Let’s take a look at the six floors of the Gottesman Library at Teachers College for a moment, shall we? There is a main area on each floor, furnished with long tables, comfortable upholstered chairs, and a helpful librarian (who only LOOKS like a statue) sitting behind the circulation desk. This main area is where students sit and read, research, visit quietly in study groups, and generally try to act smart in front of their friends. They hope a professor will walk by and notice their effort. Occasionally a cell phone will go off. This is the student’s way of saying, “I have both brains AND a stunning social life. You can catch me in the library at 2 pm and in a bar at 2 am.”
I know this is what they are thinking because the students who REALLY are studying have turned their phones off or on vibrate. The truly studious ones always sigh loudly or turn to glare at the cell-phone offender for blantantly violating basic library etiquette. (I should add here that there is a bar in Fort Worth called The Library, which is about as genius as it gets as far as naming an establishment. Those TCU students can honestly tell their parents that they have been spending all of their free time at The Library, and there is a simultaneous sigh of satisfaction on both ends of the telephone line. Brilliant.)
So that is the main area of the TC library. After quickly panning the scene, you notice that there are … um … no books. There are computers and rich mahogany paneled walls, but there are no books (The socialite on the cell phone has not noticed this minor incongruity, as yet).
A few days ago, through the online book catalog, I look up “handwriting,” a keyword for my thesis project, and the screen suddenly spits back 4,500 some-odd titles (Okay, not THAT many). I wonder, where, oh, where ARE these 4,500 books? I ask the statuesque librarian. She tells me they are in a series of separate bookrooms. Hmm. I find the bookrooms and discover exactly WHY everyone is out there in the upholstered chairs without books. The bookrooms are dark, buzzing with fluorescent bulbs overhead, overcrowded with bookshelves, have walls that are painted a dull Dickensian orphanage gray, and have low, low ceilings. I feel like I am crouching in a foxhole. I did NOT feel safe in the libary.
No one is in the bookrooms with me during my one-hour perusal. It is a little creepy. I cannot find what I am looking for, so I consult my handy library map, and proceed from the 2nd floor bookroom to the 2nd floor bookroom loft. There is a TINY elevator in the corner. This is not to be confused with the two enormous elevators out in the main area of the library. No, the bookroom elevator I can hardly squeeze into while holding my books. Only one person at a time can fit into this elevator. Or maybe two people, if they are hugging.
It is no wonder the bookroom ceilings are so low. What with these “lofts” on every level, there are TWO floors for every ONE of the main library. So actually there are twelve floors of books in the six-floor library. I have to tell you, being in the ultimate teacher library is quite an experience. Anything you want related to education is available to you. ANYTHING! Every title in the entire joint is for teachers. I almost ran through the stacks squealing and leaving a glorious spray of books in my wake. But I didn’t, because I am deathly afraid of heights, and these lofts are suspended. That’s right, suspended in such a way that you are almost on a catwalk, looking through to the floor below. For the life of me, I could not figure out how they had those book stacks up there. I was so nervous and pulled in so tightly as I walked between the shelves that I almost made myself implode. I touched the spine of each book with a feathery finger. In some part of my brain, I knew that the loft was holding thousands of pounds of books, but I still had a fear that 160 lbs. of Nika was going to push the place to critical mass and send it all crashing to street level. I did NOT feel safe in the library.
But it was worse on the tiny bookroom elevator. Each time I got on to go to a different floor or loft, I felt very strange. It wasn’t the fact that I was in a four foot stainless steel box; I do not have claustrophobia, or anything like that. It was not that there was a rotary phone on the floor, which seemed a little too antiquated for the kind of surety I need in an elevator experience. No, it was something else I could not put my finger on. It was a sense of … exposure. I did NOT feel safe in the library.
Finally, I looked up and realized why. THERE WAS NO CEILING ON THE ELEVATOR!!! How can there be no ceiling?! Pardon me, but isn’t there something about the mechanism of an elevator that requires a ceiling? Aren’t there hooks and pulleys? Look up into that sixth floor shaft of light while you are moving and just try to keep your lunch. I am glad I have been practicing my stair-climbing, because from now on I will try to put the skill to use.
And I thought libraries were the most dangerous places on earth because they EXPOSE you to new ideas. Sheesh.