On Sunday. It was beautiful. If only it were possible to time my visits back to Texas such that I could be sure to catch a thunderstorm. I miss them most of all.
I dropped a class–too much time spent on problem sets. I really have grown lazy in my old age. Still, I’m hoping to pick up another independent research project before too long to fill in the gap. For now, I’ve got plenty to keep me entertained with my one real class, my one real research project, and my seminar. I found the main library stacks today. They’re amazing. The bookshelves are on tracks, and you have to slide them around to squeeze into the actual shelf you’re interested in. So many books. Still need to investigate DVDs.
OK, I’m really having a hard time picturing how these sliding bookshelves work. Help!
hmm… i couldn’t find a picture. So I’ll try to describe. Think of the stacks like at the PCL. Two-sided shelves for books interspersed with walkways. The shelves are really long, and form hallways. Now imagine pushing all the rows of shelves together so that the walkways went away. All the books are still there, you just can’t get to them because you can’t fit between the shelves. So you leave enough room for one walkway, and put all the shelves on rails. at the end of the shelf, there’s a wheel you can turn to slide it one way or another. To get between two shelves, you slide over shelf after shelf until the one you want is accessible. Make sense?
I can picture it now, thanks to your comment. So, if two people want books that are on distant shelves, they have to take turns, since there can only be one walkway at once! Saves space, at the price of convenient access. I could see it working… for rarely used books, anyway.
When you’ve got the 2nd biggest university library in the country (second only to harvard), you have to imagine that most of the books will almost never get checked out. how crowded did you ever see it in the stacks at UT?