Dewey Decimal Surfing

I haven’t done real library research since high school. Has anybody? Of course, even in high school, a pubescent boy’s idea of research was pulling out the “B” volume from the medical texts and ogling the pictures of naked ladies with your friends. I feel lost just walking into a library now. Did you know that they don’t use card catalogues anymore? There are a lot of books in there. How does anybody get anything done?

Two factors contributed to my loss of library skills. First, my graduation from high school coincided perfectly with the great internet explosion. Second, I was a Film/Television major at a college for “Communications and the Performing Arts.” My final exam was “go make a movie.” Typical homework consisted of, “Watch Independence Day and write a critique.” Any research I ever needed was found on countless web pages from the comfort of my dorm room. Some of them were even nice enough to list book references so I didn’t need to open them. I’d make up a bibliography, turn in my “Comparison of A Weekend at Bernie’s and Hamlet” then go watch X-Files.

I suppose I’m being a bit facetious. I used real books for research too. My roommate had like seven editions of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, a wellspring of information about everything from the Big Bang Theory to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. It was the perfect source for… well, another source.

Of course, I wasn’t studying law or medicine or anything like that. I look at these gigantic, lead-heavy medical texts that my poor wife had to lug around in grad school, and think, “Better her than me.” I mean you can’t even type search phrases in!

Even though I rarely use them for any practical purposes anymore, libraries still fascinate me in the way steam trains or ghost towns fascinate others. Especially older libraries like in New York or Boston where the architecture is just a little bit mystifying, with at least a dozen stairwells, all leading to different places. All over the building you find little nooks and hallways that don’t go anywhere, and rooms that, apparently, nobody has entered for several years.

These rooms are always the places where people seem to discover original manuscripts and sketches from really famous historical people, then selling them on E-bay for a million dollars. I always imagine opening up some really old dusty book and having the second Mona Lisa fall into my lap.

That’s what I’m going to do. After I become a famous writer, I’m going to stick a bunch of short stories and humor columns inside an old book for somebody to find a hundred years later. A really boring book that nobody would ever pull off the shelf like, “The Economic and Social Effects of 16^th Century Prussian Rocking Chairs on the 17^th Century English Middle Class.” Anybody who’s forced to write a term paper about that, deserves a laugh and a million bucks.

I’m sure historians from NYU will hotly debate the stories’ authenticity. They’ll carefully examine each line, analyzing the subtle Hewlett Packard printer strokes, circa 2007. Noting the misuses of, commas, the lack of grammar, incomplete sentences. “Yes!” they will declare to the world, “We have found the lost Hodges anthology, including such inspired works as, Why Do I Get Hangnails; The Funny Thing About Spoons; and Making Friends with Boogersnot Johnson.”

One day, maybe students will avoid the library while researching me from the comfort of the internet.