"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
It could be worse. Some schools and universities, in their fight against what is called "substance abuse," have declared their campuses to be "substance free." Personally, I would find living and working somewhere without substance to be a problem. Perhaps they are referring to their curricula.