UCC Library
May 3rd, 2006
Its that time of year again when the UCC library heaves with the desperate sighs of students in the strangling grip of pre-exam panic. In May I avoid the library like the plague… an apt metaphor perhaps, considering the pathogens that may be festering in the stagnant, fetid air within - the collective breath of a thousand sickly students. But today I have no choice.
One last taste of oxygen before taking the plunge, I momentarily admire the stunning Boolean architecture before we’re herded through the gates like cattle. The guard in the booth has given up. I think back to brighter, quieter days, when he once refused me admission because i had no ID. He sits there now… defeated, as the swarm of students continues to pass. Once powerful, now a broken man, on the verge of tears perhaps… contemplating what might have been if he had become a lollypop lady like his mamma always wanted. In a moment of sympathy, I consider owning up to the fact that I don’t have my student ID, but the herd ushers me onwards through the putrid atmosphere of the overcrowded foyer - greeted by the warm, nauseating smell of a Mexican launderette.
And on to queue up to search through the books of past exam papers. To queue up again to use the photocopiers and pay €3 for the privilege. Books… photocopiers? These are past exam papers! They were once healthy PDF files basking in the blissful calm of some UCC computer. Why were they relegated to such a state, deprived of their right to pasture on Booleweb? Perhaps it was the difficulties of copy/pasting. Sure isn’t it much easier to send them to the knackers yard… “THE PRINTER”??? Sure haven’t we been doing it that way for decades?
In the past, due to IP restrictions, I have had to SSH Into my college account, download the files onto my space via lynx, and then retrieve them with FTP. Now at last there is passworded external access to Booleweb, but what good is that if there are no papers once you’re logged in? This is what happens when you let your university uses yahoogroups for official mailing lists.
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November 9th, 2007 at 13:31 pm
Ah the joys! For a jaded hack in his mid-50’s, your rant brought back into vivid focus, the torrid days in the library stacks at UC Swansea in late sixties, with zombie-shuffling, bleary-eyed folk desperatly churning out grey-edged photocopies from books in danger of spine-split under the weight of the hefty photocopier platens of those days. If the struggles of those days were character-forming, then it is good to see that the struggle continues, even it has shifted to a place in the labyrinthine, electronic maze.