Sometimes clichés have an interesting meaning behind them. One that I have personally heard over and over is that pictures are worth a thousand words. While perusing the old pictures within the library I come to realize this saying more and more.

The first picture I came to is one of the bookstore at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, sometime in the 1970s. It stood out to me as I burrowed into the boxes because of the fact that everything is so different. The photograph was taken only 40 years ago but it feels like a completely different world. Plain jeans, a strange additive to the normal Penn State merchandise, are stored by a handwritten sign for “$5 books.” Today textbooks often cost more than $100, and signs are printed using computers and printers. The shirts look like something that would be sold in the “dad” section of the store, not something popular that the students would buy. Behind the counter a card catalog, listing all of the store’s stock is visible, whereas today that information is usually stored in a database or Excel spreadsheet. The paper is sold by loose leaf or by the notebook. Crazy glue, glue sticks, and pens are found on every single display, due to the fact that the students would have to handwrite everything or use an old-fashioned typewriter and manually cut and paste sections before typing final drafts of papers. However, despite these differences, the emblem of Penn State remains the same.

Even though this feels like a completely different world, we can still have the attachment that is Penn State. We are students; we study and work hard to get our grades. We have the Penn State merchandise (although it’s now more expensive) to show that we are proud to go to this great university. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but sometimes you have to read between the lines.