OUTRAGE!!

There was a party this evening, held in a stuffy and noisy (nasty acoustics) ballroom. Before long, the anti-party-goer in me was protesting, so - after downing my share of grub - I slipped out, and went to the library instead.

It was straight to the periodicals room. I had been looking for recent issues of Nature for some while to no avail. After one last combing, I asked the student helper at the desk.

Me: Where are the international science journals?
Her: They're right there in that corner under "N".
Me: So how come there are none?
Her: Ahh. Right. They've stopped subscribing to them.
Me: What??!
Her: Well...you see the library decided that there were hardly any people were reading them, so they've cancelled subscriptions for this year.
Me: Cancelled?? THEY CANCELLED??!!
Her: Wait, I think there's still one left, you might want to scour through that row beside the wall...

I could have collapsed on the spot.

It's outrageous! Blasphemy!! What on earth is a university library doing without international science journals?

To clarify things, I went to the main desk where three librarians were having a good laugh. They had no idea the journals were missing, nor could they offer an explanation for the disappearance. They did seem shocked though, and said things like "no way, they can't unsubscribe to this Nat-you-are thing can they?", and "we're never going to get a subscription again if we cancel now!" So that went down the drain. A respectable one with greying hairs asked me amusingly, "you actually read them?"

JUST BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE CAN'T READ THEM DOESN'T MEAN NO ONE CAN OKAY??

Of course I restrained from shouting in public and merely mumbled a yes. Then greying Mr Venerables followed up with a "you're an undergraduate right? What's your subject?"

Argh.

Just get the journals back on rack for crying out loud.

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Update: The day after that there were three international journals laid out, two of them published locally. On the second day five more were put up, including NG and Fortune but not Nature. I even spotted a few of last year's old journals masquerading as recent issues...how sad is that?

Update: They're all back now. Thank goodness!