Scholarship, Past and Present.

Recently I've been thinking about the changes that have come over academic society in the last two decades. When I was sent off to college in the lazy late summer of 1987, precious among my luggage was my handy electric typewriter with a dual cartridge that included the correction tape right with the normal tape. Sometime during those magical four years in which I supposedly learned what I needed to function in some career out in the "real world," I learned to use a Macintosh (like that was hard) and MicroSoft Word and to deal with the rigid demands of a dot matrix printer. The library still had its card catalog, but a new electronic system had been in place for a short time, which you could access from the library lobby. I spent a good deal of time in the periodicals room thumbing through bound copies of Studies in American Fiction, American Literature, and the Faulkner Journal.



These days, you don't have to go to the library to read most journals. JSTOR and other services have put that content online in pdf format and you can browse the catalog and download articles in the comfort of your own home. Research has never been easier. Conversely, the status of scholarship has declined to the point that students believe wikipedia entries are as authoritative as PMLA. They aren't.

However, there's something to be said for a library as a refuge. I certainly feel more scholarly when I'm sitting in the main reading room of the Library of Congress or even in the stacks of a university library.

To be surrounded by books is a consummation devoutly to be wished.