Dying Breed Field Trip: A University Library

You'd be surprised by what you can find in the stacks at your local college library

The University of Tulsa McFarlin Library.

I plan to try out different content formats on Dying Breed, one of which is Dying Breed Field Trips. The world is an interesting place, and I want to explore what we can find when we start poking our noses into places we take for granted or overlook.

In this first Dying Breed Field Trip, I’m visiting the McFarlin Library on the beautiful University of Tulsa campus, where I can show you an underrated source of serendipitous knowledge discoveries: the college library stacks.

Got your permission slip signed? Then hop on the bus and let’s go to a university library.

In an age where all the world's information is accessible from your phone, and ChatGPT can instantly generate a 3,000-word explainer on Renaissance art, you might wonder why anyone would bother hauling themselves to the dank-smelling catacombs of a university library.

Answer: College library stacks are one of the best places to discover serendipitous knowledge.

Here’s something that I’ve come to realize over many years of researching and writing professionally. One of modern life's most underrated intellectual problems isn't accessing information; it's discovering what you don't know doesn't exist.

When you search for something on Google or ask ChatGPT a question, you already know what you're looking for. You type in a question, keyword, or topic and get exactly what you asked for. That sounds great, but it also means you reinforce what you already know or think you need to know. You're still unaware of the things you don't know you don't know.

When you add on the fact that a lot of the information we encounter in our daily lives is fed to us by algorithms that are designed to show us what we're already interested in or what the algorithm thinks we'll be interested in, the echo chamber of our bias towards the familiar and known is strengthened.

To bust out of this echo chamber, you need to inject some randomness into your life. You need some serendipity to help you find things you weren't looking for, but may catalyze your curiosity and generate some genuine mental sparks.

The college library stacks are one of the best places to discover this serendipitous knowledge. Here's why: