Wisdom of the Ages

I wrote this while sitting in the college library. Though it is written in the present tense, I sadly could not actually post this from the library.
I am sitting at the top of the library at present, on a small balcony area extending over the main room. I can see the tops of the shelves, into the shelf-walled nook at the end devoted to Ancient Greece. The ceilin gis vaulted and painted aqua, with gold-painted strips of wood barring and crisscrossing its surface. At the joins of the wood there are matching floral devices.
Windows alternate with shelves, arched and of either stained glass or small, clear, diamond-shaped panes. The stairs, at least up to my alcove, are lovely wood, but some rogue decorator has covered what I assume used to be lovely floors with hideous patterned carpet.
The whole library doesn't appear very large, but I suspect it is. From the poking around I've done, it seems it is full of little rooms and passages tucked in nooks and crannies at odd, difficult-to-photograph angles, though that shan't stop me trying.
It's very quiet and peaceful within the library, as it ought to be, though I can hear people and vehicles outside. The smell of books is everywhere, soothing and delightful, at least to me. I could spend my whole trip in here, safe and comfortable, reading.
But it's very differnt from libraries at home, or at least it appears so to a connoisseur such as myself. Instead of neat ranks of books upon the shelves, and bins and carts plastered with demanding notices to place books there when finished and under no circumstances to attempt to reshelve them yourself, there are simply stacks of books. People place their books on the floor by the shelf where they found them, or across the tidily-shelved books (all right. I suppose they do that at home, or at least at Barnes & Noble. When customers do that, it makes me want to slap them, but here I find it "charming." Probably because I don't have to clean it up). They've even got books laid out on top of the shorter shelving units, as though for the inspection of the patrons.
The whole place feels very special--not just because it's a library full of books full of the knowledge, wit, and wisdom of the ages, or because it's a beautiful suite of rooms in an ancient building, but because I have a key to it. That's right--you've got to have a magnetic passkey to get in the door. Fond as I am of the philosopy of public libraries, sharing knowledge welcome to all, there's something exciting about going into a room other people can't.
Of course, every teacher, student, and probably member of the cleaning crew (called "scouts") has a passkey, but let me revel, anyway.