Fear this.

Firestone Library stacks are equipped with cranks so that you can open and close adjacent bookshelves as necessary. Perhaps you have already associated these mechanisms with medieval torture devices; if not, this chilling tale should make the connection a little more explicit.

Deep in the belly of Firestone, Dan Feinberg ’13 was lurking betwixt the stacks, seeking new sources for his Writing Seminar paper. Although to many that class is a special brand of torture in itself, this was way more literal.

His topic was fairly obscure, so he ended up in the area of “reject books that don’t get much attention, so the stacks are much closer together and you could really only have one open at a time.” Feinberg found a promising shelf — thinking he’d only be there for a second, he didn’t bother to lock the crank — and dove in. He kneeled and discovered a whole wealth of books, then experienced one of those brief bursts of that academic adrenaline when it’s like wow these are all vaguely relevant to my research topic what up bibliography and found himself lingering there longer than he’d anticipated. Caught up in the thrill of deep scholarship, he suddenly became aware of a pressure at his rump.

That was the shelf behind him closing in. It kept going, and he was forced upright, and squished more and more until he desperately assumed the most compact configuration possible in this quickly shrinking space: “one foot in the second shelf of each side, so I had as much of my legs [as possible] tucked into the shelves.”

And yes, he was thinking what you’re thinking.

Firestone : Princeton :: Trash Compactor : Death Star