Library Card
I had some errands to run in the city yesterday, so as I am often wont to do, I stopped at the New York Public Library on 42nd & Fifth. I never borrow books, though. When you write fantasy novels, there is very little research that can’t be conducted on Wikipedia, and I have more unread books piled up in my house than I know what to do with.
But even so, there’s something about the library, about entering that grand bastion of learning, symbolic of mankind’s struggle to pull ourselves from the muck and become more than animals bent only on eating, sleeping, and mating.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those things.
It’s heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer. No matter who you are, or from what walk of life, you can enter freely and be welcome, enjoy the quiet, the free wi-fi, look at art, and maybe learn something while you’re at it. There are tourists, who are there only to add more pictures to their collections, thus proving to the folks back home that they saw all the places of note in New York City. There are students, tacking away on term papers, and self-employed hipsters using the library as their office. There are crazy people researching their lunacy, and homeless people who come in to use the bathroom.
When the weather isn’t conducive to sitting in the park to write, I like to go up to the Main Reading Room on the third floor. There’s hundreds of seats, well-lit, with outlets to plug in your laptop (or in my case, smartphone). With no distractions, I find I can get a lot more done in the library than anywhere else. I put on something soft on my iPod, like Iron & Wine, and lose myself in whatever story I am telling that day.
But I also have a sense of sadness when I’m in the library, because I see hundreds of people, and so few of them, myself included, ever seem to have a book in their hands. The vast majority work on the free computer terminals or on their laptops. I think of how, in a digital age, you don’t need huge amounts of space to store information. Will there be a need to build such gigantic monuments to learning in the future? Will books even exist in a hundred years? Already, libraries are suffering, as they become less of a priority to taxpayers and philanthropists alike. The libraries close earlier and open later every year, it seems, and you don’t need giant marble pillars to house a computer server.
But the internet isn’t free (unless you go to the library, or a coffee house with free wi-fi), and I fear that if the day comes when libraries are gone and you have to pay to access the information electronically, we will have lost something invaluable in our society: The ability to better yourself through learning, regardless of your financial status.
It was with these thoughts rattling in my head that I left the reading room, shaking my head sadly at the priorities of our society. As I went down the wide marble steps, I saw a huge crowd in the lobby, standing around three enormous TV screens. I was heartened to see so many people there on a Friday afternoon, eager to embrace the library and all it represents. But then I saw what they were doing.
They were playing Guitar Hero.
In the Library.
It may seem a sin; it did to me at that moment, but this was a celebration of the new video game lending program the library has begun, and after reading the Times article about it, I can’t help but support the idea. If it works as hoped, it will drive a whole new generation, which might not otherwise appreciate the library for the precious resource it is, to visit its hallowed halls, even if only to borrow a copy of Grand Theft Auto.
Who knows? While they’re there, maybe they’ll pick up a book.
I think that books will still be of value. They a tangible thing to hold, to feel, to scribble notes on, to claim physically, to smell, to dust off, to pass on.
I personally have a thing against the digital word unless it is a quick article or a blog or something on the short side. Books are patient, will be there, will never have the risk of disappearing in an uber crash, can be read when there is no power, can be lovingly cared for.
If anything people will love libraries simply to wander among the stacks and smell wisdom, to feel it silently moving around them, to see history be present in the crumbling spines and old type.
Yes, it sucks that libraries are failing but I don’t think the digital world will out them. They are too important. Would you still go there and feel the same sense of quiet if the books weren’t there?
Can you tell I am a future librarian?
I’m not worried. Only the technology is changing, Peat. The driving soul of a library – public funded access to knowledge for all – will remain so long as civic minded citizens and government institutions keep doing their part.
The buildings may be smaller and a bit noisier. The stacks of books may be replaced by shelves of Amazon Kindles and Sony Readers. The Microfiche Readers may be replaced by Internet Thin Clients.
But rest assured that the things you love most will remain.
Because now our generation ascends to power, and we won’t let it be lost.
That’s a comforting thought.
*gushes*
Thanks for sharing this. I must go someday…
It’s only a matter of time until Take 2 requests the rights to “The Painted Man: The Video Game”, no doubt.