More than one month ago, I borrowed Life Is Elsewhere from Century Library, NUS. I was thrilled when I reached this book, for its yellowish pages and primitive black covers. It rekindled my memories of grandpa’s myriads of books and a very good feeling appeared alongside. So I borrowed it almost immediately without hesitation.
The content of Life Is Elsewhere is not my topic today, but what was later added to the book. I have no idea about who have once borrowed this book, yet I know someone must have, not because of the “DATE DUE” page is fully sealed, but the highlighter or pencil marks on many pages. There is even a big sticker attached to one of the pages, which truly depressed me at first sight. I’m so upset to see those bright orange marks cruelly split the comfortable and satisfying atmosphere this whole book has created, and it’s public property anyway.
Subsequently, I asked myself to ruminate over this phenomenon. However, this phenomenon proved to be no rare at all as I read more books in the library. People underline or annotate willfully which is very irritating to the other readers. I’m not sure it’s an undisguised provocation of the regulation or simply due to their ignorance. What it’s certain is that this happens in every university throughout the globe. It somehow reflects a student’s cultivation. There’s no denying that people who are studying in the universities for sure have received good education. So it seems that good education doesn’t mean anything in this case. Nevertheless, I feel so incapable of changing or even influencing the situation. Maybe there will be someday when I can finally make a difference instead of complaining in vain here.
The End
P.S. I learnt from a book in the library that, “fish juice” means the water in the fishbowl. Very interesting.
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Hi Josie I know how frustrated you must feel. I do too, especially when I read textbooks for study. What is important to one reader may not be important to me. Sometimes I thought the previous reader was not too smart, as he/she highlighted the 'unimportant points'!!!
ReplyDeleteSo let's do our part - we WILL NOT deface library books.
Hi Josie, I can't agree more that the conditions of the library books are really worrying. There are so many highlightings, underlines, and annotations. I just can't imagine how can they do that without sense of public property. Anyway, I think it is only a small proportion of people who do that, the majority of readers are fine. What we can do is preserve the library books in good conditions when they are in our hands.
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