The Significance of the University Library

A talk about books—or about gathering, cataloging and disseminating books—risks becoming a lullaby. Note how difficult it is to say, “The significance of the university library” without yawning. For books are meant to be experienced rather than characterized, and library buildings must do more than house collections. That is, libraries should foster individual intellectual encounters. I am sure that during the millennium, library dedications such as this one will consist of handing out books to all who attend, and then, in the detached intimacy of collective, engrossing study, all will enjoy an hour of eloquent silence broken only by prayer. This approach should be the perfectly appropriate affirmation that all dedications aspire to be.

If in the flawed commitment of the pre-millennial present we are not secure enough to be silent, we can be sensible enough to be short. Today, therefore, I would not harangue you with abstractions linking this library with illustrious concepts of what libraries have been and yet might be. Neither will I indulge myself in a detailed listing of resources that inevitably emphasize quantity—and thereby blur the discriminations that even a modest library holding allows us to make. I am less interested in the historical antecedents of the Joseph F. Smith Library, or the number of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and periodicals it has available, than I am in what happens to those who yield themselves to the library’s almost limitless possibilities.

Students, for instance, who accept this lovely, functional building as a study hall or as a staging area for romance must also accept it as the unflagging prompter of their academic development. The library is the true alma mater, or foster mother, on every campus, for an unread book has that same mildly reproachful look about it that I remember on the face of my mother when I failed to practice my trumpet or missed Sunday School. Perhaps we do not need to feel the driving frustration of young Thomas Wolfe at Harvard. He was remembered as the one who ravaged the stacks, jerking books from their shelves, reading a few pages furiously, and then moving on in frenzied, intellectual gluttony. For Wolfe, ideas were so interrelated that he needed to know everything at once! Lest such a picture call forth only amusement, I suggest you read his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, and be swept up, even engulfed, in language that will startle and thrill and suffocate and revive you. Whatever you bring to such an encounter, you will come away with your imagination permanently enlarged and all your sensibilities heightened.

Such changes may not be as evident when we use the library as a classroom resource. Leisure reading, like leisure activity generally, is the most revealing reading we do. In his poem “Days,” Ralph Waldo Emerson poses the problem of choice in terms that illuminate our relationship with the accumulated knowledge awaiting our response in the Smith Library. The poem is as follows:

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts, after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.¹

How neatly this poem focuses our failure to choose wisely from the treasures available to us. While Emerson was not overly impressed by books as ends in themselves—he considered them appropriate only “for the scholar’s idle times”² and an unacceptable substitute for direct experience—he went on to say that he would not be hurried into underrating books’ role as teachers of elements and as needed contexts for the modest experiences that characterize most of our lives. While appreciating Emerson’s use of books as supplement, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints cannot be satisfied with a secular context alone—no matter how far reaching. For us, Church programs provide the social and emotional undergirding we need, and the gospel supplies the intellectual reach and insight that give our lives their eternal meaning. We never really illuminate the gospel through secular learning—the gospel alone truly illuminates—but wide and careful reading can hone the tools we use to receive divine direction.

As the Lord pointed out to Job, we may phrase our questions in such ignorance that we complicate the Lord’s ability to communicate with us precisely. Remember the Lord’s devastating question to Job near the end of that revealing book: “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2). Then the Lord proceeds to ask Job a series of stunning questions. Job cannot understand a single question, much less answer one. The problem is not that answers are unavailable for the fundamental questions Job is demanding of the Lord. Rather, Job has not prepared himself to receive what he has asked for. Belatedly, he recognizes this lack of preparation. We would do well to check our own Job-like responses before we discount the contribution that academic preparation can make to spiritual understanding.

Occasionally I hear the fear expressed that wide learning is not compatible with simple faith, but I am convinced that people do not think themselves out of the Church. In every case I have seen, those who have cited intellectual problems with Church doctrine have been found, in the end, to have forsaken the commandments before having difficulty with the theology. The Lord is not afraid to have us learn “out of the best books” (D&C 109:7). This library can be the locus of that learning.

May I also reflect for a moment on the use of this library as an innocent alternative? After reading Lehi’s discussion about the need for opposites in establishing definitions, some have been concerned that in our efforts to understand evil, we risk being corrupted by it. Somehow, we must be able to appreciate vicariously the “compound in one” (2 Ne. 2:11) that Lehi describes. Unfortunately, however, vicarious agents like television, motion pictures, or current magazines often recruit more than they inform. If we would know the full impact of adultery, such knowledge will not come from the smirking infidelities splashed before us in full color and total vulgarity every night. A careful reading of The Scarlet Letter, however, can give insight without scars. One comes away from reading this masterpiece of self-deception without being tainted by or attracted to immorality. Similarly, we may need to learn about political systems that are antithetical to gospel principles if we would understand and reclaim good people who are subjected to bad government. With what relief and gratitude one comes to an account of sin without feeling depraved, or to philosophical error without being infected. We need to know well the world we would improve. Sadly, however, many books are no better than the movies, TV programs, and magazines I have just decried. Yet even in the midst of general moral degeneration, I am encouraged by the opportunity that a good library provides for knowing without succumbing.

Finally, may I speak to the faculty who will want to bask a bit in facilities that were hardly dreamed of a few years ago. Beyond the obvious resources this library can provide, I would have the faculty view it as a conscience. Every time we walk through the section supporting the area we teach, we should pause in sober accounting of how prepared we are to provide instruction that receives its cutting edge from a knowledge of the latest developments and its inspiration from the skill and enthusiasm we have assimilated and then distilled. We may well find that the greatest challenge our students face will not be their commitment (unless we can count on commitment, little else matters) but the skills we help provide, the skills they will need in a society that will listen to and acknowledge a superbly honed mind. If we would carry the gospel to all people in their own tongue, we must master the language of scholarship. When superb scholarship is fused with faith and given impetus by consistent, supportive activity, it provides a model for students that is both persuasive to them and thoroughly satisfying to professors. Nothing less than such a model can possibly suffice. Ours is the explicit responsibility to show students not only that to be learned is good but that hearkening unto the counsels of God is a necessary corollary. How beautifully that combination can come to fruition for both students and faculty in the library. For the word of God is also available there, both in scripture and in the sermons of inspired Church leaders. When we testify that the gospel is true, do we know the gospel? Surely the library can be a spiritual conscience as well as a secular one. The man for whom we named this building this day, who educated himself under difficulties that few of us can even envision, will surely expect that we have not taken the example of his name lightly. He will expect of us, as he expected of himself, a personal effort that will be the continuing dedication of this spot and this edifice. In homage, we can do no less; in honor, we will do more.