Better Homes and Libraries

I'm a Terry Pratchett fan. Not a big fan; although I've been familiar with his works for years I'd been exposed to several of his books unawares and I'm just now becoming familiar with the effect one of his books had on my developing sense of aesthetic. In the book--I don't remember which one--an early scene takes place in a library, with rows of books stacked across shelves so innumerable they may be quantum entangled with every other row of stacks everywhere in the multiverse. The power the books have is so strong it must be contained, and whispers along bronze chains. Libraries are described as places of supreme power, and this particular library has a collection whose knowledge generates tidal forces that shift reality unpredictably and have turned the local librarian into an orangutan. Undaunted by his transmogrification, he continues to traverse the vastness of his arcane pocket universe.

This was the image that rollicked through my brain when I first entered Memorial Library, and it's the reason that in my mind the musty book dungeon is the only proper library I've ever encountered. I swear the shelving rearranges itself while you're not looking, and the stairs don't always lead to the same floors. A narrow hallway becomes that much more vast when the walls are bookshelves.

The book fetish is understandable amongst a group of people whose profession has long been guardians of those books, from a time when the book and its content were analogous. As that becomes less true, we see a shift towards digital content. Digital content means more freedom as works can iterate faster, can wheel more freely. In a profession obsessed with making information accessible, it seem strange that instantly searchable, broadly available digital documents wouldn't be welcomed. I'd expect them to be met as old friends, or likeminded allies, lionized and glorified in verse and song.

It can't merely be the aesthetic pleasure of creeping through a hallway densely packed with the desecrated corpses of trees, but still, the thought of libraries turning into rec rooms with goofy little furniture and "futuristic" decor that will look hopelessly dated in ten years feels adequately bleak, even as their ability to serve that patron increases.

Maybe my thinly veiled contempt for the masses who become patrons is coloring my vision a little.