Editor:

I have been waiting all week for a response to Jonathan Goldman's absurd attack on the Main Library (April 22). Since no one else has come forward, I would like to at least address some of his more confused statements.

Apparently Mr. Goldman has had difficulty finding material in the library. Unfortunately, his complaint is too filled with hyperbole to clearly tell whether he has had this problem (or even entered the library) more than once. When he says he waits in line to use SABIO "every time," and it "always" shows that books are in the library, which they "never" are, he is either exaggerating or has inordinately bad luck. Surely he must have found something, sometime? Did he ever ask anyone for help? Perhaps he prefers to "wander around like zombies" instead.

Or perhaps his problem with "books never being on the shelves" (last time I checked, the place looked pretty full to me) has more to do with his confusion about our classification system. I don't know what film Mr. Goldman saw in grade school, but the Main Library (like most major universities) has only a small portion of the collection filed under the Dewey Decimal System. The vast majority of our material is classified using the Library of Congress System, which uses a combination of letters and numbers to organize material by subject. It's no wonder Mr. Goldman was unable to locate the books he wanted, if he was looking for "A's on the second floor and B's on the fifth floor." In the Main Library, the LC classified books start on the third floor (A through G), and work their way up (fourth floor - H through PQ; fifth floor - PR through PT).

I wish Mr. Goldman luck in completing his college degree while boycotting the library. (Perhaps he believes a future in politics can be sustained using only vague accusations and oversimplifications, with no facts or examples to back them up. He may be right.) If he would like to learn to use the library properly, I'm sure he would find much more than librarians chuckling in the back of the "worst library in the universe." I invite him to come back into the library, with an open mind this time, and ask for help when he needs it. I suspect we can make his "quest" more successful.

Kay Dodder
UA Main Library, library specialist