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Let us utter a hearty hale and sad farewll
To her who brought the OAK and ROM and menu,
And other cyber-sorcery as well
To our previously printish venue,
For this salutary great leap forward
We thank our Caroline with all our hearts.
As we lead her lachrymosely doorward
We laud her wit, tenacity, and smarts...

Wiki Markup\[Excerpt from a poem composed and given on May 17, 1994, on the occasion of the departure of Caroline Coughlin from Drew.\]

Recent Gifts to the University Library

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Books also possess sensuality. They are meant to be touched. They are meant to be held--on the lap or desk, tilted upward, and grasped between the thumb and forefinger. They are meant to be caressed, page by page with a gentle downward motion, sometimes with just a hint of moisture from the forefinger.

Wiki MarkupBill Holm, the Minnesota prairie author, makes this confession:I love the bite of lead type on heavy rag paper, the sexy swirls of marbled end papers, the gleam and velvety smoothness of Morocco calf, the delicate India paper covering the heavy etching of the frontispiece, the faint perfume of mildew in old English editions, the ghost of smells of ink and glue in bindings.
The first time I visited a Russian Orthodox church, I watched the black-mustached \ [bishop\] emerge from behind his gold door in a great cloud of incense. The choir surged louder in four almost-in-tune parts.

Wiki Markup\[He\] bent ceremoniously down and kissed the Book. That's right, I thought\! The right thing to do with a book\! I will go home to Minnesota and light a candle and every night I will kiss a book. Tomorrow _Leaves of Grass_, and after that _The Iliad_ and after that _The Well-Tempered Clavier_....^2^  Which books would you ² 
Which books would you kiss?

If we are wise, we let poets have the last word. So let us be wise. Here is Billy Collins, a recent Poet Laureate of the United States:From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus
I can hear the library humming in the night,
a choir of authors murmuring inside their books
along the unlit, alphabetical shelves,
Giovanni Pontano next to Pope, Dumas next to his son,
each one stitched into his own private coat,
together forming a low, gigantic chord of language.

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