`The Couch of Sloth'

On Saturday, my 4-year-old was sick and fell into an atypical three-hour nap, so my 6-year-old and I went to the library to give my wife a break. The downtown Houston Public Library, the central repository with the largest collection of books, has been closed since last April for renovations and isn’t scheduled to reopen for at least another nine months, so we rely on small branch libraries around the city. I do most of my catalogue-searching in advance, from home, because the computers in the libraries are usually out of service or monopolized.

This visit was more spur-of-the-moment, so when Michael announced he wanted books about dragons, I went in search of a computer to access the catalogue. I couldn’t find one unoccupied, so I spoke with a librarian in the children’s department who said only one terminal in the building was dedicated to catalogue searches, and it was on the second floor, and it was not working. She kindly searched the collection from her own computer, but I was puzzled and asked: What are all these patrons doing on the computer? I had seen at least 20 occupied terminals. “Oh, searching the Internet,” she said. “You know.” Well, no, I didn’t. One more illusion punctured.

I tried to look casual as I strolled about the library, both floors, looking over shoulders at computer screens. Most were filled with games. Two older women were occupied playing Idiot’s Delight – solitaire. I saw only one screen otherwise used: a rather scruffy fellow seemed to doing his taxes, which I thought was a nice touch because he and the others were motoring the Information Highway at taxpayers’ expense. Am I the only one disturbed by dusty library books and standing-room-only computer terminals? By people with sufficient idle time to squander it within spitting distance of bookshelves? By a public library system that subsidizes mindless diversion – i.e., games? Samuel Johnson had a cogent answer more than 250 years ago, in The Rambler No. 178, on Nov. 30, 1751:

"Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes whom her charms could never rouse from the couch of sloth; whom the faintest invitation of pleasure draws away from their studies; to whom any other method of wearing the day is more eligible than the use of books, and who are more easily engaged by any conversation than such as may rectify their notions or enlarge their comprehension."