Go get it!
Libraries are great! They really, really are.
You walk in and you look at things, read things, collect information. You don't even need to flash your membership card to get in like you do at Costco or Sam's Club. Just walk right in and fill your brain with things.
Physical things. Actual evidence of the actual thing you're looking for.
In my three years at Tisch, I would estimate that the equivalent time of two years were spent inside a library. Granted, this was in the time of tyro-Google, before you could type in a few letters of some sort of search and it would read your mind, finish your sentence, pull up millions of examples of what you're looking for.
There was a point to that. Honestly, there was.
Anyway, I've spent a ton of time in libraries of all stripes. Research libraries, reading rooms where you needed to fill out a form and some poor librarian would schlep off to the lower dungeons of the place to fetch your materials, large public libraries with levels and levels of very smart people mumbling to themselves, image banks with folders of semi-decently sorted images of almost everything.
My favorite was the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan library. We would spend hours and hours in that room pouring over folders of mounted images from books and magazines, from photo collections and private archives. Old-school image searching.
You could check out a folder, a composite of the collected images you gathered. I remember there being a limit to how many images you could check out at one time. I remember making the bargain of checking out certain images while classmates checked out other images then meeting up later to photocopy the images to share. You would need to return all of the images in good condition so that you could check out other images.
A single week of work for History of Costume and Décor would warrant five or six trips to the picture collection. Even then you wouldn't find enough images to fulfill the assignment.
History of Costume and Décor was scavenger hunt for history. Hardest class I've ever taken. Ever.
Bringing it back to the point, there was a benefit to going and getting the thing. There was advantage to having the physical dead-tree document and presenting it as part of your research. Your research is better when you go get the thing you're referencing.
We're talking artifacts, folks. Honest to goodness, real life, hold-in-your-hand artifacts.
I'm only partially joking. The truth is, I think there's more to getting up, to moving yourself physically to go and find the thing you need, the thing you're looking for, rather than just sitting in you normal everyday work-time spot punching keys on a keyboard. It activates a different part of your genius. I also sure there's more than a small degree of appreciation for having left your workspace of comfort to fetch a random bit of visual inspiration.
Libraries truly are fantastic places. They're the "otherwhere" that can often kick off a successful search for things you didn't know existed.
You walk in and you look at things, read things, collect information. You don't even need to flash your membership card to get in like you do at Costco or Sam's Club. Just walk right in and fill your brain with things.
Physical things. Actual evidence of the actual thing you're looking for.
In my three years at Tisch, I would estimate that the equivalent time of two years were spent inside a library. Granted, this was in the time of tyro-Google, before you could type in a few letters of some sort of search and it would read your mind, finish your sentence, pull up millions of examples of what you're looking for.
There was a point to that. Honestly, there was.
Anyway, I've spent a ton of time in libraries of all stripes. Research libraries, reading rooms where you needed to fill out a form and some poor librarian would schlep off to the lower dungeons of the place to fetch your materials, large public libraries with levels and levels of very smart people mumbling to themselves, image banks with folders of semi-decently sorted images of almost everything.
My favorite was the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan library. We would spend hours and hours in that room pouring over folders of mounted images from books and magazines, from photo collections and private archives. Old-school image searching.
You could check out a folder, a composite of the collected images you gathered. I remember there being a limit to how many images you could check out at one time. I remember making the bargain of checking out certain images while classmates checked out other images then meeting up later to photocopy the images to share. You would need to return all of the images in good condition so that you could check out other images.
A single week of work for History of Costume and Décor would warrant five or six trips to the picture collection. Even then you wouldn't find enough images to fulfill the assignment.
History of Costume and Décor was scavenger hunt for history. Hardest class I've ever taken. Ever.
Bringing it back to the point, there was a benefit to going and getting the thing. There was advantage to having the physical dead-tree document and presenting it as part of your research. Your research is better when you go get the thing you're referencing.
We're talking artifacts, folks. Honest to goodness, real life, hold-in-your-hand artifacts.
I'm only partially joking. The truth is, I think there's more to getting up, to moving yourself physically to go and find the thing you need, the thing you're looking for, rather than just sitting in you normal everyday work-time spot punching keys on a keyboard. It activates a different part of your genius. I also sure there's more than a small degree of appreciation for having left your workspace of comfort to fetch a random bit of visual inspiration.
Libraries truly are fantastic places. They're the "otherwhere" that can often kick off a successful search for things you didn't know existed.