Libraries are more important than we think.
I liked saying that because it was sort of a pun.
Until the advent of the internets and LOLcats, people could only know what other people knew through listening to a lecture, being part of a lively conversation, or reading a book, a newspaper, or a magazine.
Young people have no memory of those times. When I see an image like this:
Canada's Parliament Library
I remember that feeling of wishing I could read every book. I wanted to know everything. Now I realize even given more than one lifetime, I could not read every book. Gah. I remember that scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when he “gives” her his library. I was like, “I’m done. Movie is over. Time to start on the left and go around…wait…is there a card catalogue?”
Look at this one from Brazil:
Oh no! they are all in Portuguese!
I think of all the time and money that went into building libraries like these. Do you think, in the future, that humans will be building sacred monuments like these libraries to house and protect video games? iPods? A single Nook? (don’t forget the power source).
Nowadays your information will disappear and never come back when the battery dies or the power goes out.
In the old days it was lack of literacy or the death of a language that made the pages go dark. Ancient Egyptian history, poetry and science were lost in hieroglyphs for centuries, and would have been forever, if the Rosetta stone had not been uncovered. I do think about an entire library like the one above, written in a language I cannot read. *shivers* It is beautiful, but silent.
This looks like chickens walked across some mud..,
In a straight line, mind you, but imagine trying to read what the chickens wrote.
Everything we are as human beings since we first started thinking and talking must be preserved for the next generation, or else every generation will start over again from scratch. Without accumulated knowledge there could never have been the explosion in technology we enjoy today. Future discoveries are built upon today’s knowledge.
First we read books on clay tablets, then papyrus. vellum, paper and now light.
We used to worry about fire and water, the great enemies of books (and ipods) and war (the greatest enemy of the book).
(We still worry about war. Here is a story about the library at Sarajevo.)
(And the Library of Alexandria)
What happens when there is no electricity? We used to just need the sun and a book to discover what was in the minds of the other humans who came before us.
The sun will be around for another few billion years. Will the book? Will we?
| “These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves” –Gilbert Highet |
