Library

A big thing in academic life is the library. This might sound funny in this day and age where you can find 'virtually' anything on the internet, but it is still true. When I did my Masters in Linguistics, many many years ago children, computers were just entering the uni, but definitely not available for students. And nobody heard of a thing called internet. Studying meant spending long hours in a library (you know, the place where all the books are?) reading through journals, books, other peoples' theses, and writing notes on little cards. This is not how it works today. For starters, the library has lots of computers for students to use. Most of its journals are available in digital form, accessible through inter/intranet. Which leads to the funny situation of students surrounded by walls of books and journals, reading everything on their screen. It is a bit like commuters cramped together in a train, all talking or texting on their mobiles to someone not present. Weird!

The upside of this is of course that you can access everything from your home. Which is what I did yesterday, when I finally got myself to do something resembling studying. As was to be expected (on whatever day you start your diet, someone will celebrate their birthday with cake), I got stuck. I got the references, but I could not get to the actual articles, because the program did not accept my student number and password. Luckily our uni library has the best librarians, who are not only knowledgeable, but also friendly, which is an admirable combination. So after we spend half an hour on the phone not being able to solve the problem, the librarian emailed me the articles (this is where the friendly part is very important).

After I hung up, I suddenly found some info on the website I had never seen before in the 2 years I'm working at the uni. Something about a uni certificate ... Which I downloaded. Which solved the problem. Bingo! I felt very much like when I have been looking for something in, say, the supermarket and the moment I recruit a shop attendant to help me out, the thing I was searching for suddenly pops into view, the very moment I'm asking the question. Know the feeling?