Library Juice 7:17 - August 13, 2004
Contents:
1. Links...
2. DOJ publications withdrawal - ALA Council discussion
3. The Library: Its Past and Future (Guido Biagi, 1904)
Quote for the week:
"Both Catholic and Anglican hold the city by the throat, and mould the
habits and opinions of the people of Toronto. No book or lecture can
have any success that does not have the stamp of approval of the churches.
Perhaps you will understand the whole situation when I tell you that
the librarian of the public library ... declared: 'No, we do not
censor books, we simply do not get them.' He certainly spoke the truth."- Emma Goldman, quoted in A Book in Hand Is Worth Two in the Library:
Quotations on Books and Librarianship, by Les Harding (McFarland, 1994)
Homepage of the week: Gene Hyde
http://www.radford.edu/~wehyde/_________________________________________________________________________top
1. Links...
-----
Five ways to fight over-reaching copyright law
Stay Free! Magazine, issue 20
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/take-action.html[ From Carrie McLaren to her subscribers ]
-----
"ALA welcomes Department of Justice decision to rescind destruction
request." American Library Association. 2004.
http://www.ala.org/ala/pr2004/august2004/DOJGovDOcs.htm[ from Karen Muller to the JESSE list ]
-----
Tell Congress to Restore Reader Privacy Today!
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/ifissues/issuesrelatedlinks/alapetition.pdf[ from Don Wood to ALA member forum ]
-----
From more than 4,500 sources, just a dozen account for most Google News
stories?
http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/MT/archives/000442.html[ sent to me by Dan Mitchel ]
-----
The devil you don't know: The unexpected future of Open Access publishing
by Joseph J. Esposito
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_8/esposito/[ from Edward J. Valauskas to multiple recipients ]
-----
An Exploration of Information Access in Cuba
by Dana Lubow
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/cuba/researchdelegations2.html[ from Dana Lubow to the SRRT list ]
-----
:::::: AD COUNCIL SPOT, "LIBRARY" ::::::
http://boss.streamos.com/real/adcouncil/cff/cff_tv_church_30_rp_v2.smi?siteid=adcouncil
The key fiction: The American government doesn't monitor libraries
and arrest people based on what they read.The reality: San Francisco Chronicle: Santa Cruz libraries warn
patrons that the government may monitor borrowing practices.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/03/10/MN14634.DTL
CBS News: Statistics on how many libraries the FBI has contacted
since the Patriot Act went into effect.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/21/national/main554924.shtml[ from Carrie McLaren to Stay Free! readers ]
-----
I Love You, Madame Librarian
By Kurt Vonnegut
In These Times, August 6, 2004
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/i_love_you_madame_librarian/[ sent by a nameless subscriber to PLGnet-L ]
-----
Library Romance:
collecting true stories of people who fell in love in a library, for an
upcoming book...
http://www.libraryromance.com/[ sent to me by Madeleine Lefebvre ]
-----
Copyleft, la alternativa radical al copyright
La Clave, No. 173, 6 de agosto de 2004
Por: Adolfo Estalella
http://www.laclave.com/sumario.php3
http://www.procomun.net/modules.php[ sent by Zapopan Martin Muela Meza to ALAWORLD ]
-----
Why is Scholastic, the World's Largest Supplier of Children's Books, giving
a Venue to the "Dark Side?"
by John F. Borowski
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0812-11.htm[ sent by Sally Driscoll to the SRRT list ]
_________________________________________________________________________top
2. DOJ publications withdrawal - ALA Council discussion
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-alacoun[at]ala.org [mailto:owner-alacoun[at]ala.org]
On Behalf Of Bernadine Abbott Hoduski
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 1:23 AM
To: ALA Council List
Subject: [ALACOUN:12840] DOJ publications withdrawalHi members of Council, executive board, Washington Office staff, Keith,
GODORT and COL,I want to thank everyone for taking the withdrawal of the DOJ documents
seriously and acting so promptly in addressing the issues. Hopefully
working together we can draft language that will permanently address this
issue. It has been of concern to the documents community since the 1960s
and will continue to be of concern. Perhaps we can finally get an appeal
process in writing that can not be ignored by government agencies. This
is a good example of how Council can be effective in addressing issues in
time to make a difference. Bernadine Abbott Hoduski, Councilor at large----------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: Margolis, Bernard A.
