Giving transitional library another shot

THE FIRST OPINION piece I wrote for The Collegian was during the first week of last semester.

I was lamenting about how I felt cheated out of the full university experience because we don’t have a fully functioning library.

But I’m adapting, as humans are able to do so well.

So I decided to see what the library does have to offer and actually found some very interesting reading in the new book section.

And I learned that the library does a pretty good job of getting books that we request to us in just a day or two. And when textbooks ordered for a class I am in didn’t arrive at the bookstore on time, I found that the library had copies, so I checked them out.

Of course, I couldn’t make notations in them or highlight in them, but still, it saved me from having to play too much catch up when the ordered books did come in.

I am a slow reader, after all. I like to read every syllable. I savor the flavor.

I guess that’s what has been upsetting about not having the old library available to me as a student. I used to go in and just wander through the rows and rows of “stacks.”

I found books that I’d never have found by using the library’s search engine.

And there’s just something about old books, isn’t there? I mean, most of the great scholars wrote books.

Of course, many are out of date now. Things do change as new knowledge either builds upon, or replaces, old.

But the point is, when one can hold the book that someone so painstakingly wrote (before there were even electric typewriters), it can give a sense of the continuum of history and learning.

I know it gave me a sense of history. I would imagine the authors putting ink to paper to write down what they had learned; of scholars studying and writing, just as students are doing today.

Of course, scholars of old weren’t forced to turn off their online games.

Most probably had a quieter environment, and the time to ponder what they were learning.

But today, doesn’t studying often feel like an inconvenience?

It does to me sometimes.

But I also know that I did a whole lot more of it when there was a fully functioning library.

The atmosphere invited my hungry mind to meander through the dining room of knowledge and sample appetizer after appetizer until my palate settled on the main course for the day.

But as I said, things change.

I wonder if we will ever have the same materials we had free access to before the remodeling began?

What if older books and magazines are locked away for their protection and can only be read if we check them out from behind a counter somewhere?

If that’s the case, we’ll never know that many of them exist.

I guess if that happens I can at least feel privileged to have wsndered those sacred halls.

Well, okay, so the library doesn’t actually have halls, but that’s being nit picky.

At any rate, if that happens, I can say I was there before it all changed. I could pick up a magazine that was published the month and year I was born.

Yes, that old!

Oh well, students of the future can enjoy the fresh new look and feel of the library.

Maybe it’s time for that; time to throw out the old and bring in the new.

But I hope that at least some of the old flavor remains.

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