By: Madelynn Lockwood, Features Editor
Outside the library, you can find two large, gray, plastic containers, holding the past residents of the second floor of the library. These residents: our books. I decided to take a deep dive into these books that are awaiting their next home – whether they be recycled, destroyed, or donated. Regardless, they are leaving the Canisius Library for the last time.
For those not in the know, the entire top floor of the library is being cleared to rehome the Griff Center for Student Success renamed the Student Success Center. Most of the books leaving the library – that I have come across, at least – are encyclopedias, old reference books, and some of the most obscure textbooks I have ever heard of. In the name of exploring that obscurity and celebrating their last leafing through…
“Reich Speaks of Freud: Wilhelm Reich Discusses His Work and His Relationship with Sigmund Freud” edited by Mary Higgins and Chester M. Raphael, M.D. This collection of interviews discusses the riveting relationship between Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud and their collective work. Unfortunately, this book lost its back half to the bins of books, presumably, and I was not able to see the full version. A favorite quote of mine follows: “When a child is born, it comes out of a warm uterus, 37 degrees centigrade, into about 18 or 20 degrees centigrade. That’s bad enough. The shock of birth…bad enough. But it could survive that if the following didn’t happen. As it comes out, it is picked up by the legs and slapped on the buttocks.”
“Psychological Tests and Personnel Decisions” by Lee J. Cronbach and Goldine C. Gleser. This is a book that is dedicated to refining decision theory and its place in hiring and firing decisions. Honestly, in my opinion not the first book I would take off the shelf, but I am sure in her prime, she was a showstopper.
“The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics” published by The Society of Christian Ethics. This is their annual report from 2001, as the title suggests. Again, this is not the type of book that maybe every student would go looking for, but a moment of limelight is here. In its glory days, maybe students and some professors studying Theology and Religious Studies would have found it helpful and interesting.
Personally, I love books – old books, at that – and even more so the books that hundreds of other people may have touched and held and cried over during a bad midterm, and them leaving the library makes me sad. Maybe that isn’t practical and libraries aren’t meant to hold every book that has dawned its shelves forever, but for me, it hurts to see books leave our library that could have potentially still served a purpose for a student center that already has a beautiful home. And yes, these books are not the bestsellers that students are checking out of the library, but someone used these books and cared about them, so we should too.
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