One of the great pleasures that I have enjoyed in the first weeks of this winter season has been to take a few hours out of one day each week to work in the public library. In fact, it is where I am sitting just now. Libraries have been much changed over the past years, largely as a result of the development of and the shifts in information technology. Some have gone so far as to question whether collections of physical printed books will be at all necessary in these institutions in the future. There have been some extreme examples of the deaccessioning of library collections already, such as the gutting of the San Francisco Main Library in the late 1990s, when something on the order of half a million books were dumped.
A library without stacks of bound books strikes me as a bleak vision of the future. It also strikes me as dangerously foolhardy to consider trading physical volumes for digital files. Formats for file storage or recording change rapidly. While we can still reliably open and read any book extant book we can put our hands to, from papyrus rolls to Darwin’s Origin of the Species, how many of us have the technological capability to play a recording made for a mini-Victrola, or even a standard LP for that matter? I have a box of VHS tapes that are no longer of any use to me. I have written it before, but it once again applies here: Books are a perfected technology, they always work; the only real problem with them is the issue of storage. In my mind, here lies much of the responsibility of our libraries.
Despite this worry, there remains much comfort to be found in the mere fact of the existence of these institutions. Here we have a space set aside for scholarly pursuit, for individual advancement, for cultural exposure, for learning. These places are simultaneously sanctuaries and monuments. Prolific book critic and author Nicholas Basbanes devoted an entire volume to the subject of book collections, how they are assembled, who assembles them, how they are maintained, and the difficulties they face. Patience and Fortitude is a discussion of the library, both the public sort of library as well as private libraries and personal collections. This volume is the best consideration of the very idea of the library, from the perspective of a devoted bibliophile, that I have ever encountered.
For readers interested in books, Basbanes’ work should not be overlooked. He has written syndicated columns on books for years, and has authored numerous volumes on books, bibliophily, and book culture, beginning with A Gentle Madness in 1995. Later works include Among the Gently Mad (2002), A Splendor of Letters (2003), and Every Book its Reader (2005), and Editions and Impressions (2008).