Bats and Books

On our way from Lisbon to Porto we stopped at the medieval college town of Coimbra. The students here still go to class in robes, and some have suggested that J. K. Rowling may have used this university as her model for Hogwarts. On this visit, we were able to see the fantastic baroque library. It was built by King Charles III not because he loved books, but because his brother-in-law had just built a similar library in Vienna, and the younger brother did not want to be outdone. It is difficult to check out a book here, though not impossible. Scholars can receive special permission to use volumes from the shelves, albeit with many restrictions. The building is beautiful, and this was the first library in the world to have a card catalog system. The shelves and the cases in which they stand all numbered so that a book could be found readily. One interesting feature of this library is that the heavy teak doors remain closed to preserve the temperature and humidity. A side-effect of this practice is that very little oxygen comes into the room. This is good for the books, but not so much for people. Therefore, the groups that visit this library must be very small, and they must stay long no longer than 15 minutes. Another peculiar feature of this library is that up in the rafters live colonies of bats. Over the centuries librarians have learned not to molest or remove the bats because they eat moths that destroy the books. If I were to brush up my Latin, I fancy that I could live in this room.Read more