A Lament for the Library

Just yesterday, I read an editorial from a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Apparently, the school's science and engineering library has destroyed or put into storage at least half of its books, about 80,000 in all, citing the need for "study space."

A view of my sorely missed study space at the University of Dallas

Albeit facetious, my first reaction was to wonder what the students were going to study without any books. Obviously, I know and understand where things have been going for decades now: More and more resources are available on the Web. Most often, when I need an academic reference I access an online database like JSTOR. Rarely do I visit an actual library, especially now that I'm away from the convenience of a university campus. In fact, I read Professor Richard Montgomery's editorial online, and it was with more than a touch of irony that I saw an advertisement appear after the first few paragraphs of the story about the UC-Santa Cruz library suggesting that readers with an iPhone or iPad download the appropriate app.

Yet I lament for the physical, brick-and-mortar library with its shelves and shelves of books--and what is happening at UC-Santa Cruz is the norm, by the way, not the exception--not just because I'm old fashioned, but because studying is different outside of a library, and for the worse.

"Students were scattered around on their devices," Professor Montgomery writes. "Some eating. Some drinking."

***

Every institution that I've studied at, I have had a favorite library space. At St. Thomas, my undergraduate alma mater, there was a room that nobody seemed to know about, down a hallway oddly placed due to an addition to the original gothic structure. At the University of Dallas, there was a little-used room reserved for graduate students where I could ensconce myself in solitude, comfortably surrounded by books. My favorite library experience, though, was during my time as a seminarian in Rome. Morning classes at the Angelicum would run from 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. At least a few days a week, I would eat my lunch quickly and walk the mile or so to the Casa Santa Maria, the American graduate seminary residence located in a 400-year-old convent. 

I would climb a rickety, winding metal staircase from the main portion of the library up to the rare books room. Surrounded by leather-bound tomes hundreds of years old, on canon law, moral theology, and metaphysics, I would sit at an imposing wooden table and study in total silence, far removed from the cobblestone streets and noise of the milling tourists below. Only rarely did I actually touch one of the books in that room because they dated to the 16th or 17th century and needed delicate handling. Yet I felt surrounded by a company of learners and fellow seekers when I sat in that room. How many others before me had thought through these same issues? How many had memorized the same paradigms, the same charts, the same formulae? I felt accompanied, supported, and encouraged by my friends and mentors: by St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Raymond de Penyafort, St. Charles Borromeo, and so many more.

There was no eating or drinking or chatting in that room. Certainly not in their august presence.

***

I heard that a few years ago the rare books room of the library at the Casa Santa Maria underwent an extensive renovation. I'm sure that's for the better, because many of the books were suffering from termites and from the extreme temperature changes to which Rome is prone. But I do hope that the nature of the room was preserved, because it was a unique place to study, one that exemplified the point that I am trying to make about the importance of physical books, whether we are actually using them or not.

We human beings are composite creatures, body and soul. Although our minds are immaterial, we come to recognize and know things through the senses. The physical presence of books helps to emphasize the ideas they contain, and their physical weight conveys something of the weightiness of their contents. Although I read more of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae on the Internet these days, when I think of the Summa I picture my one-volume Latin-language edition from the University of Bologna. This handsome 20-pound tome, these few thousand closely printed pages, convey more of the majesty and depth of Aquinas' thought than could never be hyperlinked and made keyword-searchable.

I don't regret that so much literature is being digitalized and made widely available. But I do regret that it has to be an either/or situation at UC-Santa Cruz and at so many other institutions of higher learning. Really, if students want to mill around, eating, drinking, and chatting, why does have to be in what was formerly the library? Where is one to go these days in order to escape from the ephemeral present and drink deeply from the wisdom of ages past? If the library is taken away, what will be left?