Give me libraries or give me death

I've just come from a presentation about the new library that will soon be built on campus, and I love it. Then again, I love all libraries. There's something about a library that I find irresistible.

As a child I loved sitting on the floor in the children's department with a great big colorful book on my lap, and in my teens I looked forward to Saturday mornings when I could ride my big clunky yellow bike to the library and come back with a basket rattling with books. I remember my first shy forays into the adult section of the library and, later, my discovery of Special Collections. When I visit a campus I need to spend time in the library even if I never even open a book.

Among large metropolitan libraries, Chicago is my favorite, and not just because of the majestic bronze bust of Gwendolyn Brooks looking like a no-nonsense poetry goddess; I love the top floor with its plants and benches and quiet reading spaces. In Columbus I love the Ohioana Library, with its huge, climate-controlled stacks full of wonderfully rare books by Ohio authors or about Ohio, but I also love the horrible crowded dusty stacks at OSU. Once I visited the Indiana State Library to read a rare typescript related to Gene Stratton Porter, and I loved the overblown classical architecture in the lobby, its immense marble walls inscribed with the names of the world's great writers and thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle right down to James Whitcomb Riley.

I even love imaginary libraries: the labyrinthine library in The Name of the Rose, or the library presided over by the Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire in the Jasper Fforde novels. I love the thought of the defunct Coonskin Library, a few pioneering wheelbarrows full of books purchased by money raised by the sale of raccoon pelts in eighteen-ought-six or thereabouts. However limited it might be, it's still a library, and what more could I want?

Which is why I don't understand all this talk about finding ways to lure students into the library, as if all we have to do is find the right bait and students will come streaming through the doors. What kind of bait do they need? We have books; we have magazines; we have Special Collections; we even have big comfy chairs and lots of light. If that won't work, how much good will a cybercafe really do?

But I love the new library nevertheless. I can't wait for it to be built so I can visit it. In fact, why wait? I'll pay a little imaginary visit right now.