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Horizontal Libraries

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Clarissa

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Since people are talking about libraries, I want to post these photos I took at our university library last week. This is since books were ejected:

I didn’t choose a particularly weird corner for the photos. It’s all like this now.

This entire idea that young people can’t survive if they aren’t horizontal much of the time is counterproductive. A young man in his late twenties came to my office completely winded because he walked 3 flights of stairs to get there. He remained winded and heaving for the next 15 minutes of our conversation. I’m… not in my late twenties, let’s put it that way, but I walk these stairs all the time and don’t notice it.

11 responses to “Horizontal Libraries”

  1. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    As a lifelong bibliophile who’s been going to the library since they could walk, those pictures of the library are horrifying. A library is supposed to have books but too many have become little more than drop-in centers for homeless people and after school places to dump kids, oftentimes I’m the only non- elderly person looking through the books.

    As for the horizontal thing, that just looks weird. I get that some people like to lie down while reading, I do myself but at night before bed. But being horizontal all the time can’t be good for your back or muscles unless you’re under doctor’s orders, plus it’s just laziness. Plus one cannot do much lying down except sleep or maybe read, maybe this is just pandering to lazy kids and adults

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The problem with this library is that yes, you can lie down to read. But read what? The books are mostly gone.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        read what?

        Your phone.

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  2. ed Avatar
    ed

    This looks great for children. Seems that’s how they’re treating college students now.

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  3. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    They’d do this at our public library, except the beanbag chairs are too hard to disinfect, and they’d all smell like urine in 48 hours.

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  4. el Avatar
    el

    This is Klara, right? She looks so grown up at 9 years old. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      She’s in the 90th percentile by height for girls her age. And still there are several girls taller than her in her grade. One girl is maybe one inch shorter than me, and I’m 5’6. But that girl’s mom is over 6 feet, towering over me.

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  5. Physpostdoc Avatar
    Physpostdoc

    If you hadn’t mentioned it, I wouldn’t even have guessed this is a library!

    Looks like the passageways connecting terminals of a slightly upscale but ever-soulless airport.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      When I go to the library to get the books I receive from interlibrary loans I always wear my sunshades so that most of the details of this devastation are blurry. It’s that sad.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        By the way, when I tell librarians that I hate what was done to the library, they get upset and tell me I don’t understand that the world has changed and we need to be in tune with “what currently works.” That half of them were fired because librarians are unnecessary if there are no books seems to escape their notice.

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        1. Physpostdoc Avatar
          Physpostdoc

          Tragic 😦

          I strongly believe that THE greatest triumph of human civilization is our libraries — when not only we found how to codify and preserve our intellectual progress and knowledge for posterity via the written word, but as a society came up with means to share it for free with anyone and everyone. People who burn books and destroy libraries are plain evil savages in this light

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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