Rare Books

Since he announced he was on the move to Yale, his colleagues have been telling him how lucky he was, he would see what he was going to see: a place to know for real at last, with its campus and its own library. The Indian summer had gone off without leaving a forwarding address when he finally arrived in New Haven, after a few hours flight and a long taxi ride. They quickly left their luggage in the hotel room where the wall of the main hall was covered with bound books. They went off towards the library, a large cube of translucent marble. In there, they first faced a huge window through which they saw the collections of old books on shelves as in an aquarium fish. They sought how to dive into the jar, but after turning several times around, they realized that these books were now only seen from afar, behind the glass.
They decided to go to the other Library, from where they saw younger students going out. They entered and were immediately pleased to see that they had found what they were looking for: the hall was furnished with large files such as those of our European libraries, and it came with beautiful oak shelves a little bit further. But since they entered the reading room, they discovered empty shelves, and the files were also terribly empty.
They had been abused by security gates, they believed that the guard let them enter without asking anything as formerly in the Centre Pompidou Public Library ; in fact the library had moved and was not installed in another building. It was now online as they understood it by reading the small sign placed on the desk, pointing out that wireless access was freely available in the reading room.