Thursday, September 10, 2009

Are libraries (and books) endangered species?

Here's an interesting speech about how one headmaster wants to evolve a school library. He talks a bit about books and their history, imagining here we're still in 1439, when manuscripts were copied by hand:

I want to tell you about this wonderful scriptorium that we have at Cushing Academy in 1439. We have scribes working full time to illuminate and copy the central texts of western civilization, especially Aristotle. We now have a remarkable library collection of 200 manuscripts, of which we are justly boastful. Now, I just learned some guy named Gutenberg claims to have perfected a method of movable type, which he thinks is the next big thing. I’m skeptical. I don’t see how this is ever going to replace the beautiful illuminated scripts that we have. So much of value will be lost if we move to these ugly, nondescript, black and white, uniform looking things called printed books. It surely will never compete with the aesthetic value of illuminated vellum. Compared to the human, personal expression of handwritten texts, where’s the individualization in printed copies? Also, these books are not going to be safe for society, because we won’t be able to control information from getting into the hands of troublemakers and even well-intentioned people who can’t handle it responsibly.

Read the rest...

1 comment:

i, chihuahua said...

what a mind trip! clearly the dissemination of information will continue to evolve.

however, i like the story of a headmaster contemplating the impact of the gutenberg press (fiction) over the article where school authorities get rid of all the books in the library in favor of digital mediums (fact).