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van Soldt on Scribal Training at Ugarit »

May 3, 2006

The Cost of Research

I've been wanting to get hold of van Soldt's "Babylonian Lexical, Religious and Literary Texts, and Scribal Education at Ugarit and its Implications for the Alphabetic Literary Texts," in Ugarit: ein ostmediterranes Kulturzentrum in Alten Orient: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Forshung, Dietrich and Loretz eds., Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995, for some time. Shirley wanted to go down to Carlsbad to visit their public library and do some genealogical research. The University of California at San Diego campus is just 22 miles further south and I knew they had a copy of Ugarit: ein ostmediterranes Kulturzentrum in Alten Orient so I decided to leave Shirley off in Carlsbad and drive down to take a look at van Soldt's paper. Here is what transpired.

The 22 mile drive was uneventful. I reached the campus in about twenty minutes and then, as Mark Twain would say, the trouble began. First, I am not at all familiar with that sprawling campus. Even with a map that I downloaded from their website, I managed to get lost and it took me another 20 minutes to find a temporary (5 min maximum) parking space so that I could get out of my car, ask directions and eventually pay $6.00 for a single all day parking pass, the shortest time available. This was not a surprise. It is the same at UCLA. I then asked where I could park and was told that the building immediately behind the parking department office might have an open space or two but I could only park on the third level or higher. It sounded good to be within easy walking distance of the library (about 0.4 miles). The other choice was about 2.5 miles away in long-term parking. From there I could take a shuttle back to within about 0.1 miles of the library. So I placed my permit on my dashboard as instructed and hopefully entered the adjacent parking structure spiraling upward. There was not a single parking space. So I turned around and spiraled down. And lo and behold, I found a space and parked. I walked to the library; found the book; paid a total of $8.00 for a copy card of which I used $4.20 and returned to my car.

Here's a full accounting of the cost of getting quality time with van Soldt's paper.

Oh, perhaps I didn't mention that when I spiraled down I passed the third level and parked in the second level. While I am clearly at fault, I will say in my defense that I didn't see a single sign or change in designation when I unknowingly transitioned to the second level. I didn't see one on the way down nor did I see one while I walked off my emotional reaction at getting the ticket.

So the total cost of this trip to the library was $58.20 and I acquired a $3.80 asset that can be used only at University of California at San Diego libraries. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I stubbed my left big toe on a sprinkler head so bad that for a while I thought I had broken it and in so doing stepped down very hard and awkwardly on my right foot so that my right ankle still hurts. This happened because I was trying to get out of the way of a bicyclist who seemed to be asserting her right-of-way at a fairly high speed.

If there is any good news in all of this, it is that I have the paper and plan to use it in a forthcoming post and the book in which it was published does not seem to be available on the internet at any price. Next time, I head straight to remote parking or maybe I'll just wait out interlibrary loan. It's free.

Posted by Duane Smith at May 3, 2006 9:25 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |

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Posted by: Jim at May 4, 2006 5:08 AM

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