“The
ideal library is meant for one particular reader,” writes Alberto Manguel in A Reader on Reading Yale University
Press, 2010). “Every reader must feel
that he or she is the chosen one.
Manguel
has a wonderful chapter in his book entitled Towards a Definition of the Ideal Library. I leave you with selected passages from that
chapter:
“The
ideal library holds mainly, but not only, books. It also collects maps, pictures, objects,
music, voices, films, and photographs.
The ideal library is a reading place in the broadest meaning of the
term.
“The
ideal library allows every reader access to the stacks. A reader must be granted the freedom of
chance encounters.
“No
shelf in the ideal library is higher or lower than the reach of the reader’s
arm.
“No
section in the ideal library is conclusive.
“The
ideal library is both secluded and public, intimate and open to social
intercourse, meant for meditation and for dialogue, parsimonious and generous, erudite
and questioning, full of the despair of plenty and the hope of what has not yet
been read.
“The
ideal library holds the promise of every possible book.
“Every
book in the ideal library has its echo in another.
“The
ideal library suggests one continuous text with no discernable beginning and no
foreseeable end.
“In
the ideal library there are no forbidden books and no recommended books.
“The
ideal library symbolizes everything a society stands for. A society depends on its libraries to know
who it is because libraries are society’s memory.
“The
ideal library can grow endlessly without demanding more physical space, and can
offer knowledge of everything without demanding more physical time,. As a beautiful impossibility, the ideal
library exists outside time and outside space.
“The
ideal library both renews and preserves its collection. The ideal library is fluid.
“The
impossible task of every tyrant is to destroy the ideal library.
“The
impossible task of every reader is to rebuild the ideal library.”
Though the author here is talking about one's personal library as well as bigger libraries, Publishers weekly recently reported on a poll showing the public still views the library favorably and that the majority of those 16 and over have utilized a library in the past year. They wrote:
"More than half of all Americans 16 and over used a public library in the past year, either in person or via the Web, according to a survey report on library use released this week by the Pew Research Center. The survey also found that Americans continue to view public libraries as vital to their communities some 77% say that public libraries provide them with the resources they need, and 66% say the closing of their local public library would have a major impact on their community."
Though the author here is talking about one's personal library as well as bigger libraries, Publishers weekly recently reported on a poll showing the public still views the library favorably and that the majority of those 16 and over have utilized a library in the past year. They wrote:
"More than half of all Americans 16 and over used a public library in the past year, either in person or via the Web, according to a survey report on library use released this week by the Pew Research Center. The survey also found that Americans continue to view public libraries as vital to their communities some 77% say that public libraries provide them with the resources they need, and 66% say the closing of their local public library would have a major impact on their community."
“Books
must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
--Henry
David Thoreau (1817-1862)
The
reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past
centuries.
--Rene
Descartes (1596-1650)
The
tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food and a little whisky.
--William
Faulkner (1897-1962)
There
will always be a mob with a torch ready when someone cries, “Burn those books!”
--Henry
Seidel Canby
In
literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
--Andre
Maurois (1885-1967)
In
the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight.
--Ralph
Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Reading
is to the mind, what exercise is to the body.
--Sir
Richard Steele (1672-1729)
Without
words, without writing and without books, these would be no history, there
could be no concept of humanity.
--Hermann
Hesse (1877-1962)
Before
the use of parchment and paper passed to the Romans, they used the thin peel
found between the wood and the bark of trees.
This skinny substance they call liber,
from whence the Latin word liber, a
book, and library and librarian in the European languages, and the French livre for book; but we of northern
origin derive our book from the Danish bog,
the birch-tree, because that being the most plentiful in Denmark was used to
engrave on.
--Isaac
Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature
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