A little bit of the past

Does anyone else wish we weren't moving so hysterically forward to the "e-library"? Not that I'm not fully in favour of e-resources and all they make available to us at the RSI inducing click of a mouse button. It's more what we lose in the race away from a traditional library. Tall dark wood shelf lined rooms, the smell of books and polish, quiet spaces away from the rush of life where you can sit and expand your mind. The person behind the desk who answers questions from their head, not after tapping it into a computer, because they know their collections like they know their friends. The individual personality of a library, and the personalities it gives host to - both staff and reader.

I had occasion to visit the headquarters of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society a few years back, a wonderful old building in Leeds, every room turned into a library / archive of material of enormous use to family historians. I was talking to visitors, getting them to complete a survey for my MSc dissertation, and doing a bit of my own research in between. And somewhere, out of the blue, a bell rang. Not a fire alarm, but a call for all staff and visitors to come down to the table and take tea together. I don't recall if it were free, or for a nominal charge, but there this random bunch were, sipping tea and eating biscuits, making polite conversation for ten minutes, before returning to our separate obsessions. And it happened again in the afternoon. And when the time came to leave, we said our goodbyes like old friends.

I just can't help wondering whether all this bumf about "professionalism" isn't sometimes missing the point.