From the Archives: The Reserve Reading Room

In response to your request for memories of the Reserve Reading Room (From the Archives photo, June 6, above): I spent a lot of time in the Reserve Reading Room on A floor while I was a graduate student during the 1970s. It wasn’t such a bad thing to have all the course reserves in one place. The room also housed most of the current periodicals and a collection of language dictionaries and reference books. Best of all, because it had its own entrance, it would stay open an hour or two after midnight when the rest of Firestone was closed — even for 24 hours during exams. For an insomniac like me, it was the obvious place to go when the only other games in town were Hoagie Haven and the Computer Center on Prospect Avenue. 

The student workers who operated the room after hours would amuse themselves by posting a survey question every day. You would answer by writing on a slip of paper and putting it through a slot. The questions frequently generated the kinds of answers that are only thinkable during that brief crack of time wherein the hypnagogic approximates the hypnopompic. 

The question I remember best: “What’s your favorite war?” And the best answer, though I don’t know who submitted it: “The war to end all wars. You know, the one four wars ago.” Since the ’70s, of course, we’ve added a few more.

Yes, we definitely have a favorite memory in the basement of Firestone: It was reading period, spring 1979. We saw each other there while returning books. Though we had known each other for more than two years, it was there we found out that upon graduation, we would both be heading to Berkeley, Calif. — she to graduate school, and he back home. 

That fall, while in Berkeley, romance blossomed. As they say, one thing led to another, and just last month, we celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. For good measure, the union produced a member of the Class of 2011!

My campus job was at the Reserve Reading Room from 1971 to 1975. It was in the old room on the first floor that is pictured in PAW before it moved to larger quarters on A level. A mysterious man in plaid shorts and purple tennis shoes used to sit on the bench in front of the desk — legs crossed, silent, just thinking for hours. Everyone knew him as the guy in the purple tennis shoes. Years later, PAW arrived with his picture on the cover announcing his Nobel Prize — John Nash *50. My husband and I looked at each other in amazement and said, “That’s the guy in the purple tennis shoes!”

I worked in the Reserve Reading Room all four years starting in 1970. The co-workers were the greatest crew ever, and you could get the book or article your professors had put on the weekly reading list without fail. Econ students would always ask for “Branson’s Notes,” which were cardboard-bound volumes for Professor William Branson. Sometimes there were requests for an article by some theologian or philosopher, and you had to learn the title from a worker from the last shift. 

Now I guess it’s all online or PDFs. My last walk around in Firestone showed no trace of this place on the ground floor.