Thursday, June 05, 2008

Morris doesn't smell here anymore

On a visit to Morris Library yesterday to renew my card, I noticed that the smell is not the same in the stairwell, due to new rubber-tread stairs. And the floors are mostly empty; bereft of books now housed in an annex bldg. on McLafferty Rd.

And the new sign-in procedure doesn't work, either, for reasons I'll explain to someone at the circulation desk this morning. If you have a Morris "Courtesy Card," eventually you'll have to do the same. If you don't have a "Courtesy Card" and live near SIU, then maybe you should get one. $10 per six months.

I don't mosey 'round in Morris like I did, when browsing was a tactile and olfactory experience. The digital is devoid of these, no walking down the aisle, viewing Pulliam clock tower out the window, or sitting on the 4th(?) floor balcony. The new library will be devoid of these as well.

I wonder how much time or money it would take to recreate the Morris Library scent. Never smelled anything quite like it in other libraries.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't you go to the fifth floor? There are plenty of books there, and it has a great view of the Pulliam clock tower out the window.

Anonymous said...

Paranoid is right, there are some lovely views at the renovated Morris and lots of books, with more coming from McLafferty annex.

Anonymous said...

I think it was time to fix up Morris Library. I regret the waste, the stupid decisions to mess with the outside look, the piggy backing of the storage building to help pay for the football stadium. It had better be nice, it was very expensive.

An interesting point - books are of little interest to the modern student. SIU has just put a pile of money, more than it really had, into a huge, open stack, book storage building. The students want internet access and not much else these days.

Oh well, good old SIU. Hitting a high, on something that no one really cares about.

Anonymous said...

As a graduate student, I still use hard copy versions of books, so the library and interlibrary loan is completely necessary for me. Also, it provides a quiet place to study.