Of Libraries and the Web

As confessed previously, I have an addictive personality. I imagine that sometime over these 5 years and (coming up on) 500 entries, I've mentioned that the web is just one of my almost-addictions.

I do not think I've shared the anecdote about the library, nor my association between libraries and information online....so here goes.

When I was a young lad, I was treated to a visit to our local library. At that time, it was not very large. The childrens' reading room was about 20 x 20. That little library did, however, have enough books to keep me busy. I won't say that I read them all, but I read many, many books. Whenever possible, I would sit out winter in that library or lug home as many books as they'd allow.

Then came college.

I'd mastered my little library, and I thought I was ready for a university library. If I could read one library, cover to cover, I could handle another, so I thought. I discovered Farrell Library, at Kansas State University, to be a bit bigger. [Farrell is now known as Hale Library, btw.] In truth, it boggled my mind. I'd never even encountered a library with more than one floor, let alone stacks of 8 levels! I was told the facility stored a million books--this was my first college object lesson, actually running my finger down the spines of those million books like they were a picket fence, from the top to the bottom floor. Prior to that, I had only a vague idea of what a million might really be.

I immediately got a job working there, filing cards in the card catalog (most folks today likely do not even know what a card catalog is, sadly.) I gave tours of the place to visiting friends and family, to lost peers and hot co-eds. Many interesting things happened back in the stacks in days of yore, including streaking, smoking, and much et cetera....or so I am told.

I do want to zoom in on that first day for a moment, however, for I have seldom been so very much in awe. I've always loved the smell and sound and weight of a library, but that library, posing its million volume challenge, was so impressive. More than any classroom or college quad, more than the most prestigious ivy league facade or pompous professor--that moment in that library foyer conveyed to me the power of the written word. It was as if millions of authors were there, in person, all staring at me (or perhaps chanting, "read me! read me!").

My reaction, honestly? I darted back into the stacks and hyperventilated (big boy's word for almost wept).

Fast forward near twenty years to my growing fascination with Al Gore's Internet. It was the 1990's, and I had a monochromatic monitor, but already I was wowed by the information (text only, back then) one could extract from the ether.

A few years later, as the web put on its pretty face, I was all-the-more enamored.

Now, like that day at Farrell, I approach cyberspace in awe. Like 1981, when I felt I had to read all of the million books, I find open portholes to what seems like infinite information, all at my fingertips....and I am insatiable. I am, admittedly, hooked.

Like all my almost-addictions, I am wary. I monitor my time online just like I do my time on television. In the same way that I look away from the window of Victoria's Secret, I force myself to look away from the techno gadgets I cannot afford (but crave). I guard myself, but there are days I lose the fight. I've found myself 6 hours into a web tangle, having opened so many tabs and windows and browsers my PC even gets too tired to carry on....but this has been very rare.

I love learning, I guess that's it. I am inspired by all that is there to learn, in libraries and online...and for that matter, from others, from travel, from introspection...