Visiting the library

I recently visited a couple of my school’s libraries—UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library and Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library—to check out a few books. In doing so, I realized how long it had been since I last searched through library stacks for a book. Awestruck by the significance of the occasion, I took a picture of book stacks and posted it to my Instagram account.

There was a time when going to the library was normal. As an elementary-school student, I learned all about the Dewey Decimal System and how to use the card catalog to search for books. My class frequented the library to check out and return books. In high school, I studied in the library of California State University, Long Beach. I’d sit there for hours, having given my mother instructions to pick me up in the afternoon. Oddly enough, as a college student, I never studied in the library—only as a high school student. Go figure. However, during the summer months between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I went to the library almost weekly to check out books.

I took a picture of book stacks and posted it to my Instagram account.

I read a lot that summer. Reading for pleasure gave me respite from assigned readings for my summer anatomy class. During my sophomore and junior years of college, I worked in a campus satellite library—the Multicultural Resource Center. Filling my childhood and early adult years are great memories of school and public libraries. The Internet changed all that.

I can count on two hands the number of times I checked out a library book as an undergraduate or graduate student. In fact, before my PhD program, the last time I remember going to a library was during my junior year, and that was to visit friends who worked there. During my MSN program, I never once stepped foot in a library. To be honest, I couldn’t tell you where the library is at California State University, Dominguez Hills—or if one exists at all.

The few times I have visited UCLA’s Biomedical Library, I have been reminded of the joys of going to the library—the smell of books; the short-lived anxiety of searching for a single literary work among thousands of collections; the thought of who may have read this book last. What were they studying? Where did they read it? What did they think of it?

Going to the library was once a staple of the educational experience. Today, it is quite possible to earn a college degree without ever reading a book. As use of technology continues to increase, part of me is beginning to miss the good old days—the days when I either had to visit the library or have no references to cite for a paper (two or three libraries if a needed book was checked out); the days when I wrote papers by hand and went to the computer lab to type them up; the days when the Internet was but a mystery and information wasn’t handed to me on a silver spoon. Those were the days!

Today, I wonder if students are actually getting a college education or simply earning a degree. Getting an education entails so much more than simply adhering to guidelines spelled out in a syllabus and receiving a grade. For me, getting a college education meant sitting in a lecture hall full of people I didn’t know and becoming friends with some of them as a result of our shared experience. It meant engaging in meaningful discussions in a small class section, then hanging around after class to continue the discussion with the professor and a few other students. It meant searching the stacks in the library, hoping—and praying—to find the book I needed. For me, that was what getting an education was about.

Have we lost the magic of the college experience? Are technological advancements removing the very things that made us feel like students? Is technology becoming more of an educational hindrance than a help? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions but, as someone who loves everything about higher education, the thought that I am even posing these questions makes me a little sad.

I want future generations to know the joy of visiting the library—not simply downloading books and articles from Google Books and online research databases. I’m not saying we should return to the days of typewriters and Wite-Out—yes, I also remember those days—but there is a special feeling associated with frequenting a university library. I can only hope today’s educators are encouraging students to experience that feeling.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Comments are moderated. Those that promote products or services will not be posted.