Authors
Gilbert Geis
Publication date
1999/7/1
Journal
Social Justice
Volume
26
Issue
2 (76
Pages
60-62
Publisher
Social Justice/Global Options
Description
THE CALL NUMBER IS HV/6001/C673, AND THE BOUND VOLUMES THAT REPRESENT the 24 years of the publication of Social Justice stretch over two feet, nine and one-half inches of shelf space on the fourth floor of my university's library. The early volumes repose in solid ersatz brown leather binding: for the later years there is a shift to a more prosaic brown around the spine with blue cardboard on the remainder. The library obviously has traded style for savings. Money that once went for higher education in California, and derivatively for library expenses, is now going for the construction and upkeep of prisons. The downgrading of Social Justice's binding may convey a subtle warning, an omen of a future fate. Will journals housed in libraries soon disappear, done in by a symbolic fiscal asteroid like the real one that wiped out the dinosaurs more than a hundred million years ago? Will solid substance be …