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October 29, 2007
About a Library
There's a great article in the November 5th issue of The New Yorker magazine about libraries. It delves into the rich history of libraries, finally ending up in the digital world that we live in now. It takes you from Greece to Google and from alphabetization to digitization. Here's a quote from the article:
"Sit in your local coffee shop, and your laptop can tell you a lot. If you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will have to take the narrower path that leads between the lions and up the stairs. There—as in great libraries around the world—you’ll use all the new sources, the library’s and those it buys from others, all the time. You’ll check musicians’ names and dates at Grove Music Online, read Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” on Early English Books Online, or decipher Civil War documents on Valley of the Shadow. But these streams of data, rich as they are, will illuminate, rather than eliminate, books and prints and manuscripts that only the library can put in front of you. The narrow path still leads, as it must, to crowded public rooms where the sunlight gleams on varnished tables, and knowledge is embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books."
I like the idea that the library of today "illuminates rather than eliminates" the past. What a concept.
Posted by Michele at October 29, 2007 1:18 PM
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