[Essay in My Heart]

Linda Hall Library

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

- Marcus Tullius Cicero -

In our lifetime, we read many books. Of course, due to the development of the Internet and SNS, the habit of reading has disappeared these days, unlike in the past. There is no doubt that it is still a very important facility.

I've used many libraries so far, and there is one library that I'm particularly impressed with, so I'll introduce it here. This is the story of the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. Linda Hall Library is located on the campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), so it is easy for many people to refer to it as just a university library.

(URL=https://www.lindahall.org/)

Quiet and compact, this private library opened in 1946. It is the largest independent library of science, engineering, and technology in North America, and one of the largest science libraries in the world.

Built in honor of his wife through donations from Linda Hall (1859-1938) and Herbert F. Hall (1858-1941) of Hall-Bartlett Grain Co., it is open to individual researchers, academic institutions, and corporations in the city and around the world, as well as to the general public. Although not affiliated with the nearby University of Missouri-Kansas City, many college students and faculty from UMKC and other Midwestern universities and colleges used to drive themselves and utilize the library to find the materials they needed.

The library's collection includes over two million volumes, including journals, conference papers, bibliographies, government publications, technical reports, industry standards, engineering conference papers, US patents, and monographs. In 1995, the Engineering Societies Library (ESL) was moved to the library, and the ESL collection were the materials from the American Society of Aeronautics and Space, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Mining, Metals and Petroleum Engineers, and the American Society of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. It has an extensive collection of materials from various professional societies .

The library's distinguished scientific history collection contains more than 50,000 books, including many rare first editions of science and technology, the oldest in the collection being Pliny's The Elder's Naturalis Historia (Natural History), published in 1472.

I have used this library diligently for over seven years, and I still have many good memories. Almost all of the papers or books I found while studying and researching were easily found in this library, and I did not find the paper I wanted just once, so I received a paper sent by fax from another university library through the ILL (Inter Library Loan) service and studied it.

The staff are always very friendly, the interior is quiet and clean, and the flower beds around the library are always filled with beautiful flowers and shrubs that welcome library users. Every time I used the facility, I felt a lot of envy. It is only thanks to their beautiful and meaningful deeds that millions of people around the world benefit from their generous donation.

Another thing I thought about while using the facility was that it would be a great opportunity for community service to build and use a library specializing in a specific field. Nowadays, in fact, it is possible to search for general information on the Internet, but I still think that the search and utilization of library materials for in-depth research or learning still has its useful value.

I want to tell you a joke. The Linda Hall Library was said to have been given as a “gift” by her husband Herbert F. Hall (1858-1941) to his wife Linda Hall (1859-1938). So, as a joke among international students, the following saying was circulated. "If you want to give a wonderful present to your wife, shouldn't it be a gift like the Linda Hall Library?"

I look forward to the day when one day I will be able to visit the Linda Hall Library again, where I can still remember beautiful memories one by one.

Solti 

At Soongseonjae(崇善齋)

December 21, 2021