In The Shadow of the Library (A Rant, Some Thoughts, An Essay), The Library At Night

Étienne-Louis Boullée: Projekt for the National Library in Paris, France.


In the Shadow of the Library

I have been reading more of Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night. It makes me think of many different ideas that are interconnected with the idea of the library.

Alberto Manguel and many other people view the library as a place of memory. It seems that in todays world people aim to forget not remember what they are reading and viewing. Unlike in the old days, there is too much information, not too little. Because everything is written down, it is no longer viewed as necessary to remember everything.

This used to not be true. It used to be that part of rhetoric was memory training. The proper term is Ars Memoria in latin. The Art of Memory. During the middle ages the islamic scholars used to view books as something to be read aloud, then remembered. Libraries for the islamic scholar were places to memorize texts so they could be recited and understood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

The Art of Memory was further developed during the Renaissance into complex and intricate forms, eventually drawing from mysticism and hermeticism to form the "Palace of Memory." I think in some ways as a library as an edifice focused on preserving memory. The Method of Loci was the ultimate completion of Ars Memoria. Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit Priest who preached in China was supposed to have written about it. There is even a novel based on his account. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan D. Spence. Oddly, it does not show how to build a memory palace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_palace

When we think of the library as a place of memory we think of books, but to be more specific, most of the Art of Memory was focused on complex cultured books. There was very little reason to memorize fiction. The bible or the Koran, complex poetic works, science, music, and history were often memorized. In other words we think of the library as a concentration of memory for cultured books. Alberto Manguel points out that culture creates very focused attention.

The library exists as a place to develop memory and focus your attention on specific cultured topics. This is one definition of a library. It is a definition which preserves meaning and focuses on the concept of the classics, primary works, and valued culture. Alberto Manguel views the library as a place for the preservation of books. He does not want any paper works to be thrown out.

In his view, and partially my own view books are valued objects which should be preserved at all costs. He questions the veracity of storing everything in an electronic medium. The shelf life of a dvd, or cd-rom is five to seven years. In my library, this is quite short, we have many books that are over a hundred years. old. Some paper books can last hundreds up to thousands of years.

He decries the urge to throw away books solely because they are not being used. In his view, there is always someone who will eventually use a book. I don't agree with his statement to his extreme. There are many books which should be replaced regularly, science and medicine becomes dated and potentially dangerous to the reader when it becomes old. Plus there are plenty of books which are not meant to last, but be a flash in the pan, then disappear.

The essential problem of memory like the library is that memory always seeks to add more than it is capable of holding to the brain. Libraries are constantly expanding institutions. They are always adding new material and getting rid of old material. It is the issue of getting rid of old material that is a problem.

How do you define a classic or primary work. History, poetry, and fiction do not go out of date for the most part. The books may yellow and crumble, but the content remains viable. Computers make it possible to expand information storage almost indefinitely. However, if not watched closely, the information becomes ephemeral, ghostly and disappears as a computer crashes or a hard disk becomes obsolete. Good quality, acid free paper books are not so ghostly.

Thus a problem with balance occurs. What do you preserve in print, and what do you make ephemeral. How do you choose? Even more important, how do you insure the ephemeral electronic part is being properly monitored and preserved. I am not exactly trusting of some of the electronic database companies.

I have never been in a library which does not seek to continuously expand and add new things. Even the Westchester, New York Supreme Court Law Library does this. Years ago, they expanded beyond their capacity to hold law books. We have essentially done the same thing with our law collection.

There is also an essential problem of resolution. Paper is still a superior medium when it comes to resolution. Microfilm tends to be fuzzy just like computers. People read 25% slower on computers than they do in print. There are also issues with eye strain, and image resolution. This may change with electronic ink, but that is a ways down the pike. The urge to just throw away physical objects abound. There is a boundless enthusiasm for technology.

However, it is a very different experience using different mediums. Reading a physical newspaper is a very different experience than reading an online newspaper. A physical newspaper is a tactile object, a computer screen is not. Alberto Manguel cites Marshall McLuhan's book, The Medium Is the Message to explain this.

Also, the physical space of a library is designed to house books. The architecture of the building resounds with the history of the book. Where I work, we are a Carnegie building, over one hundred years old. Everything in the building says read books here. It is still a very old fashioned place, not very well designed for the physical medium of computers.





