![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fun in the Library
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 12:03 amSome people might take the title of this entry as evidence of what a sad geek I am, but it's largely linguistic habit - I once even wrote a class handout called "Fun With Definitions". I reckon it comes from the instructive books I read as a child, which had cheerful titles like "Fun With Papier Mache" or "Let's Go Spelunking". Nevertheless, I do enjoy libraries, coming as I do from a generation that still thinks the printing press was a pretty cool idea and doesn't walk into a library and think "Why would anyone want so many printouts?"
Of all the libraries I have used, my favourite was the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. It was circular, it had oak tables, it had balconies and a mezzanine floor (whatever that is) and it had The Stacks, where you could stumble across the mummified remains of lost professors. Our library here lacks that sense of magic and mystery, but considering it's only been in existence for around fifteen years, it has quite a decent collection of books in several languages. Today I went in search of Orhan Pamuk's Benim Adım Kırmızı ("My Name Is Crimson"), a story about calligraphers and illuminators in Ottoman times. My wife recommended this as she is currently doing a course on traditional Turkish illumination and wants me to understand the torment she is going through. On my way to the Turkish Literature section, I picked up an introduction to Classical Arabic, which I almost certainly won't read, since as difficulty goes, Arabic makes Chinese look like a special version of Esperanto designed for the linguistically challenged. Still, I'd like to learn the alphabet, since I love the calligraphy, and then at least I'll be able to say, "Ah, that says kHa'wyyiq'ul-Dhiqh" or whatever.
Arriving at the Turkish literature section, I was initially surprised to find nothing by Orhan Pamuk, then found that the books are organised according to some strange system which can't be chronological (since the medieval poet Pir Sultan Abdal is the same section as the twentieth-century poet Nazım Hikmet) and didn't seem to be divided according to poetry, drama and novels either, since Pir Sultan Abdal appears in two sections. Actually writing the subjects on the shelves is a cheat used only in lowly public libraries; ours, being a self-respecting university library, uses the British Library of Congress Dewey Hexadecimal system, which is designed to keep as many librarians as possible in work by ensuring that only they can find books. Eventually I located a number of books by Pamuk, but not the one I was looking for.
On the way back I happened on the humour section. As I said, this is a serious university library, so the humour section isn't very large, and half the books have titles like "The Etiology of Satire" or "Deconstructing the Irish Joke: Post-Colonial Perspectives" but there are still a few funnies, probably donated by foreign staff on their way home. The problem with browsing the humour section is that it can be as depressing as it is amusing. There are all these people around who write more wittily than me, and get paid lots of money for it.
Of all the libraries I have used, my favourite was the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. It was circular, it had oak tables, it had balconies and a mezzanine floor (whatever that is) and it had The Stacks, where you could stumble across the mummified remains of lost professors. Our library here lacks that sense of magic and mystery, but considering it's only been in existence for around fifteen years, it has quite a decent collection of books in several languages. Today I went in search of Orhan Pamuk's Benim Adım Kırmızı ("My Name Is Crimson"), a story about calligraphers and illuminators in Ottoman times. My wife recommended this as she is currently doing a course on traditional Turkish illumination and wants me to understand the torment she is going through. On my way to the Turkish Literature section, I picked up an introduction to Classical Arabic, which I almost certainly won't read, since as difficulty goes, Arabic makes Chinese look like a special version of Esperanto designed for the linguistically challenged. Still, I'd like to learn the alphabet, since I love the calligraphy, and then at least I'll be able to say, "Ah, that says kHa'wyyiq'ul-Dhiqh" or whatever.
Arriving at the Turkish literature section, I was initially surprised to find nothing by Orhan Pamuk, then found that the books are organised according to some strange system which can't be chronological (since the medieval poet Pir Sultan Abdal is the same section as the twentieth-century poet Nazım Hikmet) and didn't seem to be divided according to poetry, drama and novels either, since Pir Sultan Abdal appears in two sections. Actually writing the subjects on the shelves is a cheat used only in lowly public libraries; ours, being a self-respecting university library, uses the British Library of Congress Dewey Hexadecimal system, which is designed to keep as many librarians as possible in work by ensuring that only they can find books. Eventually I located a number of books by Pamuk, but not the one I was looking for.
On the way back I happened on the humour section. As I said, this is a serious university library, so the humour section isn't very large, and half the books have titles like "The Etiology of Satire" or "Deconstructing the Irish Joke: Post-Colonial Perspectives" but there are still a few funnies, probably donated by foreign staff on their way home. The problem with browsing the humour section is that it can be as depressing as it is amusing. There are all these people around who write more wittily than me, and get paid lots of money for it.
