From the Bookshelf

I find myself wandering through the endless rooms and corridors of my school's main library. It is easily the largest library I have ever been in, and it is not difficult to get lost, in both a literal and a mental sense. This place is such a powerhouse of knowledge, and it sometimes saddens me to know that I will not be able to read or understand it all before my time is up. As I sit here writing this, in between L 7 .B66 and L 13 .B99, my eyes and mind wander across the endless collection of titles and authors. Who were all these people? What did they accomplish? What kept them up at night? Most of all, what earned them a spot on these shelves? Every now and then my eye will catch a particular title, and I'll have to pry it off the dusty shelf and read a small excerpt. I'm always curious to read the name of whomever checked the book out last and what the date was when they did. There are books in this place that have not been picked up in years, but my mind reading through the lines seems to bring them back to life. This library is becoming a place of refuge for me, and I regret not having come here more often as an underclassmen, but I am here now, and I do not plan to leave again. There is just too much to soak in, it's unfortunate that I have to pick and choose. We each have a role to play, we must each gather information from the subjects which spark our interests. Afterward, we must make that knowledge available for the masses, to be archived on the multitude of shelves that make up this place, another beautiful example of turning many into one.



“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” 
- James Baldwin