I love that dungeon

The column suggested that Firestone should privilege study spaces over books, a view which I have frequently encountered floating around campus. This suggestion never fails to perplex me, because Firestone already is required to store some millions of volumes off-site, even without expanding the reading rooms. Firestone — just one library in our University system — houses 3,200,000 physical books. Each year Firestone acquires another mile of new books, requiring it to remove volumes to the storage libraries at our remote Forrestal Campus (2,400,000 total, including books not registered to Firestone). Firestone is responsible for the bulk of the University’s humanities and social sciences works, excluding books on art, architecture, East Asian Studies and music. Books on the natural sciences — such as those used by Mathabane and, on occasion, even by philosophers like me — are kept not in Firestone but in Lewis Library.

The column suggests that we digitize an unspecified “portion” of the collection, but the only sections suggested are “periodicals and technical manuals.” The technical manuals aren’t in Firestone at all, and I don’t know anyone who has ever visited the library to retrieve periodicals: these are already online and usually accessible through databases such as Journal Storage. Firestone already spends about 40 percent of its acquisitions budget on subscriptions for these digital archives. With respect to digitizing the books we have, the librarians are one step ahead of their critics: 250,000 volumes have been scanned and are available through Google, but the vast majority of the collection is under copyright and cannot be made available online without the author’s consent. Of course, this restriction holds for most newly published volumes as well.

Mathabane admits that “students in the humanities and some social sciences may enjoy stumbling upon books related to their research” — serendipity ranking high among the joys of scholarship — but points out that the natural and computer science majors have no need for Firestone, which, for those natural scientists who never study the humanities, is true. But because 65 percent of the undergraduates are humanists or social scientists — although I would never have believed it myself — most of us really do need Firestone. And for anyone who needs “a digitized system” to find “specific information” in the library, I would suggest starting with the electronic card catalogue.

With regard to the expansion of study spaces, the librarians have already addressed these concerns. The ongoing renovations envision a new large reading room, a series of smaller reading rooms and study spaces scattered throughout the stacks, all created by maximizing spatial efficiencies. Firestone will still have an on-site capacity of 3,200,000 volumes. So there’s no need to evict the books to make room for the people. And if we still require even more study space, why not use Campus Club? I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s pretty quiet.

Mathabane recognizes that the goal of a research library should be to “provide academics with the information that they need to do good work.” So after encouraging us to scan the volumes and turn the stacks into study halls he ends by lamenting that Firestone — the industrial powerhouse of scholastic energy — is “falling short” of its goal. No evidence is adduced in support of this claim, other than a Tolkien-esque critique of the building’s interior style — a point which I readily concede.

Surprisingly, Mathabane acknowledges that there is something to be said for being “surrounded by shelves of books that one loves” — which is his exact description of the Princeton Public Library. Why the public library deserves such effusive praise remains a mystery to me, but his argument seems grounded, for the most part, in the building’s luminescent design. One is not supposed to dispute on matters of taste, but while I will concede that the public library is an unusually good example of modern architecture done right, I maintain that there is in Firestone a fiercer, more industrial sort of beauty — the sort of aesthetic appeal that often lingers in displays of overpowering strength. There is an attractiveness in those chthonic batteries of academic artillery which can hold its own against the admittedly more graceful style of light-flooded interiors and glass walls. Then again, I’m the sort of person who thinks a journey through the Mines of Moria of “The Lord of the Rings” would make an excellent alternative to Outdoor Action, which perhaps explains my deep appreciation for the “dungeon” at the heart of Princeton.

Brendan Carroll is a philosophy major from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at btcarrol@princeton.edu.