The Aesthetic of Erasure

I have only recently begun to do my studying in the East Reading Room. In terms past, I have preferred to work in the older, prettier spaces of the library, where the lights are yellow, not the harsh fluorescents of First Floor Berry, and the room smells faintly musty, and the narrow stairs creak when you ascend them. Call it imagined nostalgia for a time in which I never lived, call it LARPing; regardless, the inaccessibility of the Tower Room and Sanborn thus far have been a big blow to my academic productivity this summer term. Fortunately enough for both myself and my professors, I stumbled upon the room nested in the eastern wing of Baker dedicated by the class of 1913. I do not know how I was unaware of this room before this term, I typically pride myself on my knowledge of library layout, and it is a fairly large room. I can only imagine the unassuming entrance from Blobby turned me off of it, a phenomenon of which I cannot be the sole sufferer, as the majority of other students I have asked have also never heard of this room. Its layout is nearly identical to that of Sanborn House’s library, though furnished, lit, and painted in a way that gives it the odd appearance of the bastard child of Edwin Sanborn himself and the 1902 Room. Still, the stairs are sufficiently creaky, and if I dim them enough the fluorescents are less nauseating, and so I am perfectly happy to work there. 

In fact, I take great joy in perusing the shelves of books housed in the room while glancing up from my work, or taking a break to fix my mind on other matters. Upstairs one can find tomes on history and government of various speciation, economic and political philosophy, not, admittedly, my typical areas of interest, but I would never turn down a lovely old cloth-bound book, particularly when it is shelved amongst its kin and when it bears the byline of Thomas Jefferson or Emma Goldman, or when it is ornamented with gilt and American Traditionalism. Downstairs one finds volumes of more niche interests, ranging from vexillology to calligraphy et livres en français. It is difficult to overstate the serendipitous joy of stumbling upon a book that catches your fancy, particularly when you find it just as you are most in need of something stimulating, distracting, or, in the case of the flag books, simply colorful. I’ve even once found an adorable little fairy door hidden on a low-down shelf (which is, if you haven’t heard, part of a charming scavenger hunt put on by the Library in which I encourage all to participate). These are the details in which the spirit of a library is to be found. It is because of these features that a space, which otherwise would be a mere utilitarian repository, takes on character, and becomes a place that brings felicity and abundance of life to those who haunt it.

It is with great vexation, therefore, that I must report that the East Reading Room, which has to this point been one of the happiest discoveries of my term, is undergoing at this moment a great stripping of its character. I walked into the room earlier this week to find the shelves of the ground floor rendered bare, and I imagine it can only be a matter of time before the alcoves and balconies follow.

This is not a dearth unique to the East Reading Room. Throughout the library shelves are being emptied, and where once stood collections of beautiful old books are now only cold barren planks of aluminum. Entire rows of the stacks are now hollow, and I myself participated, as a member of Library staff, in the removal of many of the non-circulating materials on FFB. In fact the majority of my work revolves around this transition, preparing the books that have been removed from the library to be transported and stored in off-campus facilities. I have spent hours mending spines and preparing enclosures so that these books, “Old Dartmouth” volumes is the term library staff uses to refer to them, may sit safely and securely in a building dark and undisturbed, entered by no one except for those tasked with fetching the book when requested by a researcher.  I do not think I have to detail how thoroughly this destroys the ability of a library flaneur to happen upon these books by chance.

But why is it that these books are being moved? Why have so many library shelves been evacuated of their most aesthetically pleasing volumes?

