On Libraries | On Libraries Essay Exercise | On Libraries Exercise Solution | Class 12 - On Libraries Note

 On Libraries   

- Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen’s College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings. Sacks was a neurologist and an author whose case studies of patients with unusual disorders became best-sellers. His focus on patients with particularly rare or dramatic problems made his work popular with writers in other forms, and his case studies were adapted into several different movies and operas. Dr. Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote a number of books--including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations--about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as "the poet laureate of medicine," and he received many awards, including honors from ‘The Guggenheim Foundation,’ The National Science Foundation, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Royal College of Physicians. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015. “On Libraries” is written in praise of intellectual freedom, community work, and the ecstasy of serendipitous discovery. Among the titans of mind and spirit shaped and saved by libraries was the great neurologist, author, and voracious reader. 

• Summary:

Oliver Sacks grew up in an oak-panelled library inherited from his father, a Hebrew Scholar and a fan of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). The library was stacked high with Henrik Ibsen’s plays, poems from his father’s generation, and adventure and history books from his brothers. He read Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, written by an English short-story writer. He enjoyed the adventures of Mowgli, the book’s fictional character.

His mother was likewise a literature enthusiast. She had collected a library of literature books by Emily Dickens (an American poet), Anthony Trollope (an English writer), George Bernard Shaw (an Irish playwright), Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare (an English dramatist), John Milton (an English poet), and poetry books as school awards. In a particular cabinet in his parents’ surgery, there were some medical books. Along with the most magnificent library, he had a small lab where he could immerse himself in books for hours on end, even forgetting to eat his lunch or dinner. Since he was three or four years old, the library and books were his first memories.

Willesden Public Library in Willesden Green, London, was where he spent the happiest hours of his adult life. He obtained his formal schooling there. He disliked passive reading in formal schools because he was an active reader and self-learner. He was a good student in libraries and enjoyed reading whatever book he wanted in the company of other readers. When he got older, he began studying astronomy and chemistry. Because the Walker Library at St. Paul’s School did not include chemistry books, he was able to visit the Science Museum’s library with the help of his schoolmaster and learn chemistry books there.

When he was at university, he went to Radcliffe Science Library and the Bodleian Library. After reading Theodore Hook, he decided to create a biography of him. He gathered information from the British Museum Library and wrote about him in the Bodleian Library. The library of Queen’s College, Oxford, was his most beloved library. He examined ancient texts such as Gesner’s Historiae Animalium (1551), Agassiz’s volumes, Charles Darwin, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jonathan Swift, as well as 17th and 18th-century writings of Samuel Johnson, David Hume, Alexander Pope, and John Dryden. .

In 1965, he moved to New York City and resided in a small apartment. It was difficult for him to read and write in the apartment, but he did write some of his book Migraine. He was accepted into Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he found it easy to read and write. He met with another friend who was looking for the same old book, Volumes of Brain from 1890. He formed a good connection based on reading and knowledge exchange.

He continued to visit libraries, sitting at a table surrounded by mountains of books. During the 1990s, he discovered that students were ignoring bookshelves in favour of accessing material on their computers. Because the majority of students were not using the books, the college decided to get rid of them. That happened in the AECOM Library and other libraries throughout the world. The majority of the books had been discarded. To him, this was a murder or a crime. It was the destruction of centuries of wisdom. He was upset by the loss of books, but the important books had been digitalized. Digital literature may neither inspire nor delight in the same way. Some books are priceless. In the 1960s, most libraries had special spaces for old books. The book that prompted him to start writing was Megrim (1873) by Edward Living.

 

 

Understanding the text

 

Answer the following questions.

a.       Where could the author be found when he was late for lunch or dinner?

Answer:  The author could be found in a little lab along with the oak-panelled library that belonged to his father when he was late for lunch or dinner.

 

b.       What are his first memories?

Answer:  The beautiful oak panel library and books were the first memory of the writer.

 

c.        Why did he dislike school?

Answer:  The author didn’t like school because he had to listen to the teachers passively obeying their instructions. The author liked to learn himself in libraries being free to choose books of his own choice.

 

d.       What did he feel about at the library?

Answer:  At the library, he felt free to look out thousands of books, to roam around and to enjoy the special atmosphere and the quiet companionship of other readers all like him in the same quest.

 

e.       Why was he so biased about sciences especially astronomy and chemistry?

Answer:  He was so biased about science especially astronomy and chemistry because science was his study of interest. Any library could provide books on various subjects and faculties, and to read all of them is not possible. We must focus our study on a specific subject to get a wide range of knowledge on that subject so the writer, to get specific knowledge, focused himself in astronomy and chemistry.

 

f.        Why did he become so fascinated by Hook?

Answer:  The writer became so fascinated by Theodore Hook because he was greatly admired in the 19th century for his wit and his genius for theatrical and musical improvisation. He was said to have composed more than 500 operas on the spot.

 

g.       Describe library at the Queen’s College.

Answer:  The Queen’s College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford, England. It has a magnificent library building which was designed by Christopher Wren, one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history. Beneath the library building, there is the vast subterranean holding of the library.

 

h.       Why did the students ignore the bookshelves in the 1990s?

Answer:  The students ignored the bookshelves in the 1990s because they have access to computerized books.

 

i.         Why was he horrified when he visited the library a couple of months ago?

Answer:  He was horrified when he visited the library a couple of months ago because most of the shelves were sparsely occupied. Most of the books were had been thrown out or digitalized.

 

 

Reference to the Context

a.       The author says, “I was not a good pupil, but I was a good listener.” Justify it with the textual evidence.

Answer:  In the essay, Oliver Sacks says, “I was not a good pupil, but I was a good listener.” To be a good pupil, one has to be a good relation to teachers in a school. S/he has to attend classes regularly under the instructions provided by the teachers. S/he has to complete all the assignments given by the teacher after the lectures. But Oliver Sacks was not like that kind of pupil. He didn’t like to learn passively. Instead, he likes to learn actively in libraries selecting books of his choice. He loves reading varieties of books in the library being free.

 

b.       A proverb says, “Nothing is pleasanter than exploring a library.” Does this proverb apply in the essay? Explain.

Answer:  The beautiful quotation, “Nothing is pleasanter than exploring a library.” Walter Savage Landor talks about the happiness, any studious person gets in a library. Any library provides enormous sources of information on a variety of topics. Nothing gives much satisfaction as reading books gives to a bookish fellow. Oliver Sacks is a bookworm who spends much of his time in different libraries in different places. His book reading started from his own library at home. All of his family members loved reading books and he was grown up in that environment. The oak-panelled library at his own home was his favourite room. Instead of attending formal schools, he preferred to read freely in libraries. Especially he enjoyed the library environment and the quiet companionship of other readers. He would love to sit at a table in libraries, with a mountain of books in infront of him.

 

c.       Are there any other services that you would like to see added to the library?

Answer:  When we hear the term “Library”, an image comes to our mind that is a room filled with several stocks of bookshelves and book lovers reading there. In the past, the shelves were full of paper-based books. I would like to see libraries offering an abundance of additional services which we can enjoy. I like to have access to audiobooks, E-books, large print and braille materials, CDs, DVDs, Internet access, community clubs, manuscripts and so on. They could provide access to reading to different readers. Even blind people can read books in a library if they provide braille materials. Internet users can read E-Books there.

 

 

Reference beyond the text

a. Write an essay on Libraries and its uses for students.
b. Do you have any public library in your locality? If so, do the people in your
community use it? Give a couple of examples.