To: ber[at]initco.net ; ALA Council List
Cc: Brennan, Deirdre M. ; Fithian, Gail J. ; Margolis, Bernard A.
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 2004 7:00 AM
Subject: RE: [ALACOUN:12840] DOJ publications withdrawalDear Bernadine,
1. Based on my information from news reporters many depositories did
in fact destroy the 5 documents!2. Most libraries did not have in place a process to deal with the
SuDox request to destroy.3. Few libraries had policy or procedures in place for the public to
access these items while institutional discussions might have been occurring
regarding their status.4. Few libraries have policies refusing to destroy the items as an
option. This would mean conformity would require sending them back to SuDox.We need a comprehensive guideline for these matters. The guidelines need to
provide options for civil disobedience as appropriate and necessary. Can
we learn from this one situation so we are stronger when the next request
comes?! Are the proper committees at work in this area and is more help
needed?Bernie Margolis
----------------------------------------------------------
[ALACOUN:12843] Re: DOJ publications withdrawal
From: "Bernadine Abbott Hoduski" <ber[at]initco.net>
To: ALA Council List <alacoun[at]ala.org>
CC: "John A. Stevenson" <varken[at]udel.edu>
Date: Yesterday 07:23:09 pmDear Bernie,
I agree that we need a several pronged approach to the problem. We need
guidelines for internal library response to the withdrawal request. We
need a spelled out appeal process in the law and in government procedures.
GPO does have a process in place. It would be good to get a briefing on
exactly what GPO does when they get such a request. In this instance, I
do not think that the request was sent to the oversight committee the
Joint Committee on Printing for review and intercession. Since the library
community has been slow to contest these types of recalls, working level
staff may not have informed higher level staff in time for such an appeal
to JCP before issuing a recall order.I believe that such requests for the
last 20 or 30 years need to be reviewed and that information used to
formulate a bill and procedures for both government and library staff.Too often librarians, unlike yourself, tend to just do what the government
tells them to do. There was a mixed response from depository librarians.
Some destroyed the docs immediately, others put them aside until they got
a formal letter or knew more about the request. Others copies them and
returned them. Others had copies that were not depository copies and did
not discard them. We need a surevey as to what actions are taken by
librarians when they get such a request.As we know the role of citizens is to question government to make sure tha
its staff follow the laws and the constitution. If we do not do that,
government believes they can do whatever they want. Librarians need to
understand the depository law in all its aspects, including the right to
appeal to the oversight congressional committees, as well as other laws
that apply such as FOIA. Only then can librarians understand their option
in protecting the public.I understand that the COL Government Information Committee and GODORT are
already starting to pull together information for a draft bill and
procedures.I am sure that our GODORT Councilor will share your valuable suggestions
with GODORT. I hope that other councilors will get their divisions, round
tables and other constituencies educated about the seriousness of this
issue and its long term implications. It is not just a GODORT and Council
issue.Thank you Bernie for being courageous in standing up for your users and
sharing your advice with the library community.Bernadine Abbott Hoduski,
ALA Councilor at large----------------------------------------------------------
[ALACOUN:12846] Re: DOJ publications withdrawal
From: "Cathy Hartman" <CHARTMAN[at]library.unt.edu>
To: ALA Council List <alacoun[at]ala.org>
CC: <varken[at]udel.edu>, <godort-leg[at]unt.edu>
Date: Today 07:56:26 amOne additional piece of information for libraries that did destroy the DOJ
publications, GPO has set up a Web page at
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/tools/webclaim-doj.html for those
libraries to request replacement copies of the publications.GODORT has begun discussions with several groups related to developing an
appeals process. I am forwarding relevant messages posted here to the
group working on this topic. If you have ideas or suggestions for us,
please let me know. I will be happy to forward messages on to GODORT.Cathy Hartman
GODORT Councilor
_________________________________________________________________________top
3. The Library: Its Past and Future
By Guido Biagi, Director Royal Laurentian Library, Florence, Italy
A talk given at the ALA Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, 1904
The first founders of public libraries having been Italians, it will
perhaps be neither strange nor unfitting that an Italian, the custodian of
one of the most ancient and valued book-collections in the world, should
speak to you of their past. He may, however, appear presumptuous in that
he will speak to you also of their future, thus posing as an exponent of
those anticipations which are now fashionable. It is in truth a curious
desire that urges us and tempts us to guess at the future, to discover the
signs of what it will bring us, in certain characteristics of the present
moment. It answers to a want in human nature which knows not how to
resign itself to limitations of the present, but would look beyond it into
time and space.
