The above quote is from Carol Abbott Paymer (Class of 1977). Read the full memory below:

I worked at the Rock as an undergrad. One week, my job was alphabetizing cards from the card catalog. The method was to sort the cards into 26 boxes by 1st letter, then each of those boxes into 26 more boxes by 2nd letter, and so on. When I started, we were 4 letters down in the C’s. Perhaps there were only C’s, or only Ca’s, or only Cam’s. I have no idea. I also have no idea how the cards got out of order in the first place. Maybe someone dropped a drawer.

I think of this every time I hear someone bemoaning the loss of the card catalog system.

The above quote is from John Bruce Taylor (Class of 1965). Read the full memory below:

Before the Rock opened I would get terrible hay fever and had a choice of medicating myself and falling asleep or trying to study for finals while blowing my nose and wiping my eyes.

The air-conditioned Rock allowed me to study in comfort!

The above quote is from Jeff Martin (Class of 2010). Read the full memory below:

I worked hundreds of hours at the carrels on the west side of the library during my time at Brown. I used to watch the sun set over the Providence skyline just about every night. Those were the four most beautiful years of my life.

The above quote is from Alexis V. DiPietro (Class of 1994). Read the full memory below:

The newspaper reading room was always a welcome retreat from hours of study in the carrels. I remember feeling excited and nervous upon entering with hours of work ahead, then leaving late at night to the beautiful view of the quad in the dark evening hours. I loved the collective experience of working at the large tables with classmates.

The above quote is from Kathe Anderson (Class of 1972). Read the full memory below:

I have two Rock stories:
1. For either my birthday or Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend made great big letters and placed one in each window of the Rock to spell out a happy message to me, but for all who entered the library to see.

2. One time, on the first floor, an unlikely-looking library visitor came into the library, seemed to pull a specific book off the shelf, take something from it, replace the book and leave. I’ve often wondered whether the Mafia was passing messages that way!

The above quote is from Richard Minsky (Class of 1970 GS). Read the full memory below:

It was fall, 1968, the week before classes began. I was about to start Graduate School in Economics. Exploring the campus I wandered into the Annmary Brown Memorial, which then housed a collection of some 2,000 incunabula. The bindings hypnotized me, and after a while the curator came out and started a conversation. He sent me to the Rockefeller Library, basement B, to the workshop of Brown’s master bookbinder, Daniel Gibson Knowlton.

It was an amazing studio, and within a few minutes Dan signed me up for his class in the Extension Division. By the end of the first semester I was hooked, and spent most of my time at the Rock, either in the bindery or at a carrel researching my thesis. In June I left with the thesis submitted and several leather bindings completed. Back in New York City I continued in Economics with the Graduate Faculty of The New School, and was awarded a contract to bind books for the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum. Putting all that together in 1974 I started a not-for-profit organization named Center for Book Arts, with workshop facilities, classes, and a gallery. One of the first exhibitions was The Bindings of Daniel Gibson Knowlton.

Now the Richard Minsky Archive is at Yale, where a retrospective exhibition was held in 2010, the Center for Book Arts is thriving, its model has been copied by others around the country, and it all started in basement B of the Rock.

The above quote is from Phyllis Kollmer Santry (Class of 1966). Read the full memory below:

When the Rock first opened there was a lounge chair on the second floor in the corner window, overlooking Van Wickle Gates. One of my classmates, whose name escapes me, used to sit there every night. It was fun and sort of comforting to walk over to the Rock to study after dinner and see him sitting up there—watching over the campus.

The above quote is from Alan (Class of 1996). Read the full memory below:

I wrote a poem while I was in Freshman at Brown called “Rock”:

Slowly into the room of empty space
Softly I hear the place of the lonely souls
It’s solitude which I feel
It’s isolation that I sense
Everyone is squeezed in this space
Squeezed into their own innerspace

The space where each of them belongs to
The expanse where they have been longing for
It’s perhaps their spiritual home
A sector one can retreat to
Not to hide away from reality
Only to get away from the hypocrisy of the world
The illusions of the friendly spirits
The malice behind all the smiling faces
Reality is no longer real
It’s only a mirage,
A deception filled up with enmity
It’s a fallacy,
A delusion where everyone is lost in the name of materialism
They don’t seem to know
They don’t seem to think
The meaning of life is only a simple thing
Is that one should love for himself,
Not for money, but quietly, forcefully and utterly.

Providence, USA
Oct 1993

Another incident I would like to share is that I was studying/reading lying on the comfortable couchchair on the basement of the Rock. It was so comfortable that I fell asleep and woke up at 3:30 a.m. (the door was locked at 2 a.m.). I ended up spending the night here.

The above quote is from Sheila Hogg (Class of 1996). Read the full memory below:

Interlibrary Moan: B Level houses some of my favorite books on language and literature. I was there after a long day of work looking for something and I headed upstairs with my finds. While passing through the door to the stairwell I heard a long, low groan. From where was this unearthly sound? I stepped closer to a double door and the moans got louder. The moaner heard me. The sound grew more intense and muffled words were coming through the crack in the door. I couldn’t tell what was being said. Grateful for the doors barring me from this moaner, I sprinted upstairs to inform the Circulation staff to call Security. Something really scared me down there. It turned out to be someone who thought the Hay Tunnel was an exit. Unfortunately, the doors lock you in at either end. I don’t know how long this poor soul was down in the dark tunnel. This was in the days before cellphones.

The above quote is from Melora Furman (Class of 1978). Read the full memory below:

I discovered my career at the Rockfeller Library—sort of. Late one evening, browsing through the stacks in a deserted section of the library, I found books about landscape architecture. That interest led to exploration of urban design, architecture, and eventually city planning. I’ve been a city planner, specializing in zoning and land use planning, for about 25 years now.