When’s the last time you visited a library? If you’re a
student, maybe it was yesterday, but for too many of us, the library is a
forgotten resource. Nowadays the Internet rules. Anything you want to know, along
with things you don’t want to know, await you on the web.
I smiled this week after one of our kids, complaining that
websites for a school term paper were useless, asked for actual books. Finally,
somebody wants to visit a library. Sometimes the library is the place to go, and other times…well, take a look:
https://youtu.be/fxOjfHFe1xY
It’s unlikely you’ll experience that type of situation, unless
you live on a college campus or in an alternate universe. But if you plan to do
any type of serious research, expect a library visit in your future.
In college, I remember visiting the library’s “stacks.” These
were multiple, unoccupied floors of shelved books accessed by an elevator, and
thankfully, a student I.D because the stacks were—in a word—scary. If I recall
correctly, the lights were on timers attached to the end of the bookshelves.
That placement only added to the fun of hunting down an ancient resource,
especially after you forgot to reset the timer and found yourself in near
darkness. But after braving the stacks, locating a particular work of literature from
among the nearly two million other books felt like finding a treasure. Library
memories (sigh). J
Which habit or tradition do you still do, even though most
people may find it “old school” or old out-dated?