Remember February of this year, when the College announced, unprompted and unexpectedly, that they would be permanently closing the Paddock Music Library and the Kresge Physical Sciences Library. This came as a great surprise to students and alumni, yes, but perhaps even more alarming was the surprise of faculty and staff alike. Professors of the Music department had not been informed ahead of time that the library would be closing, and were thus left to discover this truth in the same manner as the rest of campus: via a campus-wide email, or, in a manner that must have been painful to staff, word of mouth. This does not only imply that the department was not given advance warning, though this fact is grievous enough to warrant its own complaint, just as any player of a varsity sport who experienced the same treatment by Parkhurst when their team was cut. No, as Professor William Cheng, Chair of the department, expressed in his February open letter and subsequent crowd-sourced collection of stories from students and staff alike, Music faculty had not the slightest inclination that the College was even considering closing their library. No member of faculty had been consulted regarding the decision, no professor asked how this may impact their ability to teach, no student inquired as to the consequences this fiat would have on their studies. Parkhurst decided to close the library, and that was that.

When this decision was first announced, I reached out to Professor Cheng for an interview, and though he respectfully declined, he kindly took time out of his undoubtedly busy and stressful days, particularly given the ongoing events, to maintain a correspondence with me, and offered some insight into what Paddock meant to him. “I needed the flexibility to duck nimbly in and out of Paddock, where I consulted books, recordings, and scores,” he said. “Paddock’s proximity to my office was crucial.” The English department is fortunate enough to be in possession of its own library housed in the same building as its department offices. The College has granted this amenity to the Art History department as well. Why, then, has it suddenly denied this critical resource to Music and the physical sciences, particularly when the spaces already existed? To this day we still have not received an answer.

Let me take the time here to clarify the extent to which the Library itself was involved in this decision. After all, Paddock and Kresge, unlike Sanborn, are not under the direction of their respective departments, but rather the dominion of the Library. The announcement came from Dean Sue Mehrer, Dean of Libraries and thus a member of Library staff. However, in my discussions with other staff members, each of them expressed an initial surprise equal to that of the Music department faculty, and noted that they had no input in the decision process, so aside form heeding from Parkhurst and the final say of Dean Mehrer, it is unclear who precisely participated in the decision, though it is safe to say it was a very small group and not at all representative of those whom the decision would ultimately affect.

The Library’s website details where each collection is to be moved, and when we might expect this process to be complete. The Paddock collection will be dispersed between the East Reading Room, FFB, and Jones Media Center. Kresge will be mostly found on 4FB, though the Library of Congress QA will be one floor down. The Nash and Harvard collections, of which I am quite fond, and which looked so very at home in the East Reading Room, will be moved to the godforsaken Annex, and Old Dartmouth volumes are to be shipped to the off-campus repository.

All said, I am glad the Paddock collection will still be accessible, if much less so than before. If one collection had to be moved to the repository, better it be Old Dartmouth than Paddock, as Paddock is immensely important to the function of the Music department, and though I love having them around, I don’t know how critical these Old Dart books are to the everyday processes of the College. But the fact of the matter is, we shouldn’t have to choose. It isn’t as though the Library is establishing a new collection, and needs room for the additional materials. I do not know what the College plans to do with the now-free space outside the Library. More than anything I wish the Paddock collection could remain in Paddock, where it has been since 1986 and where it belongs, and the department would have quick and convenient access to all of its materials, and I would be at peace to continue studying among the Nash and Harvard collections as opposed to scores, which, in all due respect to musicians, are not nearly as pretty on shelves.

And for all this, what has the College achieved? Not a reduction in costs; all employees of the Kresge and Paddock Libraries, indeed all library employees who may have been affected by this change, will retain their positions, as promised by Dean Mehrer, and these two libraries are not stand-alone buildings but rather subspaces of the Hopkins Center and Fairchild, so the College is not conserving significant real estate. Besides, I do not think Parkhurst has much of a leg to stand on when it comes to the excuse of saving money, when the enormous (and, frankly, hideous) new graduate computer science building is being erected in the background. No, all I can foresee coming of this are musical groups traipsing across the Green and returning to the HOP lugging armfuls of material they could once access just downstairs, poor professors like Professor Cheng having a dramatically increased and complicated workload, though his salary will doubtless not reflect this change, and disgruntled students like myself languishing, students who do not ask for much, only pretty things to look at while they study, and library spaces that are actually inviting, that are cozy, that are curated by people and not Parkhurst, that cater to human needs, not card catalogs.