This looking forward toward the future is no selfish sentiment; it springs
from the desire not to dissipate our powers in vain attempts, but to
prepare new and useful material for the work of the future, so that those
who come after us may move forward without hindrance or perturbation,
without being obliged to overturn and destroy, before they can build up
anew. Thus does it happen in nature; huge secular trunks flourish and
grow green by luxuriant offshoots which add new vigor of life to the old
and glorious stock.
We may perhaps discover the secret of the future of the library by looking
back over its past, by attentively studying the varying phases through
which it has passed in its upward path towards a splendid goal of wisdom
and civilization. By thus doing we may prepare precious material for its
future development and trace with security the line of its onward
movement. It is of supreme importance that humanity in general, as the
individual in particular, know whither its efforts must be directed, that
there may be no straying from the straight path. We are sailors on a vast
sea bound toward a shore we known not of; when we approach it, it vanishes
like a mirage from before our eyes. But we have as guides the stars which
have already ruled our destinies, while before us flames, on the distant
horizon, that light of the Idea towards which our ships and our hearts
move eagerly. Let us stand firm at the helm and not despise the counsels
of some old pilot who may perhaps seem faint-hearted to young and eager
souls. He who is hurried along by the excitement of the course, by the
impetuosity of the motion, finds neither time nor place to look back and
to meditate, which is necessary that he may look foward with sharper and
calmer gaze. Modern life among the young and more venturesome peoples is
a giddy race. They run, they annihilate the space before them, they press
onward, ever onward, with irresistable impetus, but we cannot always say
that this headlong course leads straight to the goal. We are not sure,
even, that it may not sometimes be running in a circle, a retracing of
their steps. In mechanics a free wheel turning upon itself and moving no
machinery is so much lost power. Let us beware of free wheels which
consume without producing, which give the illusion of movement whilst they
still remain stationary. Modern civilization bears within itself a great
danger: the endeavor which loses the end by a misuse of the means, and
which though busy is ever idle - idle, yet never at rest. It may be,
therefore, that a momentary return to the past with all that it can teach
will be useful to all of us.
