personal anecdote WAS [Alumni-chat] Why Aren't the Students Using the Lib...

[Sistersara at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/8/2007 8:51:13 P.M. Central Daylight Time,  
sjr5 at nyu.edu writes:

I  certainly used the library for its explicit purposes, but my 
strongest  memory of the library is that it's where I learned to 
smoke. I.e., there  was a smoking section in the library, either near 
the doors, or   between the inner and outer doors. And I noticed that 
if you smoked, you  could take a cigarette out to the smoking area and 
meet a boy by asking  for a light. So that's why I started to smoke. 
Of course, once I'd gotten  my cigarette lit, I usually couldn't think 
of anything else to say, but I  was guaranteed at least 10 minutes of 
hanging around whichever boy I'd  asked for a light.



Oh Sonia -- so much Antiochiana in your post.
 
Way back when -- that is when where the Union now stands, the Tea Room  stood,
 
And the Caf was in the three joined Quonset Huts where the Union parking  lot 
now stands, 
 
The Library was in what in the late 50's early 60's got called Horace Mann  
-- the small square brick two story building on College Street next to the  
Friends Meeting House.  I think the new Library, the Olive Kettering or the  OK 
dates from about 1955 or 56.  Anyhow, there was a community design  phase, and 
one of the considerations was that students wanted to be able to  smoke while 
studying.  Olive Kettering was designed with that in  mind.  
 
Walking in and facing the desk, everything to the left, including the  
catalogue area and the core collection and all the desk and seating space around  
the core -- that was smoking.  The Periodicals and the music collection,  which 
were to the right of the desk, and the space for serials, and reference,  
non-smoking.  In the basement, some sections of the stacks were smoking,  some non 
-- but since most of the desks got claimed for a quarter, and people  put in 
their portable typewriters and (quite illegally) brought in a thermos of  
coffee, the line between smoking and non-smoking was rather indistinct.  To  be 
polite about it all, you found yourself an ashtray, and put it with your  stuff. 
 It was that way in 57, and it was still that way in 62.  
 
When the Library was moved from what became Horace Mann to Olive Kettering,  
the students on campus lined up in a chain across front campus, and moved the  
collection hand over hand.  Not yet a student, I was in YSO during the  move, 
and I joined the chain for several hours.  During my time on the  line, bound 
periodicals were being moved.  Huge heavy pounds of stuff --  but they were 
handed off one by one down the line, and at the end of the line  someone was 
putting them precisely where they were to be.  The Dayton Daily  News had a 
feature about how Antiochians moved their library.  
 
Now I am concerned about the mold in the place.  I had heard about  Corry, 
but not about the Library.  Look, Mold eats wood and paper.  If  enough of it is 
present, the whole collection is in danger.  It is probably  a result of a 
flat roof on the Library that leaked, and wasn't fixed when it  first showed up 
-- but guys, if it is in the basement, and in lots of the  collection -- it is 
damn serious.  
 
There are ways of getting the mold out of books with various gas treatments  
in something like an autoclave, and I am sure that Librarians know where to 
find  the resources on this.  Different kinds of paper need different treatments 
 given their initial acidic content.  Very old acidic paper responds well to  
the vapor of boiled 7UP,  among other things, but I am sure there are more  
scientific solutions.  
 
I been blogging for months about New Orleans -- about how any rebuilding  
ought to be just masonry construction -- brick and mortar and cement --  
absolutely no wood and no sheet rock, all of which is subject to mold and  mildew, and 
being eaten by both.  There are towns along the Rhine and  Danube that flood 
every twenty years or so, and that have buildings that have  stood for 
hundreds of years because they are designed to flood -- they are  masonry, they can 
be powerwashed after a flood, and then white washed.   They have nice huge 
staircases to the upper stories with equipment to move stuff  up, and they have 
local plans to make these moves.  But they also don't  allow anything made of 
wood or paper on ground floors that cannot be easily  moved.  They just don't 
want the mold.  
 
Amsterdam.-- God what a lesson in how to do it.  I knew nothing about  the 
place till the mid 1980's, but having just finished leading an Elderhostel  
program in Denmark (where I was AEA certified Danish speaking), I was asked to  
take over a group where the leader had gotten ill, and the last week or so of  
the program was in Holland, studying the matter of Water Management in  
Amsterdam.  What a revelation.  Yes everything in that town that could  possibly be 
laid wet is not at all attractive to mold.  You know zoning for  no wood on the 
ground floors -- not even window sills, and arrangements for  moving 
everything on ground floors up in case of floods, with all the equipment  in place, 
and of course no sheet rock -- just old time plaster that could be  washed and 
white washed after a flood.  
 
These days I sit and scream when I see folk on TV making complaints that  the 
local Home Depot cannot provide enough sheet rock for those  rebuilding.  
Good lord, in New Orleans they ought to shoot people who  rebuild with anything 
that can be eaten by mold.   And while it is  nice to concern ourselves with 
New Orleans, well if Antioch is getting the  precious college library eaten by 
mold, we are in really bad shape.  
 
First thing is to fix a structure where we can save the collection without  
mold moving from one part to another, (it is contagious) and then the next step 
 is to fix the building.  I think OK is saveable -- but it needs to have  
everything removed, be structurally repaired, put on a pitched roof, proper  
climate control, and then sealed up tightly and filled with the right gas for  the 
right amount to time to kill everything.  Then the collection needs to  be 
properly gassed before it is returned to the building.  In the meantime,  why 
not just scan the good stuff and put it on line.  Mold does not play a  major 
destructive part in cyberland.  
 
I concern myself with why students are not in the library, but when I was  on 
the Alumni Board in the early 90's. I didn't see all that much action around  
the library either, when I visited with Joe every time I attended a  meeting. 
 I still thought it important to build the collection.   Decisions made to 
stop taking subscriptions to serials were profoundly bad,  particularly because 
the economic reasons for ending the subscriptions were not  communicated to 
alumni.  Those decisions were not made by Librarians, and  they profoundly 
impacted the ability of faculty to teach to currency in  disciplines.  If we can 
restore the college, we have lots of work to do in  restoring the collections in 
terms of what was missed in the economic down years  when nothing was 
acquired. 
 
Yes, the library needs to have a heavy, hard copy collection, properly  bound,
 
But the Library also needs to put most of what it owns, particularly the  
rare stuff -- on line.   
 
 
 
 
 



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