The above quote is from Thomas Lindsey (Class of 1969). Read the full memory below:
1. Photocopiers were relatively new machines. I remember that the Rock had machines at which you gave your sheets to be copied to an attendant who put each one on the glass plate and pressed the button to start the scanning and copying. A machine could make six or ten copies a minute.
2. The social studies and humanities reserve materials reading rooms on the basement and second floors. You had to read most material in the reading room, but there was a large lounge area outside that were very popular social gathering places.
3. The bookstacks with the mechanical timer switches on them. You could be reading in the stacks and the overhead lights would suddenly turn off.
4. Finding a book in French that was published in 1683.
5. A library with more than a million volumes in it. This was more than 10 times the size of any library I had ever used prior to coming to Brown.
6. Finding the U.S. Government Documents section down in the basement center south, near the music listening rooms. One had to play LP recordings in music rooms for the music course reserve listening assignments. I was fascinated by all the information that came from the U.S. government as described in the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications. The library also subscribed to the Readex Non-depository Publications microcard sets. I am sure that I used government publications for research in writing research papers, and made use of the microcards with non-depository publications.
I did not think about becoming a librarian until several years after graduation, but I think that my experience of being inside the Rockefeller Library had some influence on it. I worked as a librarian for 37 years, and more than 20 years in government information collections.
6. I saw the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” when it first came out in the 1960s. Sometime after that, I was up in the classification AP section and found bound volumes of the New York Times. I used the New York Times index to find out when they were shot, and looked at the Times issues near that date to see what had been published about them. Libraries have gone from binding newspapers to purchasing rolls of microfilm to subscribing to online access to newspapers. We now have access to 1000s of current and discontinued newspapers, even newspapers from the 18th and 19th century.
7. The huge lobby in the front. When you left the library, you went to a counter between the doors on either side, and showed the contents of your bags and other personal stuff to an older man. This was the deterrent for book thieves, although I am sure that the library had a regular % shrinkage rate each year.
8. Finding publications of the League of Nations, 1919-1946. I used those publications to write my second semester World History research paper on the failure of the League to respond to the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy. I think about that situation and my long-discarded research paper every time I read or hear about wars or insurgencies across the globe, and how other nations and international organizations respond to them.