Progress has rightly been compared to a continual ascent. Modern man sees
before him ever vaster horizons; the eye of science discovers in the
infinitely distant and in the infinitely small ever new worlds whether of
suns or of bacteria. In the same way do conceptions and ideas ever widen
and tend to a more comprehensive generalization. All the march of
civilization, both material and moral, consists in rising from a single
primordial idea to another more complex and so on to the highest
scientific abstractions. Woe to science if it stops short in the course
of this evolution; its reputation would be injured beyond repair. In
material things, the fate of certain words shows us the great advance that
that has been made: the words are the same but the things they represent
are very different. We still give the name of Casa (Capsa, that is, hut)
to our splendid dwellings, which have here among you reached their highest
point of development in your sky-scrapers; we still give to the great
trans-atlantic steamers, floating cities, the name of boats, which was
once applied to the first rude canoes of the troglodites. The first
function of the Casa and of the boat still remains, but how differently
are the details carried out. So also, the book, the liber, whose
etymology is preserved in the word library, was anciently the inner part
of the tree (liber) on which men used to write, and which is now
unfortunately again used in the making of paper, no longer obtained from
rags but from wood pulp. The libraries of Assyria and Egypt, those for
instance of Assur-Bani-Pal and of Rameses I., consisted of clay tablets,
of inscribed stones, or of papyrus rolls; the libraries of Greece, those
of the Ptolemies and of the kings of Pergamus, the libraries of Rome,
first opened to public use by the efforts of Asinius Pollio; the Byzantine
libraries, which arose within Christian churches or in monasteries; and
lastly, the rich and splendid collections made at great expense by the
patrons, by the builders, of the culture of the Renaissance - all these,
compared with the modern libraries, of which the most perfect specimens
may be found in this land, are like an ancient trireme beside a twin-screw
steamer. And the essential difference between the ancient and the modern
library, between the conception of a library as it existed up to the times
of Frederic, Duke of Urbino and of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and that existing
in the minds of Thomas Bodley, or Antonio Magliabecchi, is to be found in
the different objects represented by the same word, liber.
A study of the fate of this word would lead us step by step through the
varying forms of the library, from those containing clay tablets, from
those filled with rolls covered with cuneiform characters, to the codices
brilliant with the art of Oderisi da Bobbio, splendid with gold and
miniatures, to the first block books, to the printed books of Fust and
Schoeffer, and of Aldo Manuzio, of William Caxton, and of Christopher
Plantin.
The invention of printing caused a great revolution in the world of books.
The new art was, as we well know, received at first with scorn and
indifference. The incunabula were but rough, vulgar things as compared
with the beautiful manuscripts clearly written on carefully prepared
parchment, and glittering with brilliant colors. They were fit at most to
be used by the masses -- by women, by children, to be sold at fairs, to be
put into the hands of cheap-jacks and charlatans; but they were quite
unfitted for the valuable collections guarded with so much care in
perfumed cases carved with damask or with the softest of leathers, made
from the skins of sucking animals. We can easily understand that
fastidious art patrons such as the Duke of Urbino should scorn this new
form of book, and should proclaim it unworthy of a place in a respectable
library. But this tempest of scorn gradually subsided before the
advantages which the new invention offered and before the marvellous
progress it made. It sought, moreover, the favor of the miniaturists by
leaving, in the margins of the new codices, sufficient space for
ornamentations and for initials of burnished gold; it sought the favor and
the help of the learned Humanists by employing them to revise and correct
the texts; it won the favor of the studious and of clerks, who have at all
times been poor, by spreading abroad the texts of the classics, by
offering for a few half-pence that which could at first be obtained only
with gold or silver florins, by imparting to all that which had been the
privilege of the few. And we must not forget the help given to typography
by the invention of the minor arts, calcography and xylography, which
added new value to the pages of the no longer despised book; so that
printed codices (codices impressi) might stand side by side with the
manuscript codices (codices manuscripti).
The word, the sign of the thought, first took on visible form with the
invention of the alphabet. But other ways of revealing thought were to be
discovered in the future. No one in the ancient world, no one before the
very culminating point of the Renaissance, could have supposed it possible
that a library might contain anything but manuscripts; just as we, to-day,
are incapable of imagining a library containing anything but books. We
have seen that the conception of the book underwent expansion, when
printed books were added to those written by hand; and in the same way,
the library underwent expansion, gradually rising, between the fifteenth
and twentieth centuries, from a simple collection of codices, to the vast
and wonderful proportions it has at present reached, assuming the duty of
receiving within itself any kind of graphic representation of human
thought, from clay tablets and inscribed stones and papyrus rolls, to
phototypes and monotype or linotype products, from books for the blind
written in Braille alphabet to the new manuscripts of the typewriters.
