What Would Mr. Carnegie Think?

The University of California-Berkeley recently remodeled its undergraduate library. With the remodel, they have lifted the ban on bringing food and drink inside. There is no longer any danger of books in the library being damaged by spilled food or drink. The reason: there are no longer any books in the library.

As we all know, if it’s on the Internet, it must be true, so the library has been re-styled to serve as a gathering place for students to gather for important discussions, complete with power supplies for laptops and whiteboards for recording vital ideas, and monitors to view work produced in PowerPoint, that scourge of civilized discourse.

What, no Foosball table?

“It’s the wave of the future,” a professor said. “The idea of research in a library is becoming archaic, versus Googling on the Internet. Maybe they’re not accessing the best information with what comes up on Google, but people are used to finding things on the Internet.”

Read more about it here.

Postscript: At my high school – an all-boys institution –  a major project junior year was the research paper. This involved evenings of research at the downtown public library. The downtown library was usually frequented by students from other schools – of the girl gender.

You Get What You Pay For Dept.

Douglas County Oregon, at the south end of the Willamette Valley, has for many decades been the fortunate recipient of revenue from tax on timber harvests. As the logging industry has declined, so has income from it. Now its citizens are faced with difficult decisions about paying for things themselves that previously were “free.” In the recent election, Douglas County voted down a tax to keep its library system operating. The margin was 55% to 45%. (Donald Trump won the county with 65% of the vote.) The county’s libraries are scheduled to close April 1.

As one resident said:

“If you want to use the library you should pay for it yourself. We are tired of being taxed. Property owners are tired of being taxed to pay for something that’s free.”

Why Libraries Smell Funny

Even in our high-tech Internet age, libraries are still operating. Maybe not as many hours per week as a couple decades ago, maybe not as meeting places for teenagers on school nights, but they still serve a function beyond providing rest rooms for homeless people.

Just for fun, librarians responded to a survey asking what unusual things have they found inside library books. It is probably no surprise that people apparently eat while reading. Some edible surprises found inside library books:

  • Bologna
  • Pop Tart
  • Bologna
  • Uncooked bacon
  • A taco
  • French fries
  • Bologna
  • Marijuana leaf
  • Kraft Singles cheese slice
  • Pickle slices

For more, including non-food items, click here.