Library

EY was telling me about 'the most boring job in the world' as defined by one of his professor, i.e. clock watcher (or something like that) in the Navy. I asked him, do you know why is this job important and he didn't know. So I suggested him to read a book by Dava Sobel, entitled "Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His time".

EY tried to look up the book in his school library online database and he couldn't find it. From my understanding, I believed that the school library should have it. So I searched his school library online database and I found it. To make life easier for him, I copy and paste the call number for that particular book on the messenger for him and told him "That's the call number for the book. "

To my great surprise, he asked me "What is that?" I was shocked. I told him "There should be more than 100,000 books in a university level library, not including the journals that library collect. If you ever need a book, remember to go through the 100,000 ++ books in alphabetical order to find the one you need." Finally, I figured I should give him a hand here if I want him to read more. So, I explained to him how does a library function, went through the floor map of his school library, helped him figure out the floor and section where that book is located, how does a library shelf the books and how does the call number work.

A 70++ year-old professor in Management, who was trained as a Mechanical Engineer in his bachelor degree, went back to his alma mater for 50 years reunion recently. He told us, one of his fellow ME classmate bragged that he had never set foot in the university library all through his undergraduate study. Now I could see that how can this be possible.