Theses and libraries

I've an essay to write (the bane of the course - the lectures are interesting and make you think - the essays just make you think*) and some one recommended to me that I should look at a PhD thesis written about 10 years ago. So I searched (on line) the library index and found the document. It was in the store. So I placed a request, only to be told by the system (gloomily I thought) "items in the store may not be available on a loan basis".

A couple of days later I received an email to let me know it was now available for collection. Sure enough, it was only available for reference purposes. It was nearly 2 inches thick**. The document was labelled "not to be scanned" and I wondered (just to myself) why this was the case - was it something that the PhD student had insisted upon, so that anyone wanting to read his/her results had to go through the same sort of pain as her/he had experienced when researching unscanned 19th C documents, or was there some sinister Wikileaks motive?

I hurried away into the library to find a quiet spot to cogitate on the matter. Quiet spot! Some hopes - it was 3 o'clock on a Tuesday of the second week of term 1 and the place was packed out. What is it about students these days - haven't they a sense of what they're at Uni for? Or has the imposition of student fees made them aware of what they are really there for?

Two hours later I was none the wiser about why the thesis was not available for scanning but full of admiration for the work that had gone into it and fascinated by the revealed machinations of erstwhile 19th Century Railway engineers. Reluctantly I relinquished the work to the librarian before I left for home.

As far as the essay was concerned, I was not much further forward.


*There's clearly something wrong with my writing style!
** 50 mm as near as dammit