Libraries

First of all, Gentle Reader, I love libraries. It's like a hardware store for the mind. I like the quiet bustle of people being interested in books. I love to walk along a row of books reading the titles and wade through all the possibilities of the content. I feel no time in a library, it is such a place of being wholly present and yet transported to another place. Even the most humble library is a place of transcendence and possibility.

I will go and find the local library just to get a sense of what is going on in a particular town. Thirty something years ago, I toured Wales by myself, and part of my quest was to visit the local library in each village I stayed in: small grey slate buildings full of the entire mix of the town. I suppose, in a way, a library is like a pub that you visit in the daytime, while one might save the pub for the evening. Both are full of stories, escape, and entertainment, its just that there are more children, in a physical sense only, at the library. As an undergraduate at the Colorado College, the library was also a central meeting spot. There was a large balcony around the circulation open space which people called the Fishbowl because it a place to window shop for good looking individuals...so they say. I was there for the good looking books, but we have previously established my geekitude. The University of Pennsylvania library did not have that kind of large open space: it was much more compartmentalized, and thus, I think, less social. It didn't really feel like a social center, but that memory is oddly more hazy for me than the Colorado College library. The University of Cincinnati big campus library has a huge spread out social space upon entering, which does circulate with people, but there is a large student center nearby with huge open light spaces that seems to have replaced the library as a social center. Raymond Walters College has a kind of open space in the lobbies of the two central buildings which generate social contact, but the library, alas, is 'hidden' (if you can 'hide' a library) down a hall. There is a lighted open space which is nice, but it is a lonely library.


The City Library of Limerick is in an old warehouse, and it is wide open and full of light in some places, with a cozy section on the side which maintains the old warehouse brickwork. It was full of people from Ireland, Poland, Africa, and India, when I went for my obligatory tour. The Language Tapes section was front and center! For my American Readers, just so you know, at this library, you have to pay a euro to use the internet for a 1/2 hour. Then they make you get off the computer. The hours were a bit limited at this library, but the space was lovely, full of local events posters, and full of families getting books.


The University of Limerick Library is a positively Hopping Joint. It is most certainly the center of student activity, even though there is a student union up the street. The cynic who ran the student orientation said the library is attended only by foreign students during the first 2/3 of the term, but then it fills with Irish students at the end of the term. I'm not sure that was an accurate assessment. The library has been pretty full up to now (two weeks out from exams) and now it is certainly very full of very focused people. There are those few who earnestly text on their phones as well. Some of the policies feel a little confining to me: undergraduates can only check out four books at a time! Another interesting part of this library is the traditional music collection. Evidently, there was a visiting ethnomusicologist here a few years ago who created two substantial CD cabinets full of traditional music CDs. This library also houses a large portion of the public computers and has two public printers, so that contributes to the intense social circulation. Only one floor is wireless, but there are direct connections at many of the study carrels. There is a lot of glass, and this afternoon, I got a seat in the sun next to the literature section. Pure joy. Sun and books. The only thing missing was tea.