It was just another ordinary hectic day in the library. To be honest, says Thomas McCarthy, it has been an ordinary hectic day for nearly 30 years.
Despite all the talk of computers and new technology it's the voracious appetite for books that really keeps the place buzzing. The traffic in books is enormous, even in a branch library in the heart of a working-class district. This week, one branch, five boxes, nearly 100 requests and returns fulfilled for other branches within Cork.
And each branch will have its own boxes and bundles. It's really a source of constant amazement and joy; this love of books, this endless hunt for a really good read.
Imagine what the traffic in books must be like in Frank O'Connor's own service, the Cork County Library. Its vast mobile routes alone, stretching over 100 miles across, serve more than 500 service points, from chic Conna near the Waterford border to the western yachting havens of Schull and Roaringwater Bay.
But inside the buzz of books, there's this new inner circle, a bank of computers. Sure enough, two special events occurred last week: the new Microsoft Vista and the announcement that the last Harry Potter book will see the light of day in late July. We saw the news of Harry Potter as it was flashed across the MSN home-page. A nine-year old who was about to begin her search for an up-to-date map of Australia screamed to her companions: "Harry Potter is coming out in July. We'll have it for the holidays!" And we went to the calendar on the wall and put a ring around that fateful day in high summer. Another red-letter day in the book trade.
And right now, in comes an eager youngster looking for a book on Windows Vista. We don't have one. But we'll soon have one, to join the books on Fortran, Publisher, AppleMac and WindowsXP shelved at the very beginning of the non-fiction shelves, very close to books on witchcraft, the occult, the paranormal.
What strange bedfellows these books make, so close to each other. What conversations they must have, late at night, when the library is closed to its constant readers. But computers have already generated many more books than witchcraft. In this they have failed to grant us their own first wish: a paperless world.
Remember that promise? Everything would become virtual, there would be no more paper.
What a laugh. Nothing creates more paper than a computer workstation. Ask any parent or teacher. The supreme irony of Microsoft is that it will morph into a publishing house in the decades to come: it will become the Macmillan or Gallimard of the future.
I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm thrilled. It's part of the victory of trees over circuit boards. We still need to draw out knowledge from trees, from tactile substances. Like children in the library today, we need to be able to touch and hold the vessels that contain knowledge. And today was also hectic with last-minute CAO applications. Their site is slow-moving.
A young teenager is crying. Her mother consoles her. After two hours of the website "hanging", chewing pencils, texting concerned friends, she throws in the towel. She'll try again in a friend's house tonight. Beside her, a new borrower, Ali, manipulates a chess-game on the PC.
I've had many conversations with his father, a gracious and highly educated man. Beside him Mr and Mrs **** from Nigeria search for NASC information through Google. I show them a story I'd read earlier, about African immigration in Minnesota. They read how employment among Somali refugees has risen from 20 to 80 per cent since 2000. They learn how permission has been given to stamp every dollar in Minnesota with the message "This dollar was earned by a recently arrived immigrant".
Yesterday, they were depressed and a little frightened by a newspaper headline about refugees cheating on welfare payments. "We don't cheat, we want to work, straight away," the woman tells me: a proud woman, with that very particular self-reliance of Nigerians.
Beside them, Britney, Jason, Jordan and Chelsea, the lively Murphy children from the new houses built by Cork City Council, exchange jokes via MSN Messenger. They are all constant readers, taking a break from books by taking a stroll through the computers.
There's a great intensity to their communication, sharing, teasing, larking. They grow more intelligent and lively with every day that passes. I wonder what will become of them?
Will they become van-drivers or chemists, cleansing department operatives or dentists?
Despite the odds that are loaded against children from Cork's northside, you can't keep a good kid down. Just last year six teenagers who used this library won places at university.
Now, I see that Jason has placed his street-scarred left hand on a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The word is out. Through the great network of Microsoft that spins across the world, a message has flashed on a screen in a busy branch library in Cork's northside. It has fallen upon native-born children and non-nationals alike: the Wizard is coming. Hang on to your books.
• John Watersis on leave