Not in the cards

When I first came to UC Davis I worked in Shields Library, in the reference department, where day after day I and the other reference staff would help students use the indexes and abstracts to locate journal articles on their research topics. Then we'd point them in the direction of the Serials List or the Main Card Catalog so they could find call numbers for the titles they needed and tell them to get going. We'd see them wander off toward the stacks, scribbled notes in hand.

This routine would probably strike a current undergraduate student as nearly as quaint as starting a car with a hand crank. The other day I overheard a student inquire of my friend Raleigh, the library assistant in charge of the information desk, how to find information on a particular company; seems he had an interview coming up. "What's the name of the company?" Raleigh asked, turning to the computer on the desk beside him and punching a few keys. "XYZ," the student said. Raleigh keyed it in. "Well, looks like there are about 23 citations here; do you want them with abstracts, or full text?" "Full text." "OK," said Raleigh, poking at a couple more keys, "you can pick up the printouts at Copy Service, right over there," pointing across the lobby. Just like that, the student got exactly the information he wanted without ever having to go near a computer himself, much less a printed index or—zounds!—an actual journal.

The whole library's that way now. Com-puter terminals are everywhere, some of them hooked up to printers so students can print out what's on the screen. To find books or journals, they use MELVYL, tapping into the resources not only of the UC Davis libraries but of all the libraries in the UC system and a few more, besides.

The venerable Main Card Catalog is still there, but it no longer occupies pride of place in the central lobby, the first thing library patrons saw as they came through the front doors. It's off in a side room now. It's quiet in there; not like it used to be. It used to be one of the busiest spots in the library, and it wasn't at all quiet. Students were there, looking things up. Library staff were there, filing new cards into the drawers. The students would ask questions, and the staff would help them. And punctuating all of it was the sound of those wooden drawers being pulled out of their slots by those lovely hooked brass handles that just fit your index finger and being placed on the high tables that ran between the banks of drawers. And the most satisfying sound of all, the solid "chunk" of the drawer being slid back into its spot. It was a sociable sound, in a surprisingly sociable place.

Computers are much quieter, and much faster, and they don't require lots of people standing and filing cards into drawers. Nobody has to type subject headings on the tops of catalog cards anymore; instead, they're keyed into the database by library staff up on the fourth floor in the technical services area. I doubt very much if they get downstairs except to leave the building at the end of the day.

All this is probably a Good Thing. That filing took lots of time, and time is money. Now everything's done at once—subject headings added to main entries, locations noted, all tied into a single database that you can search anywhere you have access to a computer and a modem. And no longer do you have to wade through information not relevant to your immediate need; key in the right subject headings and presto! just what you want is right there, right now—no waiting, no walking.

But I wonder what's been lost. I remember discovering that the Library of Congress has a subject heading called "Last Meal Before Execution" and that there's actually been a book written on just that topic. I found that out while I was looking for something else. I haven't the foggiest recollection of what I was originally looking for, but "last meal before execution" will stay with me forever.

There's something to be said for serendipity, and it seems to me that it's much more likely to occur leafing through the pages of an index or having to flip past several dozen catalog file cards before getting to the one you want. Then again, I'm not a biochemistry major who's trying to get a paper done. I wasn't then, and I'm not now. I can well imagine the eye-rolling that would take place were I to suggest that a return to paper and cards would be a salutary addition to an undergraduate's educational experience.

But I hope the Main Card Catalog gets to stay.

The Pleasures of a Bench

During my time at Davis I was on the move. I walked (or usually ran) to class. I yo-yoed between the Coffee House and my office in a cycle of procrastination. I tried to swing by the Rec Hall each week to play racquetball. I focused on making "progress" in my program of English literature and moving through its various degree requirements. Yet my favorite memories of UC Davis involve not motion but rest, and my personal symbol for Davis is not a bicycle or a cow. It's a bench.

As a child, I played tag and hide-and-seek. These games always included a "base," a place you could stand for a moment to catch your breath and regroup. Benches are bases for adults. Each is a small oasis allowing a person to take a time-out. In departmental halls or on the sidewalk, I am often stopped and reminded about a meeting or a deadline; no one ever does that when I am sitting on a bench. People, consciously or not, recognize the sanctity of the bench.

At Davis, I became a bench connoisseur. My favorite is located across the street from North Hall. Its distance from the MU means that it's often unoccupied. It faces the Quad so you look over a grassy expanse, a particularly nice view on late afternoons when the sun angles onto the campus from the west. I also like the benches outside of Shields where people wait, take one last sip of their coffee and a few deep breaths before saying, "I'm going in." The benches inside Shields, tucked into its inner courtyard, are a fine place to escape from the day's turbulence. Behind South Hall, there used to be a lovely wood bench bracketed with rosebushes, but it is gone now, victim of the massive construction that is transforming the campus.

Unlike a chair, a bench has a reassuring solidity, and it is, by design, communal. It is made for people to sit together.

At one point benches were an integral part of my department. Although offices were scattered throughout several buildings, Sproul Hall, which contained the mail room, served as the departmental hub. Outside Sproul are several comfortable well-placed benches. We would sit on these and relax, eat lunch, spend a moment or two before or after class. They served as informal gathering areas where we would encounter one another by chance and chat casually.

A couple of years ago, the English department moved to Voorhies, a transfer designed to bring everyone under one roof. Paradoxically, we lost an important part of community inter-action. Outside of Voorhies are a few hard stone benches with no backs. They are cold and uncomfortable. Located under roofs, they are barely touched by the sun. They serve as a place to tie a shoe or adjust a backpack, but they don't encourage anyone to stay.

Despite the role benches can play in promoting interaction, my favorite memories of them involve solitude. I would often come to campus in the early morning, sometimes arriving by 6 or 7 a.m. Frequently a small drifting haze hung in the trees. There would usually be dew on the Quad or the sprinklers would be running. Sound from the one or two other people who were about carried across the stillness. The day seemed full of possibilities.

I would sit on a bench with my coffee and watch and listen to the university waking up. As I did so, I would feel a part of the place in a way that I never did during the middle of the day as, late, I half-jogged to each meeting. Time would slightly suspend, and for a moment I would believe that everything was going to be OK. This is the call of the bench. Sit down. Stop for a moment. You'll be safe here.