Improvement?

I went to Glasgow yesterday morning, to plunder the university library - which has a wonderful collection of Scottish literature. I took a break mid-morning, and first sat outside for ten minutes, under a blue sky, but in minus degrees, weathering the cold to enjoy the sun, because it’s been unremittingly and depressingly wet for days, then spent half an hour in the Hunterian Museum, revisiting the Whistlers.  I'd love to work in that part of Glasgow – in fact I think I'd like to live in Glasgow; its architecture and its cultural liveliness are reminiscent of Liverpool, and so, familiar.  The library is absolutely invaluable this year. My university library is being refurbished, and although they've made some astonishingly efficient interim arrangements, most of the books aren't directly accessible but have to be ordered from store via the web-based catalogue.  This means I can’t browse.  I thought this arrangement would upset students generally, but apparently my expectation revealed only how old-fashioned I'm becoming, a fact which was brought home to me with force recently, when I was informed by one of my students, that the verb 'to browse' is derived from the compound noun 'web browser'.  This suggests that, for many, the primary meaning of 'browsing books' just is sitting at a computer and surfing the catalogue for a library or bookshop. 

The feeling of straddling two worlds is beginning to occur more and more frequently. I watched University Challenge for the first time for perhaps years, recently.  As usual, I was completely floored by most of the questions, but instead of also being awed by participants’ erudition, I was appalled both by the general lack of knowledge about the arts, and by the number of questions about football or elements of quantum physics.  But at the same time as feeling distress that the names of the protagonists in Romeo and Juliet or that of the author of Adam Bede are now deemed a challenge to up and coming academics, I am lusting after a particular digital pen which stores handwritten text, and converts it into typed text once it is plugged into a computer.   (I'm enchanted by the idea of handwriting a letter which, after swift  and painless, hi tech wizardry, you can send as an email.)