The Stacks of Splendor

Radcliffe Camera

There is an air about Oxford that makes me want to better myself.

The Bodelian Library, much older than myself and my home country combined, instills in me a work ethic that I have never felt before. Along the walls on the inside of the Old Bodelian (in the courtyard), there are little wooden doors...each telling secrets in the Latin names above them.

Across the way, through a passage, I am greeted by the unseasonably warm English sun as I walk along the cobblestones (the kind that you fear for the safety of your ankles on). Through the gate that surrounds the Radcliffe camera, I'm greeted by a large round building with a great dome on its head like a proud hat. The building itself is reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance and nearly as old. I'm of the lucky few. In order to get inside the Camera, down to the vast stores of information, you have to flash the symbol that you belong-- your Oxford ID card.

Even though I am an official Oxford student, the process of flashing this badge of intelligence still makes me feel uneasy.

Will they see me as an impostor?

These thoughts run through my head as I'm finally let down the stairs to conquer one paper or another.

Down in the Gladstone Link, the newly developed section of the library that is underground and connects the Camera to the Old Bodelian, there is a different atmosphere. Gone are the heavy clouds of ancient scholars (or that might be the ancient dust) looming over current researchers, in its place there is a feeling of optimistic modernity as one is surrounded by materials for research. The shelves feel like spinning death traps because so many books are housed here that all the shelves are pushed together. In order to obtain a book from a particular section, you have to spin a wheel on the outside of a shelf to separate it out from its brothers; in turn, moving entire sections of the shelves down the halls. The real danger is attempting to not squish any little old women that may be lurking in the shadows of the aisles they are in. It feels like a torture chamber: lights flicker on only as you move the shelf. The shelves themselves are the instruments of torture.

I can't wait to go back.