From this brief compendium of bibliographical history one essential feature
emerges. As though directed by an unswerving law, by the law of
reproduction, human thought feels the necessity of expanding, and of
multiplying and perpetuating itself; and it is ever searching for new
means of carrying out this intent. Thus the copyist or the scribe is
replaced by the compositor, the miniaturist by the engraver, the
draughtsman by the lithographer, the painter by the color-printer, the
engraver by the photographer and zincographer; thus the machine replaces
the hand of man -- the machine which is only concerned with working
quickly, with producing as many copies as possible with diminished effort,
with snatching her secrets from Mother Nature herself. We have replaced
the note tironiane of the Roman scribes by the typewriter, the wax
tablets by the pages of the stenographer; for drawing and painting we have
substituted photography and three-color printing; wireless telegraphy has
taken the place of messages sent by the post-horses.
And not content with these singular and wondrous modes of reproducing
graphically the thought and word, we have found another means of
reproduction still more stupendous in the immediateness of its action.
Sound, the human voice, whose accents have hitherto been lost, may now be
preserved and repeated and produced like other graphic signs of thought.
When the graphophone was first invented, we little thought that the
cylinders upon which the vibrations of the voice had traced so slight and
delicate an impression, would ever be reproduced as simply as, by
electrotyping, we reproduce a page of movable characters. Neither have we
yet, or I am much mistaken, grasped the whole of the practical utility
which the graphophone may have it its further applications and
improvements. Up to the present time the graphophone has been kept as a
plaything in the drawing rooms or in the bars, to reproduce the last
roulades of some well-known singer, the bangings of some military band, or
the pretended uproar of some stormy meeting. At the present day, the
librarian would probably refuse to receive within his library this
faithful reproducer of the human voice, just as Frederic, Duke of Urbino,
banished from his collection the first examples of printed books. But
without posing as a prophet or the son or a prophet, we may surely assert
that every library will before long contain a hall in which the discs of
the graphophone may be heard (as already is the case at the Brera in
Milan), and shelves for the preservation of the discs, just as the
libraries of Assyria preserved clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform
characters. This is a new form of book, strange at first sight, but in
reality simply a return to ancient precedents, yet a return which marks
the upward movement of progress.
An Italian Jesuit, Saverio Bettinelli, undertook toward the middle of the
eighteenth century to give laws to Italian writers. He produced certain
letters which he assumed Virgil to have written from the Elysian fields to
the Arcadia at Rome. In two of these twelve tablets which he put forth
under the names of Homer, Pindar, Anachreon, Virgil, Horace, Propertius,
Dante, Petrarch and Ariosto, in the poetical meetings held in Elysium, he
laid down as a rule: "Let there be written in large letters on the doors
of all public libraries: 'You will be ignorant of almost everything which
is within these doors, or you will live three centuries to read half of
it;' and a little further on: 'Let a new city be made whose streets,
squares and houses shall contain only books. Let the man who wishes to
study go and live there for as long as may be needful; otherwise printed
matter will soon leave no place for the goods, for the food, of the
inhabitants of our towns.'"
This anticipation, which dates from 1758, still seems an exaggeration; but
I know not whether a century and a half hence, posterity will think it so,
so great is the development of the industries, the successionof ever new
inventions for preserving any graphic representation of human thought.
