10th March 2023
I recently spent a few days in some wonderful, world-famous academic libraries, and I noticed two things different from when I was an undergraduate a few decades ago.
The first was that the library was full of working students and researchers – packed – with either almost no or no desks available.
This, on the face of it, is a good sign.
In the early 1990s I remember the same libraries being fairly empty, and you could have a whole row – sometimes a whole room – to yourself, and not just a desk.
Libraries are (ultimately) instruments and not ornaments, and so they ought to be busy and not empty.
But.
If you looked carefully, you also noticed that almost none of those working in the libraries were using any of the books from the shelves or from the stack.
Indeed, almost every student and researcher was working on a laptop (or at least staring at one).
A librarian explained to me that while they are delighted that libraries are being used more than before, they are sad that it rarely for any of the library stock.
It was more about ambiance, it seems: the librarian mentioned that students say they work better when surrounded by books, even if they are not using any.
The reason I was there was to look at some volumes from the shelves or brought up from the stacks – books which one could not get anywhere else.
And so I waited with my pile of books for a desk to become free.
And waited.
Standing there, with nothing more advanced than a pad of A4 paper and a pencil case, feeling like a dinosaur or time traveller; wondering about the paradox of book-lined libraries being more used than before, but with the books themselves as ornaments, even if the library was itself being used as an instrument.
And then I realised I was just as “culpable” – for in the olden days, one would have written a letter to a newspaper or made a private journal article about such an observation – and I am posting an electronic blogpost instead.
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