Being shelfish
/
Alan Jacobs recently recounted the bookshelf woes that have afflicted him since the reopening of the Baylor Honors College following a remodel. During the wait, he learned that he had been allotted two bookcases: “When I pointed out that my then-current office had eight bookcases, all of which were full, I was told that, okay, I could have three in my new space.” And that was all the new office had room for.
The whole situation, while faintly comic, leads Jacobs to some wry and disturbing conclusions about the fate of books in modern academia, so be sure to read the whole post. But I couldn’t help noticing one detail in particular:
I don’t mind moving into a smaller office. My former one was bigger than I needed, and the new one is better situated and is a pleasant, comfortable space—I’ll be happy there. But when I moved in I was a bit surprised to find that the bookcases—and yeah, it would’ve been hard to fit in any more than three—are thin-industrial-steel things instead of the well-made cherrywood ones I had had in my former office.
When I started my full-time job at my college seven years ago my office had one bookcase of precisely the industrial steel kind shown in Jacobs’s photo. I learned quickly that these bookcases are not only ugly but terrible for the books themselves. The finish of the steel creates friction when one slides a book in or out of place, and unless the shelf is packed full the books will lean and warp in ways I haven’t seen on traditional wooden shelves. I even had the covers of multiple paperback books delaminate in strange patterns suggestive of unaccustomed structural stress.
And did I mention that the steel shelves are ugly?
Fortunately I was able to request an extra bookcase, which was delivered promptly. I was glad to see it was a more traditional—if cheaply made—wooden case. I eventually moved two of my own IKEA Billy bookcases to my office. This gave me a total of four, which was almost enough. For a while.
When our department shifted one hall over a few years ago, the wooden shelf and my two Billy bookcases and an additional waist-high case from Walmart came with me and I ditched the steel one. I managed to requisition a second wooden bookcase as a replacement. This is the most satisfactory office library arrangement I’ve had so far, even with books stacked on top of all of them and a couple of boxes full on the floor by my filing cabinet and more waiting at home.
The unbending, unbeautiful, ultimately damaging utility of the steel bookcase is a pretty good accidental metaphor, especially when the scholar and the lover of literature doesn’t have enough.
