Looking back at being a college freshman

Our niece, Sammy (shown in the photo with her father Bill, Carl’s brother) graduated this May from Laurel High School in Laurel, Montana. She’ll be a freshman this fall at the University of Montana—Billings campus. Who can watch a new “hatch” and not wax nostalgic over one’s own year when being a grownup was new and the future spread out ahead like a blank page? The contrast between now and then, while dramatic, doesn’t necessarily mean one was “better” and one was “worse.” Take a look at how students used to research, and how they (and anyone else, for that matter) can research now. When I was Sammy’s age and entering my freshman year at the University of Illinois (1970), I loved rooting around in the splendid card catalog room at the U of I’s world class library, handing my check-out slip to the library helper, who would disappear into the acres of wire bookcases “back in the stacks.” There was a pleasant smell that can be found in old libraries: compounded of a little dustiness, a lingering odor of institutional cleaning fluids, and hundreds of other particles I cannot identify. After a while, the helper would reappear, and I would receive the book. A year ago, I was back in Urbana and stopped by the library. The card catalog room, with its high domed ceiling and murals, now—instead of yards of tall, wooden card catalog cabinets—has tables with computers. The librarians and library helpers were still there, though, as was that memorable scent of books. The U of I library has more than 24 million items, of which 10 million are books, and is the largest academic library in the U.S. I still love doing research. I am no longer required to physically go to a location, and what might have taken an hour now takes a second, and instead of one source of information, I may find tens of thousands. My little office, however, just doesn’t have that magic smell that needs years and years of accumulated knowledge and effort and above all, millions and millions of paper-filled, bound books. I do love being able to work in my jammies, though.