If I have to make a library confession I will tell you that I'm not very good at using them. They overwhelm me. This is an embarrassing thing to admit, as someone who loves reading. I hate to use the computers and the catalogs and I feel unenthusiastic about cross-referencing or using a bibliography. Really, I enjoy them about as much as I enjoy cooking with a recipe. Spoils the fun. I've done my best work in libraries by grubbing around in the specific section I need (Geography: Italy: Memoirs) and coming up with things I never could have found on a computer. I like seeing the way that librarians have decided to order and classify things. I enjoy looking at groups of books, they're like rocks of a similar color or those US stamps that have cross-sections of different ecosystems. I can recognize that my method has serious flaws, and would be woefully inefficient if I were trying to write a serious research paper. That doesn't make me less stubborn about liking it, though.
Apparently, there was one more level of difficulty I would have had to face at this library only half a year ago: in order to get any books, you had to look them up on the computer, then order them at a desk. You couldn't go into the stacks yourselves. Like a giant special collections library made up of EVERY BOOK EVER. Fortunately it's not like that any more, but the library's history meant that I had to ask two different people before I figured out how to go through the tiny little passageway to the left of, and behind, the check-out desk; past the copiers; and finally into the long, low collection of books. Is this kind of thing normal? It's not what I'm used to from the various public and university libraries I'm familiar with. With the exception, I guess, of Stanford. Their stacks are in similarly long, cramped quarters with low ceilings made hazardous by pipes and sprinkler heads. I think of my tall coworker risking his life every time he'd walk through those tight mazes of books.
I was successful, though, in the end, so you can breathe that sigh of relief. Do you know that thing that happens, when you finally begin to penetrate the mystery of a library? it's a kind of impression of wonder, that it can even exist, that people have been writing things down for so many hundreds and hundreds of years, and an enthusiasm or giddy excitement, that it's all available to me. Then, not long after the giddiness, I start to get a little sleepy from the warm, musty air.
Postscript, regarding the Ackroyd book: I've been reading one or two others of the books I brought home from the library, and I'm ready to admit that the way his book is organized is more-- well, okay, I think because it's trashier, it's a lot easier to read. He doesn't use a lot of dates, and with my limited amount of time to get all this information, it's more what I need. I hereby rescind my earlier disparaging remark.
I leave you with a picture of all that was left this afternoon of the birthday cake that one of my friends in Basel made me. It's some kind of Transylvanian nut cake. I took to eating a little bit of it for every meal. I will miss it, now that it's gone.
