Some of my fondest undergraduate memories are of my time I spent in the multi-storied stacks at the library at the University of Illinois, where the rarest materials were at my disposal. It also did occur to me that the stacks were waiting to go up in flames, especially with the number of professors and grad students who would smoke in the stacks in those days. I would also note that long hair and bell bottoms were not the worst sartorial accompaniments for the female of the species back in the seventies.
Although I’m slightly younger and we did have a computer to look up the aisle location and availability of a book in the library, I do remember the borrowing stamp and card at the front or back of a book. I do miss that.
Funny story – my 7 year old boy was reading a book he borrowed from his school library about F1 motor racing to me (he is into the fast cars phase ATM). We were at the part that said that the Bugatti Chiron is the fastest production car in the world. My 7 year old called out to my husband to verify this….and when he didn’t get a timely answer from his dad, he told me he was going to check it on Google. I laughed- because I had to remind him that Google isn’t always right and if the book says something then you don’t need Google to say it is so. You can trust a book!
Donald, I assume U of I had, as my school did, some kind of early first-year mini-course just on how to do legal research at the library. We had a fifty page printed handout and did exercises on finding cases, using Shepard’s, how to check but mostly ignore treatises and works like CJS, finding law review articles, etc. I wonder if these sources even exist any more? LEXIS/NEXUS was in its infancy back then, and we had to sign up in advance for time at the terminals. It was a luxury, not a necessity, at that time.
Legal research from the old days I do not miss! Mention of Sheparize causes me to break out in a cold sweat! The volumes you needed often seemed to be in a prof’s “private collection” in the bowels of the library. I think how arduous it all was kept the briefs, and the opinions, down to a more readable level. Now we have attorneys trying to pass off unchecked AI droppings as their own work! O Bad New World!
The young ladies I met in college while at the library were orders of magnitude greater in character and intelligence than those my sons have abandoned trying to find on the internet. They have resorted to more traditional means, such as meeting through friends and common-interest gatherings, including (wait for it . . .) church.
One of my favorite places as a high schooler was the Berkshire Atheneum in Pittsfield, MA where we lived. It’s not lost on me that Atheneum comes from Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. Then after joining the Navy I never entered into a Library again. Sad. Very sad. 😞
When I was in Jr High and High School, my Mom worked in the library at the University of New Mexico. During summer and holidays, she would take me to work with, and I would spend the day lost in the stacks. Everything from “Doctor Doolittle” to Woolley’s “Ur of the Chaldees” with its wonderful full-page black and white plates was there. I still fully remember the intoxicating smell of Books.