Brown University prides itself on being a free, open and welcoming environment - but one would never know that after a visit to a University library. Our campus libraries are, on the whole, wretched oases of the aesthetically repugnant type, with little value beyond being landmarks where parties can rendezvous, with the sole intent of going elsewhere.
The administration needs to get this through their heads - aesthetics matter, and neither beauty nor cultural worth is entirely relative.
After spending many a night in the cavernous carrels of the Rockefeller Library, on the bland levels of the Sciences Library or in the blindingly bright free-for-all that is the Friedman "Study" Center, I have come to realize that our University has not the slightest clue as to what beauty and high culture truly entail. Certainly I have left out several other libraries on campus, such as the Orwig Music Library, the Art Slide Library, and a couple others, but their relative lack of use should not merit serious consideration as a study area in dire need of renovation.
Plain and simple, the University's major libraries and study areas are grotesquely ugly. The Rockefeller Library is a sullen place where, I believe, the misguided notion that naked utility ought to trump beauty has been given free rein. It is a barren environment where inspiration is hardly to be found. When studying there, I am often distracted by the sheer hideousness of the library itself, as well as the rather musty odor that permeates every room save a few. The noisiness of a supposed study area is likewise not conducive to concentration on a paper, book or problem set.
In many ways, being at the Rockefeller Library makes me feel as if I am still in high school, studying in a boisterous library ostensibly designed by a person who thought that libraries were merely places to visit and that their sole purpose was utilitarian. Perhaps I have a vision that is too old-fashioned for our coarse modern world, but I have always regarded libraries as cultural epicenters, where knowledge is to be absorbed, theories proposed, enlightenment reached, beauty acclaimed and the Infinite contemplated.
Cold, callous utility should not be that which we seek in our libraries. Instead, spiritual, intellectual and social fulfillment, whose realization is far more important and whose roots are indelibly ingrained in human nature, should be sought. Our status as rational beings necessitates the satiation of an innate thirst for civilized culture, but the Rockefeller Library provides little more than a place to sit and further cheapen whatever remnants of high culture remain at the University.
The Sciences Library is, in virtually every respect, even worse than the Rockefeller Library. The building itself rivals the Pompidou in its architectural inanity; the actual study areas are breathtakingly repulsive. Am I the only one who thinks that a cheap carrel, a squeaky chair, insipid floors and dingy stacks are an aesthetic problem warranting some sort of remedy?
The Friedman "Study" Center is, however, the most disappointing study area on campus, largely because it is so new. The University had the chance to design a quality study area that actually served as a study area, but instead the students received a quasi-hippie hangout, bereft only of strobe lights on the ceiling and a lava lamp in the corner.
The furniture is horrible, both for studying purposes and simply for sitting. The lighting in the downstairs area is awful. And the layout of the room itself makes quiet isolation nearly impossible, for a friend will invariably see you and offer the customary salutations.
In my time at the University, I have only noticed two libraries that are worth anything as study centers or as quiet cultural areas where one can reflect. Those two libraries are the John Carter Brown Library and the John Hay Library. The former is not officially part of the University system, and has regular business hours, consequently making it useless for many students. However, I suppose that it has a rather nice stoop, where one can observe campus life during the day, and the drunken riffraff during the night.
The latter is an amazing library, clearly the best on campus. The magnificence of the statue of Dante has even compelled me, as a Protestant, to rethink the matter of purgatory. This library is a marvelous example of what our University can produce, if it does not get swept up in the moment by architectural fads that come and go with the wind. It has an aesthetic beauty to its design, on both the inside and the outside, which is truly timeless.
Yet, like the John Carter Brown Library, the John Hay Library is rarely open. The University has recently extended its hours, adding one hour to every weekday and a four-our slot on Sunday. Yet, studying there is still a chore, even when one can manage to go while it is open. Bureaucratic nonsense forces one to waste precious time storing away one's bag and accessing the study areas. The more elegant rooms upstairs are usually inaccessible to students, as well. $160,000, huh?
There are several solutions that the administration could pursue in order to ameliorate the present state of affairs. One solution is simply to make the John Hay Library open just as often as the Rockefeller Library. Another is to aid students in purchasing memberships to some of the nicer libraries in the area, such as the Athenaeum, at the intersection of College Street and Benefit Street. Yet another is to renovate the Rockefeller Library - money would be much better spent on our academic infrastructure than on a superfluous "Walk." After all, this is a university, right?
Sean Quigley '10 is a granola conservative. He wrote this column after spending an afternoon reading Russell Kirk and hugging trees.
