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.

The above quote is from Samantha Kibbe (Class of 1988). Read the full memory below:

My greatest memory of the Rock is that of carrying 40+ books back in my knapsack at a time. I not only gained knowledge but also muscles!

The above quote is from Susan Heuck Allen (Ph.D., 1990). Read the full memory below:

Great and unending help at the Reference Desk from Duane and at Circulation from Charlie!

The above quote is from Julie Stein (Class of 2005). Read the full memory below:

In the spring of our senior year (2005), my friend Ari Lucas (Brown ’05) was able to fulfill a college-long dream of serenading fellow students in the Periodicals Rooms of The Rock with Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World. He enlisted many friends to join in the singing, and we delighted and confused many people in the Periodicals Room that evening. We filmed the whole thing, and it’s uploaded here. A truly special memory for all of us.

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

I grew up in a working class suburb of Kansas City. Among my freshman year surprises were foods I’d never eaten—quahogs, fried clams, Boston cream pie—in pretty-much unlimited quantities. I’d often have pie after a big dinner and then grab a soft-serve ice cream cone on my way to the library. If I arrived soon after dinner, I could grab an Eames chair in my favorite spot, on the lower lever facing an interior garden. I’d be logged down from a big dinner and multiple desserts, and once settled in, usually spent a long while asleep in the comfortable spot before beginning my studies.

The above quote is from Sallee Garner (Class of 1969). Read the full memory below:

Although I spent a lot of time in the library, my most vivid memory is of the forsythia that bloomed in front of it. Coming from a far northern corner of New York State too cold for forsythia, I was dazzled by the hot almost tropical yellow of the flowers.

The above quote is from Gavin Bahadur (Class of 1989, 1992 MD). Read the full memory below:

I remember a handful of picture perfect spring days when I would lie on the grass outside the Rock and write letters to my girlfriend who lived in Michigan. I wrote those letters to her for several years, and finally one day, she married me. We have been married nearly twenty years now and have a wonderful boy and girl!

The Rock was also a place where I did a lot of studying and learning in the carrells in the periodicals section—where I fell fast asleep on the pages of my organic chemistry text more times than I can remember.

The above quote is from Zsolt Zombori (Class of 2009). Read the full memory below:

I always had a slight tendency to squeeze too much into the day to the expense of the night. Often, I would have massive volumes of books to read, while on the verge of falling asleep. I would then always go to the Rock, naively hoping that I could resist falling asleep in the common reading room. When it proved to not work, I started reading while standing. I found a nice lectern to hold my book and I stood there until my reading was done. I never thought this method could ever prove insufficient, but one day, I simply fell asleep while standing. I fell to the ground, which woke me up. Looking around I found some twenty pairs of curious eyes directed towards me. Full of embarrassment, I realized this was the time to give up and go to bed.

The above quote is from Erica Reisman (Class of 2009). Read the full memory below:

I remember studying in the carrels and watching the sun set over Providence. And I remember running into some naked people handing out donuts before finals.

The above quote is from Marel d’Orbessan Rogers (Class of 1969). Read the full memory below:

The Rock was my first “big” library, and also the first with LC call numbers. I remember using the central smoking rooms (which have probably disappeared) and the classrooms, and doing my first primary source research with government documents (thank you whomever showed me how to find them all under “United States”). I earned my MLS after Brown and credit the Rock with some of the inspiration to become a professional librarian.