March of progress?
Had a most peculiar day. Went back onto the Open University campus to meet up with some friends, two of whom were retirees just like my wife and I, another a woman still working at the OU. Came away from the place having enjoyed a long chat with our friends, but also being rather depressed at the way the campus is changing, losing its specialness. Maybe it's just us losing touch with the institution, though the woman still working there did say the place had changed for the worse.
We were particularly spooked by a visit to the Library, a new building completed only a few years before we took early retirement. One of our friends had a few photographs in an exhibition there that he wanted us to see. Now, we've both got very fond memories of the OU's old library, which had a vibrancy about it, always had lots of people milling around and was genuinely one of the hubs of the university. Imagine our surprise to wander into this new and revised library to find it seemingly deserted. Things like check-in desks had been done away with for self-scan devices, security seemed to have vanished, and all that was left was a big open space displaying OU texts and not much else. In the floors above there were the library stacks proper, but the place had the appearance and feel of a mausoleum for dead books. Disturbing.
We were particularly spooked by a visit to the Library, a new building completed only a few years before we took early retirement. One of our friends had a few photographs in an exhibition there that he wanted us to see. Now, we've both got very fond memories of the OU's old library, which had a vibrancy about it, always had lots of people milling around and was genuinely one of the hubs of the university. Imagine our surprise to wander into this new and revised library to find it seemingly deserted. Things like check-in desks had been done away with for self-scan devices, security seemed to have vanished, and all that was left was a big open space displaying OU texts and not much else. In the floors above there were the library stacks proper, but the place had the appearance and feel of a mausoleum for dead books. Disturbing.