hibbert@netcom.com wrote:
> >
> That's another thing I like about the SF Bay Area. Stanford has a good
> library, and as long as you don't look or act like riff-raff (and that's
> below students, by the way) they don't mind if you wander through their
> libraries. They even let you check most things out if you're polite.
It's heartwarming to know there are still such places. The University
of
Delaware was like that 25-30 years ago -- I could use the Morris Library
for research even while I was in high school, and later, whether or not
I happened to be a current student, I could go and hang out in the
current
periodical room, or browse the stacks, and read to my heart's content.
Later, after moving to New York and enrolling at New York University,
I found out that you can only get into Bobst Library (through a
turnstile,
past a uniformed guard) if your student ID has a **current semester's**
validation sticker on it. That means, if you're a full-time student,
but
don't happen to be taking summer classes (let's say), you can't use
the library during the summer. I was appalled at the bloody-mindedness
of it (but later came to accept it as the very spirit of NYU).
I would have thought that by now, many more institutions would have become more like NYU and less like the U of D, but I'm glad to see that it hasn't happened everywhere!
Jim F.
P.S. -- I found ways around some of NYU's library restrictions
(involving
the use of a color photocopier), but I won't go into that in detail.