I can imagine that many of the European libraries are much older and more suffused with history. However, in our case, this history seems to be willfully forgotten. We have not had a local historian in our building for many years. In the book, The Library At Night, there are numerous illustrations of famous libraries. The pictures of France's national library are quite stunning.

You can see it in the shelving. We still use old solid wood shelving designed so the average man can reach up and take the book off the top shelf and then spread his arms to either side and reach a book from shelving stack on either side. It really does have the feeling of age. We even have the bookends with corkboard on the bottom so they won't slip.

Being a Carnegie building is being part of the history and memory of the great men philosophy. This has not ended. The Gates Foundation has donated many of our computers to use. They are doing this as part of the extension of cultural memory. They want to be known for creating opportunities for the common person to expand their horizons. Gates is essentially building on the memory of Carnegie. I wish this would extend beyond adding computers to our collection.

We house a local history collection in our library. We have not had a local historian for some time now. It was originally a position appointed by the city. This is not just a problem at our library. The countywide historical collection has been closed for renovation for a while as well. Sometimes, I feel that if I have patience things will improve.

We have made some improvements, but not enough to allow a greater mix between computers and books. Still, people come in mainly to use the computers, and occassionally, they use the wifi connections for wireless internet. More people come in to check out dvds than books.

There is a tremendous amount being said in this book which is quite interesting I am adding my own thoughts to this.

When I thought of shadow, I also thought of the loss of memory. It is so easy to lose material in a library setting. Partially because so much of our material is old. We are the last copy repository for the county. This means everyone sends us what they think is the most important last copy of any book which they have. Sometimes, it can be quite odd to see what people think is important. We have many, many older quality books.

Still because of space, we still have to discard some of these. Libraries don't have unlimited space. Even the Library of Congress in the United States discards things because of space issues. People believe they house everything, they don't. The Library of Congress archives all their newspapers on microfilm discarding the newspapers in print.

Lately, there has been an emphasis on the idea of increasing circulation. We would like to improve our circulation statistics. I can understand this. However, there has to be a balance between culture and popular material. Many of the best books are never printed as popular books. The library where I work rarely purchases things like Darley Archive Press books http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/, or Black Sparrow Books http://www.blacksparrowbooks.com/index.asp. It is very hard to find quality literature works in a bookstore or public library.





We here a lot about the paperless society. Somehow, technology is going to replace paper. People still want to read physical books. Ebooks have not become the rage. Physical books are still far more popular. What has happened is that the library has ceased to be a place for books. It has become something else. There is a divide between the palace of words or memory and the newer media center ideal. The sense of cultural identity in the library has fractured.

People have lost the sense of relevance of the library as a place of cultural memory. They come not for things which deepen the sense of a "Palace of Memory", but for immediate satisfaction. In a sense, it is becoming a media circus. Every format of media is getting equal space, dvds, cds, and computers are being added to the mix. Reading is not being viewed as essential. This is one of the reasons for the incredible drop in literacy in the United States.
http://www.nea.gov/news/news07/TRNR.html

Libraries were not created as places of entertainment, they were created for self-education. This is the essential element that is missing from many of the libraries which people are stepping into today. There is a loss of the idea that the library is important as an institution which preserves community. Culture improves attention and memory.





Because of the loss of focus, libraries are becoming a shadow of what they formerly were. The idea of self improvement for all classes is losing its hold in American culture. It does not sell a product or entertain people. We need a push for renewed interest in literacy.

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The Library At Night by Alberto Manguel is a quite interesting book. It is an eclectic history of libraries. There is a lot of unique content which I think you will not find anywhere else.

The book has a wonderful eccentricity to it that comes from the feeling that you get of the author being an erudite self taught scholar. There are sections on Chinese libraries, Arabic libraries, French libraries, Roman libraries, and other places. Quite a bit of the information is historical.

I touched on several points which he makes in the earlier section of this post. This book is broken into fifteen essays, so it is not completely chronological, it jumps back and forth through time and space.

The author describes the personal library which he had constructed for himself on his property. The way he describes his personal library is rather entertaining. He likes to sit and read in his library at night.

He also describes the history of bibliographic organization. It is rather interesting, people arranged books, alphabetically, by subject, by country by color, by size, by number, and other stranger arrangements. He correctly points out that every arranagement in some ways is arbitrary. Melville Dewey is covered as well.

