Recollection of a 3-cent library fine yields many other memories.
By: Marina C. Isgro
Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author and Princeton humanities professor, touted the virtues of traditional libraries in the face of an increasingly digital culture in a speech Sunday at Princeton’s Richardson Auditorium.
"Those are the most salient images of myself as a child and as a young adult," she said, recalling the joys of her youth spent in libraries.
"The handling of tissue-thin dictionary paper was an unmitigated delight," she recalled, noting that she still prefers the feel of dictionaries to the perfunctory retrieval of information on her computer.
Nowadays, Ms. Morrison argued, technology is supplanting the sensory and social aspects of the traditional library experience.
"It has become not unthinkable in some quarters to dispense with stacks, and reading rooms, and librarians," as information can be condensed into electronic form, she said.
"I rather tremble before the instant availability of such an onslaught of data not because of any nostalgia," said Ms. Morrison. "My shiver arises from the assumption that has insinuated itself into these technological marvels that data is equal to knowledge or even wisdom."
Ms. Morrison said she suspected that instant access to such a wide variety of information could undermine intellectual thought and creativity.
Relating a recent anecdote from her own life, Ms. Morrison recalled telephoning her sister, rather than searching on the Internet, to help verify the cost of a library fine in the 1940s. After her sister confirmed that the fine was 3 cents a day, she began to reminisce about the 3-cent ice cream cones that she often bought from neighborhood stands.
"The joy was not in the price or even the convenience," Ms. Morrison said, describing her sister’s experience of eating an ice cream cone. "The joy was in strolling down the street, licking the purchase as she went, adroitly making sure to catch the melt."
As well as serving as a metaphor for the value of a slow, careful experience, Ms. Morrison said, her sister’s recollection of the ice-cream memory "put me in a mood unavailable to me if I had just been surfing the Internet to check the accuracy of a fine."
Ms. Morrison’s desire to keep libraries alive was manifested in a suggestion she made to citizens of her hometown, Lorain, Ohio. When they asked her how she would like to be commemorated, she suggested the addition of a room to the local library.
"Because I spent so much glorious time, accountable to no one, in the reading room of our single library, I encouraged them to add another room, with nothing in it but good, light, comfortable chairs and non-circulating books," she said.
"The room has become the most popular section of the library, and not only as a welcome reprieve from my hometown’s horrible weather," Ms. Morrison added.
Ms. Morrison’s lecture marked the beginning of the 75th anniversary celebration of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, a group that supports the activities and operations of the library.
University President Shirley Tilghman, who introduced Ms. Morrison, said, "I wish the Friends a future that shines as brightly as a signed and limited first edition by a Nobel laureate," referring to Ms. Morrison’s reception of the Nobel Prize in 1993.

