So yesterday was my first chance to walk past the crowds and enter into one of the oldest and most dedicated places of academia. There actually weren't any crowds, being that it was a Monday, but the feeling of anticipation was still there. You walk down a circular staircase, open a heavy door and before your eyes opens up an enormous round room and books are lining, filling and covering every square inch of the walls. Have you ever experienced the frustration of going into the library and not being able to find any sources on your current project? Not here friends, they have basically a room dedicated to Shakespeare, and entire libraries dedicated to other various subjects such as History, Theology, Philosophy and English.
There are 8 MILLION volumes in this library, and if what you need isn't on the shelves someone will go fetch it from a different library, (or from an underground book stack) and hand deliver it to you.
My first paper is on the women of Shakespeare's plays and I had stacks of books around me today. It is incredibly silent in this room and everyone in it is pouring over books and frantically taking notes. The longer I sit in there the faster the time goes by. The worst thing about having the privilege to use the Bodleian, is once I leave here I can never go back, and I will leave ruined for any other library in the world.
3 comments:
It makes me happy to know that you are loving every minute of this! I wish that i could see your face when you walk into this library. I bet its a good one!
especially vanguard's tiny little thing...
Cool-- I've been to the Library of Congress and the Huntington; some of the books are old, but the buildings sure aren't. But ya gotta love the attentive library staff -- like waiters in a fine restaurant. At the Huntington, they don't call them librarians at all, but curators, as if it were a museum.
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