Thoughts from Places: Booth Library
For generations of university students the world over, regular trips to the campus library were inevitable if not entirely necessary. Given that these libraries were often far larger than their small town counterpart, it was necessary to frequent these repositories to sample from the collected knowledge of mankind, from Plato and Aristotle to Bradbury and Frost. But indeed, some would argue that those days have come and gone with the advent of the Internet, the new repository for human knowledge that doesn’t require your to wrap yourself up in a winter coat and scarf in order to find a single newspaper clipping on post-War immigration. But the library as we know it is far from obsolete, even if it a leftover of an old world order. Indeed, it still holds grandeur of its own in a world that has tried to push it to the fringes. Booth Library is that sort of library, one fuses the best parts of our typographical past and digital present. However, I had to stop and embrace the beauty of place to truly realize the grandeur Booth Library presents.
Each time I step into Booth Library at Eastern Illinois University, I’m brought back to a time when the printed word, rather than the digital word, ruled the world. As I ascend the worn granite staircase at the front of the library, I can feel how I, as a current student at Eastern, am following in the steps of so many students and faculty before me back to 1948, when Booth was built. Once inside the front doors, I’m taken away from the expected sights of a library and transported the old word imagery of the cathedral, with its vaulted ceilings and illuminating stain glass windows. Just above the door, a stained glass mural of the Illinois state crest– a bald eagle with a banner of “National Union over State Sovereignty” in its beak over the shield of the Union – hangs over the entry way like a royal coat of arms for the Prairie State. Beyond the entryway, another set of stained glass windows depicts the old university crest from its days as Eastern Illinois State College. On a sunny day, the room in bathed in rich colors as young minds pass through on their way into this cathedral of life and living knowledge. If only for a moment, I stand here in the colonnades of colored light and take in the majesty of the place, a simple gift often ignored by research-minded professors and last minute studiers alike.
Just beyond the breezeway, the expansive cathedral foyer greets its visitors with quotes in stone from the likes of Bacon, Thoreau, and Milton. Here, too, Booth offers an expanse of light to crash up against the limestone walls and archways. Most students only catch a passing glimpse of these artistic artifices in the lobby. But to pause here for even a few moments gave me the opportunity to take in this place anew, as if I were passing through on my Orientation day again. From these aged blocks of Illinois granite, I could almost hear the words of EIU’s alma mater reverberate –“for us arose thy walls and towers/ thy beauty, grace, and strength are ours.” Its harmonious tone still rings in my ears as I notice a painting towards the children’s wing of a seated older woman looking out towards the front desk. She seems pensive yet welcoming, the sure smile of Mary Josephine Booth, for whom this temple of literacy is dedicated. As I later discovered, it was Booth’s tireless efforts in her long and illustrious career at EIU that lead to the creation of a permanent library, replacing the cramped quarters of the original library in Old Main. Though it mattered not that I knew the library’s origin story, I still found my experience in the library changed as a result of indulging in it. In effect, I felt that this was not simply a building for storing books and aged documents, but a sacred space created through the tireless efforts of an individual for the benefit of generations innumerable beyond her. To truly recognize her efforts, it took little more than a few minutes out of my busy day to stop and marvel.
As I moved into the heart of the library, I stopped again in the atrium, the gorgeous glass enclosure that connects the original part of Booth to the larger, more modern addition. Though there was a grey overcast sky that day, the atrium still glowed with a welcoming light that invited me to stop and stare. As I turned around to look back at the original building, I noticed that the gothic stone edifice that had once been exposed to rain and snow now made up an internal wall. Indeed, all of the original windows were still there; in fact, one of the bridges that connect the two buildings passes through the stone frame of one. Looking back at Old Booth, I can imagine EIU students that came before me laughing and studying as they looked through those windows, their hopeful eyes filled with the green of forests and prairies beyond. Though it didn’t change the way I went about looking for books, for a moment in time, I felt connected to my blue and grey forefathers as I beheld the old stones next to new steel.
Opposite from Old Booth is the modern addition, an expansive structure of steel and brick built in 2002 to house countless volumes of literature. Though more conservative than its predecessor, New Booth allotted more space for bookshelves over 4 floors as well as space for a computer lab. Despite the nearly 55 years that separated the two parts of Booth, the pair showed an acute parallelism that would hardly alert you to the difference in age. On the surface, New Booth imitated the high arched windows of Old Booth to create a certain feeling of unity. But below the surface, Old Booth and New Booth paralleled one another in the source of knowledge they were home to. Old Booth, with its long illuminated rooms, was built as a home for books and journals while New Booth was built for a digital millennium, as a place to engage with the new source of worldly knowledge, the Internet. Today, these two homes stand side by side, connected by an atrium that shows the best of each to those who are able to spare a moment’s time.
Deep in the heart of New Booth, one can easily get lost in row after row of informational tomes. From the New York Times to the art of Van Gogh, it seems as if a library this vast contains any book a formative young mind could ever require. There’s a certain serenity to be found here when you aren’t trying to urgently trying to find a books for your class. Surrounded by countless volumes, many students take refuge here when they need to pound out an extensive essay or are looking for a few minutes of silent studying away from their dorm room. Like in the atrium, the heart of New Booth has a modern adaption that answers the age-old problem of libraries, that is, not having enough space for the ever-expanding breadth of human knowledge. In a small way, the moving book shelves effectively double the amount of space available less requested, but no less valuable, collections. Though one may not need these manuals and studies all that often, they can still open new pathways of knowledge for an inquisitive student. The shelves themselves are kinetic and living, a characteristic not often attributed to a facet of a library. As they quietly hum into motion, colorful volumes on topics from coal mining and bug study come into view, inviting the mind to wonder what sorts of aged tomes sleep on the adjacent shelves. Despite this intrinsic beauty, these shelves are beasts of burden deep down, build for function rather than form. Indeed, this is the most apparent factor about these shelves as we take for granted the deeper beauty hidden within. In taking a moment to observe these modern creations, I was able to look beyond their function to see a more meaningful shelf.
Suffice to say, Booth Library is as alive as ever. Though its limestone archways and stained glass windows stand as a bastion of a typographical era come and gone, it is still the beating heart of learning at EIU as it provides an effortless connection to the Internet. These new connections exist seamlessly beside the achieves of aged books, allowing a citizen of the digital age to peek back at the physical volumes of a gilded age passed. To this day, the tireless work of Mary J. Booth continues to provide a cathedral of living knowledge for countless Panthers throughout the years. Though rich history and beauty abounds in Booth’s halls, I often find myself in too great a hurry to take it all in. By stopping for a few moments to marvel at the grandeur of this library, I realized that the “beauty, grace, and strength” of our university lives, in part, beside the countless annals of human knowledge housed at Booth. It’s a breathtaking place, all in all, if you take a moment to listen to the timeless song it sings and embrace its intrinsic beauty.
