Ill (or at least feeling guilty) over ILL

Normally, I hate to Interlibrary Loan (ILL). It's nothing against the books themselves... they're lovely. I just feel so guilty making the non-profit library spend several dollars of their limited budget on getting a book sent just for me, instead of being able to put that money towards buying new books that lots of people, including myself, could read.

This summer, however, I've had to ILL quite a few books for the professor I'm working for, and I started to feel more comfortable with it. When I discovered a book that I needed for the research I'm doing for him, and found out on WorldCat that there were a dozen libraries in the country that had a copy (as opposed to the book that was only owned by a single library in the Netherlands) I went ahead and ordered it. "I pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition," I thought to myself in self-justification. "Surely they can spare to spend $2.50 on shipping for a book that's likely to be a goldmine for my research project."

The day after I put in the ILL request for the book, I got an email from the school library saying that none of the other libraries in WorldCat actually had circulating copies. I was somewhat dissapointed, but figured there was nothing I could do about it, and decided to proceed with the project without it. Today, however, as I was running another search through the card catalog, I found out that this library owns the book I requested.

Feeling somewhat dumb and wondering why the librarian hadn't said anything, I went ahead and clicked on it... only to discover that it is still in processing, after having arrived yesterday. So forget about feeling bad about having the library spend three dollars on shipping for a book... I now have a major guilt complex for inspiring the acquisition of a new book, which had to have cost at least 30 pounds (I checked), plus a ridiculous shipping charge from Europe. The worst part is, the book's a 500 page volume, in French, on a narrow topic of European constitutional adjudication, so it's not like anyone besides me is ever going to read it. *sigh*

Ye Olden Days Lacketh Convenience

Ordinarily, I'm a big fan of all things medieval.  

In fact, I even got up the courage the other day to visit the medieval collections at the library here at Notre Dame - an entire floor of non-circulating books, many of them very old and most of them in Latin.  Unfortunately I couldn't stay long - I was worried that one of the Medieval Studies doctoral students studying there would suddenly yell something like "Hey, you can't be here... you're just a law student."  Plus, more rationally, I neeeded to hurry back to the law school so I could actually get some work done that day.  But I intend to go back, scary Ph.D. candidates and all.  It was too wonderful to stay away from long.

But this post isn't about the impressive medieval collection here, or my love for crumbling Latin texts written a thousand years ago.  It's about the medieval period I'm going through in my own life, and how much I dislike it.  Turns out, I couldn't have been happy in the Dark Ages.  Or even the 1980s (although, if you ask me, the decade of big hair and Prince was the real dark age).

Last weekend, one of our neighbors moved out of our apartment building.  Normally, we probably wouldn't have noticed, but this particular neighbor happened to be the only person around with un-password protected wireless internet.  We'd been mooching internet off him all year, and now it's gone.  Mike and I decided not to sign up for our own account at this point, because we are moving at the end of next month (to a "real" apartment, with a separate bedroom and living room and a kitchen that will have more than 18 inches of counterspace, even after we move the microwave in - so exciting!).

So now, anytime we want to look up a recipe for dinner, or check to see where a Facebook event is happening, or need to look through recent decisions by the Supreme Court of India (my task for work, of late) we have to pack up our computers and either walk 3 1/2 blocks to the grocery store, or make the 20 minute walk to the law school building (despite the added distance, the law school building is usually the more attractive option - it's quieter, and has sofas).  

I know I shouldn't be complaining, especially because we conveniently had free internet for the entire school year.  But still... I miss the twentyfirst century!!