There is a bit of history of nazi book burning, as well as a tiny bit on Adolf Hitler's library. It is quite intriguing in points.

I really liked when he described Jorge Louis Borges becoming the national librarian of Argentina even though he had gone blind. Borges ran the national library for 18 years. I really like Borges writing. The writing in The Library At Night, even though it is nonfiction, seems to draw a bit from the magical realist style.

The book has black and white photographs throughout. The photographs are mostly historical. Some are quite intriguing, The Mahogany Library Steps at Althorp, the Domesday Book In Sections, Warburg's Mnemosyne Panels, the Donkey Libraries of Columbia, and many other pictures.

There is an index, acknowledgement, notes, and image credits. I have one of the authors other works, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places which is quite fun to read. This book is c2008, Yale University Press. It is definitely scholarly in nature. However, the writing is not dry at all.

To Read or Not To Read-- NEA Study

The United States Library of Congress

This is a commentary on the NEA-- National Endowment for the arts study, To Read or Not To Read, A Question of National Consequence, http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf . This is an incredible study, it shows that American reading and writing skills are declining in every category. People are losing their interest in literature in general. If you want to think of it this way on the web, not a single keyword in the top ten lists of keywords includes books or literature. Movies and music, but not books.

We are in essence creating our own Fahrenheit 451 by turning away from the habit of reading. As people buy less books, they become less of a commodity and they lose their importance in our minds. This study says even if we are reading, 35% of the time we are distracted by something else, the computer, music, email, the telephone, or any of another plethora of available media. We live in a distractive instant gratification environment which reinforces itself.

Teens are not reading, they are watching television, listening to music, or using one of a million different devices to fill their time, the ipod, the iphone, the pager, the portable psp play station, or the portable computer. When they come into where I am working, they head in to sign up for the computers, mostly to do "graphical research", look for images, anime, cartoons, drawings, or music, very rarely for books. And if they are at the library, a lot of the time, they are not there to get books, they are there to get videos, talk to their friends, or get on the computer. Reading is an assigned habit focused on reading the classics which many of them find dull, complicated, and harrowing. I can see the statistic that half of Americans don't read for pleasure writ clear every day I come in to work.

It is mostly the older Americans who are coming to us to get reading materials for pleasure, the middle aged and the teenagers don't do it so much. And those who do come up to talk to us, often talk about the large amount of books they have in the home. The more books they have, the more prosperous they often are.

In the study, there is a lot of material on how those who have a lot of books in the home do well in school, move up into management, are more likely to be involved in civic activities, and are more likely to succeed in life. This does not just reflect in America, it reflects in our place in the world.

Finland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden all have higher reading scores. This may translate into being more competitive in the international marketplace because quite simply they are better able to use the tools given to them. In my opinion, if Americans don't address the central issue of education for competence in reading and wrting we will lose out in the end.

Our prisons are filling with illiterates. There are far more people in prison who are illiterate than on the outside. It must be manly to not read books.

On a most important note, employers consider reading and writing to be essential skills in the workplace. 93% of employers consider the ability to read and write critical. They seem to be looking for the ability to write with clarity and accuracy to be very important.

When people read less it impacts my profession badly. We are partially funded by circulation statistics, how much people use and read material. So, if you are in a library take that book out when you go home.

The more people that use our libraries, the more money we get. This creates a downward spiral with less funding for libraries as people read less. Will they go to a bookstore instead? Even the bookstores seem to be carrying less reading material and is diversifying into other products, audio books, videos, and software. The bookstore is becoming a media center.

This is a personal example. I used to go to Forbidden Planet in Manhattan to look at science fiction books. They had rows and rows of science fiction boks. Now, they have one book case full of science fiction books, have introduced video games, increased the amount of Manga, a foreign import, and expanded their action figures. People aren't reading the fantasy and science fiction books they were once known for so they had to change considerably.

Even in places where there is a successful bookstore, they are not focusing on literature necessarily, they are focusing on tie-ins, a further sign of distraction. You go see Harry Potter, buy the book by J.K. Rowling, visit the web site, and maybe even listend to the sound track. Media is now a complete package where you have to listen, concentrate, and read. A bookstore is a business, at least that is the way we normally think of it. However, this is changing. A lot of bookstores are folding.

