The second thing one notices is the silence within. The library is situated in the city centre, Donegall Square North, opposite the rank for City Bus. The noise of roaring engines and smell of stale exhaust fumes can be almost overwhelming at times. Once inside the sanctuary of the library doors, sound is suffocated. Yet it is not the silence of a mausoleum.
People work there.
And then there are the floor boards, which in places rock and creak like an old sailing boat. The carpet, so old that it must have come from Ali Baba's cave, badly muffles the squealing of tortured wood. I was drawn to it in the mid-1980s. There was a sense of history about the place that even the most obtuse could not help but notice, and it offered a handy meeting point for earnest would-be writers. More serious scholars than I use it as an unparalleled research source on the North.