Prowling the University Library Stacks

[Extollager]

Does anyone know essays, or have observations of his/her own to record, about prowling the stacks of large libraries?

I'm prompted to start this thread because I've just read "In the Stacks," a very short essay by Ian Frazier in his Gone to New York. He evokes the Butler Library at Columbia University.

Reading it reminded me of my own time poking around the main library stacks at the University of Illinois around 25 years ago, when I was working on master's degree. I recall happening upon a book signed by Algernon Blackwood, and a Victorian travel-book classic about the Middle East (I think it was formerly called the Near East or the Holy Land, etc.), with hand-colored plates, that had evidently been in the library of Lawrence of Arabia. These were not in the rare books section, just in the stacks.

This photo was taken approximately 1956, but the stacks look as I remember them.

This is how the compact shelving areas looked.

 

[dask]

I discovered a whole slew of Gernsback pulps downstairs at the WWSC library back in the mid 70s. Didn't spend a lot of time with them but since I knew where they were I figured I could go back and wallow in the blessed muck of glory anytime I wished. I did go back twenty years later when my wife was finishing her degree. I had some time to kill so I confidently trotted downstairs and may as well have slugged in the gut and punched in the face --- they were gone! And to make matters worse, nobody at the desk knew what I was angrily shouting about. All that treasure, vanished. Now I know where the term stark raving mad comes from.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Trinity college's in Dublin is amazing, plus you can get to see the Book of Kells, as well.

 

[HoopyFrood]

During my Masters degree last year, I frequented the Old Library (so much more awesome than the main library, which was cool in its own right) a lot because I needed the old english and Middle East sections. It looked a lot like that second photo. Stacks very close together and rammed with all sorts of books.

My favourite part was the Old English bit. Some of the books were huge, about a foot and a half in length and a foot wide with full colour plates and held closed by string. I used to just wander the shelves and pick books up at random and flick through them. And smell them. The books there smelled amazing and old.

I've mentioned this in my blog, but it fits here. One day after a seminar, I needed to track down some stuff on Bishop Joseph Hall (apparently he was against travel to foreign lands, which was my topic for my essay). I searched for anything on the computers, nothing came up, so I did my customary wander around the shelves. I only picked up one book, out of thousands, and completely at random, that day. It was a fat, hefty tome full of quotations. The book falls open and the first quotation I see...is by Bishop Joseph Hall.

I miss those libraries.

 

[Extollager]

I discovered a whole slew of Gernsback pulps downstairs at the WWSC library back in the mid 70s. Didn't spend a lot of time with them but since I knew where they were I figured I could go back and wallow in the blessed muck of glory anytime I wished. I did go back twenty years later when my wife was finishing her degree. I had some time to kill so I confidently trotted downstairs and may as well have slugged in the gut and punched in the face --- they were gone! And to make matters worse, nobody at the desk knew what I was angrily shouting about. All that treasure, vanished. Now I know where the term stark raving mad comes from.

Oh no.

That would be a story worth digging out, Dask, and writing up for The New York Review of Science Fiction, for example.

http://www.nyrsf.com/

Is there any chance you could undertake a little investigative reporting and find out what happened?

I wonder if it won't prove to fit in with that horrible librarians-against-paper attitude that Nicholson Baker describes in gruesome detail in Double Fold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Fold

 

[Extollager]

I've mentioned this in my blog, but it fits here. One day after a seminar, I needed to track down some stuff on Bishop Joseph Hall (apparently he was against travel to foreign lands, which was my topic for my essay). I searched for anything on the computers, nothing came up, so I did my customary wander around the shelves. I only picked up one book, out of thousands, and completely at random, that day. It was a fat, hefty tome full of quotations. The book falls open and the first quotation I see...is by Bishop Joseph Hall.

Please post a link to that blog entry or reprint it here!

 

[dask]

Oh no.

That would be a story worth digging out, Dask, and writing up for The New York Review of Science Fiction, for example.

http://www.nyrsf.com/

Is there any chance you could undertake a little investigative reporting and find out what happened?

I'll try to get up there some weekend and see if someone more authoritative than the person I talked to back in '95 knows anything more definitive that the "probably got sold to a collector" response I was slapped with.

 

[Extollager]

I'll try to get up there some weekend and see if someone more authoritative than the person I talked to back in '95 knows anything more definitive that the "probably got sold to a collector" response I was slapped with.

Dask, whatever you're comfortable with -- but one thought would be: get in touch with the New York Review of Science Fiction and get them to express some interest in the matter, and then go to the library as a writer commissioned by the NYRSF to get the story -- rather than going there as "merely" a private curious person.

Seriously, I think you have an exceptionally interesting topic here. How'd they come to have those mags? An alumnus's gift? What were the holdings? Were they used by anyone? How was the decision made to dispose of them -- by whom & how? What happened to the mags?

If you need to read anything to fire you up, dip into Baker's Double Fold.

Another thought: I wonder if you couldn't get some expressions of support for the investigation from sf authors who live in the area (perhaps contactable through web sites or publishers) and fan groups.

Keep us posted!

 

[dask]

Yeah, not my kind of sandbox for sure, but I'll see what happens. The college (now a university) has been around for a while, started as a normal school in the late 1800s if I recall correctly. Heck, they could have bought the mags off the racks or even subscribed to them. They subbed to F&SF and Analog when I attended. Nice library, for a while. (Kidding, they're still pretty good --- I hope.)

 

[soulsinging]

I believe Ted Bundy used to spend a lot of time prowling campus libraries.

Too soon?

 

[gully_foyle]

The Social Sciences Library at the University of Queensland is amazing. There is a massive literature section that has hundreds of SF gems from the 60s and 70s and critical analyses of SF works.