In tones more usually reserved for the fall of the Roman empire, the historian Tristram Hunt this week lamented that the barbarians had invaded the sanctuary.
Students - horror of horrors - had been allowed into the British Library and taking up seats that were once the preserve of serious researchers.
"The past 12 months have witnessed a catastrophic collapse in its working environment. The studied calm of the reading room has given way to a hum of mobile phone ringtones, chit-chat and pubescent histrionics. It is difficult to get any work done," complained Hunt, who sounds as if he is worried about a looming deadline from his publisher.
The perishers are idling away the hours in the library in time-honoured undergraduate fashion, complains Hunt, echoing our columnist John Sutherland who made the same point more than a year ago on this website.
In Sutherland's words, "These hordes of new young users, their elders lament, have no sense of library etiquette. They use their mobile phones. They'd rather text than read. They chatter like parakeets in an aviary. Above all, they are not serious.
"They are in the BL because it is warm, handsomely appointed, has free input for laptops and an ace cafe attached. It's a good place to hang out," he said.
Some readers will be surprised that yoof consider the BL a cool place to hang out but Sutherland at least points to the root historical cause of the problem - 2000 seats instead of 3,000 because of Whitehall costcutting and the space demands of the Channel Tunnel terminal at St Pancras.
What will appal Dr Hunt even further this week is that the library is to be given over on Thursday night to a reception to celebrate the merger of the two academic unions into the University and College Union.
The histrionics won't be prepubescent but I suspect the lecturers will be chattering like parakeets after a couple of glasses. No doubt students swotting for their exams will be telling them to ssssshh.