Many of the surviving bookstores are becoming nonprofits and inviting in other forms of entertainment. Nkiru books in Brooklyn, New York for example, an African American bookstore changed into Nkiru cultural center. Housing Works, one of the most successful used bookstores in Manhattan uses its proceeds to help homeless people with AIDS-- Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. It takes donations and sells them. It is a really high quality bookstore. I have seen other bookstores starting to change their status to nonprofit.

So what is happening with those young adults who are not reading, how are they making it through the school system. They can now listen to their assignment, plenty of them come in requesting the complete audiobook of Lord of the Flies, or if they really can't be bothered and can't understand Hamlet, they rent the video instead of reading the book. Reading is a difficult skill for a lot of people.

Less than a third of American teenagers are reading daily. This is problematic. I like to think that as an adult people will at least read the morning paper each day, or listen to someone reading it to them.

We need to do something. I think part of that something comes from the world wide web. People are turning to the internet to do a lot of their writing and reading. The study mentions newspapers losing ground to the internet. The study states the internet is less formal, less edited, and less linear than newspapers. In a way, I approve of this. My grammar is far from perfect, and I do have quite a bit to say. If blogs weren not available, I would not be able to say it to you.

Also people are turning to places where they can talk about themselves like myspace.com, there are over 98 million myspace.com pages a huge amount of writing and reading if you think of it. Also facebook.com has over 17 million pages. The internet is a giant collaborative open book. It gives people an opportunity to express themselves that simply wasn't there before, like I am expressing myself now.

I think the internet is quietly generating a new generation of readers. We can see it in the explosion of interest in urban fiction which comes from the street from people who you normally don't think of as readers and writers. It is violent, full of sex, drugs, and darkness in many ways, but it creates new readers. With the availabiliity of the internet and computers, it opened whole new opportunities for people who would not normally be reading. I can see the hunger for many people who want to read Zane, Noir, Omar Tyree, Chunichi, and other urban fiction writers.

There is a real renaissance in African American writing and reading. This site http://www.aalbc.com/, has grown tremendously since one of my colleagues saw it at Book Expo America in 2005.

People want reading, they just want it to be relevant to their experience. I think a lot of publishers are out of touch and are not producing material that jibes with every day American experiences. I will probably take the time to read "A Free Life" by Ha Jin, because it looks like it reverbates with the American experience. America is becoming a more diverse society. Publishers are just beginning to wake up to change. We are starting to see change with more international writers becoming available in American like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Isabel Allende, and Jonathan Carroll who has an amazing personal website http://www.jonathancarroll.com/ .

Also we are seeing a real explosion of poetry. Poetry in print from small presses has just exploded in availability because it is so easy to print books. It is also a form of free expression which takes well to the web. I was at a workshop, Poetry In the Branches, and the presenter said that were five times as many poetry books being printed as there were ten years ago.

We can now print exactly what people want when they want it. Maybe, bookstores and libraries need to be a little more flexible in how they get books to people. With companies like http://www.lightningsource.com/ , it is possible to print books just in time and on demand. We are not far from a future where books become instant as well. Instabook http://www.instabook.net/web/content.php?content.5 . This will change things considerably. It will lead to a different place and job for books and reading in the world.

Maybe we can reverse this trend. I am not quite sure how, but it needs to be done to keep Americans educated, employed, and free.

This is my daily rant. How did this start? I went to my library and found my library card was expired and I needed to go back the next day to renew it so I could take out some books. I found an article about To Read or Not To Read and decided I should look at the study and comment on it instead of going in to the library and getting a book to read. Sometimes, a little bit of the busman's holiday can be bit overwhelming. After all, this study has a chance to have a real impact on me.

I took a walk to my local library again today, but found it was closed. I guess, I should have called beforehand. Tomorrow is Turkey Day, so it will be closed. The walk was very nice though. It gave me a chance to stretch my legs. I always liked walking better than driving.

I went back again to my library at around three o'clock, it was open. I got a new library card, paid a few dollars in fines, and went and sat down at the free computers for an hour. It is kind of funny sitting there acting like a library patron. I also picked up four books to look at: The Alton Gift by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross, The Atomic Bazaar, The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche, a graphic novel called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and The Bonehunters A Tale of the Malanzan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. I have not started reading any of them yet. I might start tonight. Signing off and wishing you well for now.