u2019s a legume, is it about legumes? Is it about the process of cooking? Is it about canning? I think we went with canning, but we had to have a pretty serious philosophical discussion about what a can of beans is truly about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teaching and research librarian Laura Landon says the strange discovery inspired some wordplay among staffers as well. \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about Rachel as \u2018the bean of libraries\u2019,\u201d says Landon. And the literary puns have been flowing, with \u2018to bean or not to bean\u2019 and \u2018For Whom the Bean Tolls.\u2019<\/p>\n
According to student reactions to the library beans story on social media, the mammoth can could have come from the supply at the Jennings meal hall, or possibly from a wholesale grocery shop in Moncton or Amherst.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has claimed responsibility for the beans,\u201d says Rubin. \u201cI\u2019m waiting for the rightful owner of the beans to come forward to collect their can. Now that we\u2019ve catalogued it, it might just get shelved so they should come and collect it before it ends up in processed foods.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHMA couldn\u2019t resist dropping by the Ralph Pickard Bell Library back in November to hear the story of the giant can of beans:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back in early November, while library worker June Hicks was busy organizing the stacks in the aquaculture section of the Ralph Pickard Bell library, she happened on something unusual: an enormous can of beans. \u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for students to leave stuff around,\u201d says Hicks. \u201cBut this is kind of unusual, a big can of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":133775,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,221],"tags":[22106,22105,1221,22104,22103],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133777,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133771\/revisions\/133777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133771"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=133771"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=133771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}