Libraries Quote by John McPhee
““Speaking of libraries: A big open-stack academic or public library is no small pleasure to work in. You're, say, trying to do a piece on something in Nevada, and you go down to C Floor, deep in the earth, and out to what a miner would call a remote working face. You find 10995.497S just where the card catalog and the online computer thought it would be, but that is only the initial nick. The book you knew about has led you to others you did not know about. To the ceiling the shelves are loaded with books about Nevada. You pull them down, one at a time, and sit on the floor and look them over until you are sitting on a pile five feet high, at which point you are late home for dinner and you get up and walk away. It's an incomparable boon to research, all that; but it is also a reason why there are almost no large open-stack libraries left in the world.””
About This Quote
Source Essay: “The Library Book” (The New Yorker, 1995)
Open-stack libraries offer immersive, serendipitous research experiences, but they are disappearing due to modern constraints.
In simple terms: Open libraries foster deep, unexpected discovery.
Key Takeaway
Value and protect open-stack libraries.
Themes
research
serendipity
knowledge sharing
Mood
nostalgic
inquisitive
Type
essay
reflective
When to use this quote
- academic research
- personal study
- archival work
- education policy
Key Concepts
Information ecology
library design
academic culture
Questions to Reflect On
- How can libraries balance digital and physical resources?
- What policies could preserve open-stack libraries?
A Different Perspective
Digitalization and space limits threaten physical library experiences.
