Here’s a view from inside Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Not the learning-stuff-now part upstairs where real scholars are working, but the just-for-show fifteenth century oldest bit of it.
Oxford has been kind enough to give me not only a tour but a real reader’s card so that I can sit in their lovely old reading rooms upstairs to read and take notes on some of their amazing collection.
The word “read” may seem overused in that last sentence, but it’s a word to conjure with here in Oxford. Another is “study.” Outdoors you see a magnificent and varied sky, but many of us want to formulate ideas about it beyond “Oh, wow, look at the sky!” Scholars, scientists, even poets have spent many hours inside staring at blank sheets of paper to make all the rest of us richer in appreciation of the sky above us.
The ideal, it seems to me, is to keep both visions at once. To be able to stand outside creating your own stuff instead of jealously debunking people inside. To be able to appreciate the privilege of getting inside and to use it without forgetting just how important outside is.
The Bodleian makes you take a different oath, but I like my own better.