Not even the life of Methuselah would be long enough to read as much as
the tenth part of all that a modern library contains; and I know no
whether we could invent a more terrible punishment than to insist upon
this for our criminal. How many repetitions of the same ideas, how much
superfluity, how many scientific works cancelled and rendered useless and
condemned to perpetual oblivion by those which succeeded them. By
welcoming everything, without discrimination, the modern library has lost
its ancient and true character. No longer can we inscribe over its
entrance the ancient motto, "Medicine for souls:" few indeed of the books
would have any salutary influence on body or on mind. Now that the
conception of books and of library has been so enormously expanded, now
that the library has become the city of paper, however printed, and of any
other material fitted to receive the graphic representation of human
thought, it will become more and more necessary to classify the enormous
amount of material, to separate it into various categories. The laws of
demography, whatever they may be, must be extended also to books: they may
be, must be extended also to books: the dead must be divided from the
living, the sick from the sound, the bad from the good, the rich from the
poor; and cemeteries must be prepared for all those stereotyped editions
of school books, of catechisms, or railway time-tables, for all that
endless luggage of printed paper has only the form of a book and has
nothing to do with thought. Sanatoria must be provided for books
condemned to uselessness because already infected with error or already
eaten away with old age, and the most conspicuous places much be set apart
for books worthy to be preserved from oblivion and from the ravages of
time, either on account of the importance of their contents or of the
beauty of their appearance. In this great Republic of books, the princes
will stand high above the countless mass, and an aristocracy of the best
will be formed which will be the true library within the library.
But even this will not have the exclusive character of the ancient library.
It will receive divers and strange forms of books: next to parpyrus of
Oxyrinchos, with an unknown fragment of Sappho, may be placed a parchment
illuminated by Nestore Lenoi or by Attilio Formilli, a graphophone disc
containing Theodore Roosevelt's latest speech or a scene from "Othello"
given by Tommaso Salvini, the heliotype reproductions of the Medicean
Virgil, or some phrases written on palm leaves by the last survivor of a
band of cannibals. The great abundance of modern production will render
even more rare and more valuable ancient examples of the book; just as the
progress of industrialism has enhanced the value of work produced by the
hand of man.
Thought as it develops is undergoing the same transformation which has
occurred in manual labor: mental work also has assumed a certain
mechanical character visible in formalism, in imitation, in the influence
of the school or of the surroundings. Industrialism has made its way into
science, literature and art, giving rise to work which is hybrid,
mediocre, without any originality, and destined therefore soon to perish.
The parasites of thought flourish at the expense of the greater talents,
and they will constitute, alas, the larger part of future bibliographical
production. The greatest difficulty of future librarians will be to
recognize and classify these hybrid productions, in choosing from among
the great mass, the few books worthy of a place apart.
The appraisal of literature, which has already been discussed in books and
congresses, will continue to increase in importance; and in this work of
discrimination we shall need the aid of critics to read for other men and
to light up the path for those who shall come after. "The records of the
best that has been thought and done in the world," said George Iles, "grow
in volume and value every hour. Speed the day when they may be hospitably
proffered to every human soul, the chaff winnowed from the wheat, the gold
divided from the clay."
One of the special characteristics of the library of the future will be
co-operation, and internationalism applied to the division of labor. We
may already see premonitory symptoms of this in the "Catalogue of
scientific literature" now being compiled by the Royal Society of London,
in the Concilium Bibliographicum of Zurich, in the Institut de
Bibliographie of Brussels, and in the card catalog printed and distributed
by the Library of Congress at Washington. This co-operation, however,
will have to be more widely extended and must assert itself not only by
exchanges of cards and of indices but also by means of the lending of
books and manuscripts, of the reproductions of codices or of rare and
precious works. The government libraries of Italy are united under the
same rules and correspond with all institutions of public instruction and
with several town and provincial libraries, with free postage; so that
books and manuscripts journey from one end to the other of the peninsular,
from Palermo to Venice, without any expense to those who use them, and the
different libraries of the state become, in this way, one single library.
And so the day will come when the libraries of Europe and of America and
all of the states in the Postal Union will form, as it were, one single
collection, and the old books, printed when America was but a myth, will
enter new worlds bearing with them to far off students the benefit of
their ancient wisdom. The electric post of the airships will have then
shortened distances, the telephone will make it possible to hear at
Melbourne a graphophone disc asked for, a few minutes earlier, from the
British Museum. There will be few readers, but an infinite number of
hearers, who will listen from their own homes o the spoken paper, to the
spoken book. University students will listen to their lectures while they
lie in bed, and, as now with us, will not know their professors even by
sight. Writing will be a lost art. Professors of paleography and keepers
of manuscripts will perhaps have to learn to accustom their eye to the
ancient alphabets. Autographs will be as rare as palimpsests are now.
