The Stacks

The stacks were closed to undergraduates. Too much wear and tear on the books, I suppose. Years later I would see the consequence of open stacks at a different library at a different university in a different state -- books torn out of their covers, books thrown onto the floor, books marked up with yellow highlighter and pen.

So the stacks were closed to undergraduates -- unless you had a note from a professor. And that semester, those of us in a particular comparative literature class all had notes that granted us access.

I spent a lot of time there that semester, and the next, and the next. The library was ahead of its time in technology. Most of the catalog was available on computers that sat in the middle of the main room. The green characters glowed against black and competed for attention with the traditional card catalogs that still lined the walls.

Beyond the computer screens and tall card catalogs, you came to the main desk. If you needed a book, this is where you brought your scribbled note with the title and Dewey decimal number. You brought it to the desk where a runner would take it from you and disappear into the stacks, coming back after a while with the book you needed.

But if you had a note from a professor, you could get a card. And with this card, you could go into the stacks yourself. Instead of passing slips of paper to the runners at the desk, you could walk around, hold up your card, and pass thru the door yourself.

Thru that door, the smell of books was thick in the air. The ceilings offered barely enough clearance for your head. The shelves extended from the floor thru the ceiling into the next level above without stopping. Looking up, you might see someone browsing. More often you would only see darkness. Around the corner, you might see an old wooden desk where if you found the right book you might sit and study in the midst of an impenetrable silence.

If you had a note from your professor.

---
The University of Illinois, early 1980s.

11:07:19 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

On Judgement / On Knowledge

In a long discussion that has actually been going on for some time, Juan Cole dukes it out with Jonah Goldberg on their disagreements about Iraq and about each other.

In the process, Cole hits the nail on the head:

[Informed Comment/Goldberg v. Cole Redux]: An argument that judgment matters but knowledge does not is profoundly anti-intellectual. It implies that we do not need ever to learn anything in order make mature decisions. We can just proceed off some simple ideological template and apply it to everything. This sort of thinking is part of what is wrong with this country. We wouldn't call a man in to fix our plumbing who knew nothing about plumbing, but we call pundits to address millions of people on subjects about which they know nothing of substance.

9:32:41 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []