Libraries have always seemed to me a warp zone of conflict: the bookworm versus the reluctant learner; the discursive narrative of a work of modern fiction versus the orderly entries of an almanac; the clamor of the content versus the quiet of the context. Tensions waft lovingly between the stacks, pulling together the lives of people as if they were superbly rounded characters in an epic work of theater.
Tension and panegyric aside: practically speaking, the act of using a library tends to be somewhat unremarkable. We jot down our Dewey Decimals (the original search engine!), navigate ourselves (quietly!) to the correct locus within the stacks as if finding the proper URL, and we access our information. We wait in line, we pay our fines, and, ostensibly, we go enjoy some new books!
So, when thinking about how to make our libraries better, I found myself a rare loss for words. Prolix blether became ponder drought. I at first wrestled with cliché: “let's leave no child bookless!” I thought. Or “no more late fees!” said my suppressed starving student soul. “Ooh,” went a particularly wild streak, “let us merge the library with the internet with television with text messaging and thrive in a hypermedia wonderland!”
Hastily stuffing these words back in my mouth, I resorted to the absurd for possible improvements: espresso machines a mandatory amenity, well-trained canines as library assistants, or perhaps a sponsored dating program to ensure that a studious boy might fall in love with a tome-clutching girl right there in the reference section!
Needless to say, I began to be dismayed.
Was I really so wanting for ideas?
Then, between piles of dictionaries and abdominals, the scent of paper prompted an olfactory glitch that impelled the proverbial “eureka”! The books! The very thing that constitutes a library - the revered objects themselves!
A brief aside: Roland Barthes, presumably a man of books, once hazarded a real raising of eyebrows in devoting considerable semantic affection to his love for leaving a cinema.Passing from the dim, dun diegesis of the cinema to the bright, barren being of the outside world may feel to some people, indeed, like a form of rebirth.
I realized I felt the exact same way about the library! And though the people and the place are worthy of celebration in their own right, I must say that I proffer a rebirth of the cherishing of books-and this is coming from a self-professed technophobic and video game monger.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to have people once again thumbing happily through card catalogs? Why not offer free classes about the history of the book? About typesetting? My library could be even better, I tell you, if a certain reverence for the book might reinstate a Barthes-like love for the unique sensory minutiae of the library.
A happy addendum to this thought: my library could be even better, thus, with more people perusing its pages - the ultimate effect of a newfound book enthusiasm, truly!