Books will no longer be read, they will be listened to; and then only will
be fulfulled Mark Pattison's famous saying, "The librarian who reads is
lost."
But even if the graphophone does not produce so profound a transformation
as to cause the alphabet to become extinct and effect an injury to culture
itself; even if, as we hope will be the case, the book retains its place
of honor, and instruction through the eyes be not replaced by that through
the ears (in which case printed books would be kept for the exclusive
benefit of the deaf); still these discs, now so much derided, will form a
very large part of the future library. The art of oratory, of drama, of
music and of poetry, the study of languages, the present pronunciation of
language and dialects, will find faithful means of reproduction in these
humble discs. Imagine, if we could hear in this place to-day the voice of
Lincoln or Garibaldi, of Victor Hugo or of Shelley, just as you might hear
the clear winged words of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the moving voice of
Eleonore Duse or the drawling words of Mark Twain. Imagine, the miracle
of being able to call up again, the powerful eloquence of your political
champions, or the heroes of our patriotic struggles; of being able to
listen to the music of certain verses, the wailing of certain laments, the
joy that breaks out in certain cries of the soul: the winged word would
seem to raise itself once more into the air as at the instant when it came
forth, living, from the breast, to play upon our sensibilities, to stir up
our hearts. It is not to be believed that men will willingly lose this
benefit, the benefit of uniting to the words the actual voices of those
who are, and will no longer be, and that they should not desire that those
whose presence has left us should at least speak among us. We may also
believe that certain forms of art, such as the novel and the drama, will
prefer the phonetic to the graphic reproduction, or at least a union of
the two. And the same may be said of poetry, which will find in modern
authors its surest reciters, its most eloquent interpreters. The oratory
of the law-court and of the parliament, that of the pulpit and of the
cathédra, will not be able to withstand the enticement of being preserved
and handed on to posterity, to which their triumphs have hitherto sent
down a but a weak uncertain echo. "Non omnis moriar;" so will think the
orator and the dramatic or lyric artist; and the libraries will cherish
these witnesses to art and to life, as they now collect play-bills and
lawyers' briefs.
But internationalism and co-operation will save the future library from the
danger of losing altogether its true character by becoming, as it were, a
deposit of memories or of embalmbed residua of life, among which the
librarian must walk like a bearer of the dead. The time will come when,
if these mortuary cities of dead books are not to multiply indefinitely,
we must invoke the authority of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, and proceed to
the burning of vanities. A return to ancient methods will be a means of
instruction, and those centenary libraries which have preserved their
proper character, which have not undergone hurtful augmentations, which
have reserved themselves for books and manuscripts alone, which have
disdained all the ultra-modern rubbish which has neither the form nor the
name of book, these libraries will be saluted as monuments worthy of
veneration. And then some patron who from being a multi-millionaire, as
was his far-off ancestor, will have become at least a multi-billionaire,
will provide here in America for the founding of libraries, not of
manuscripts, which will no longer be for sale, but of reproduction of
codices in black or in colors; and we shall have libraries of facsimiles
most useful for the study of the classics, just as we now have museums of
casts for the study of the plastic arts.
The application of photography and of photogravure to the reproduction of
texts which are unique rather than rare, makes it possible for us not only
to have several examples of a precious codex or manuscript, but to fix the
invisible deterioration which began in it at a certain date so that, as
regards its state of preservation, the facsimile represents an anterior
stage to the future state of the original. By thus wonderfully
forecasting the future these reproductions render less disastrous the
effects of a fire such as that which lately destroyed the library of
Turin. They have therefore found great favor among students and have
excited the attention of the most enlightened governments. If the means
for carrying on what have hitherto been but isolated efforts do not fail,
if generous donors and institutions and governments do not deny their aid,
we might already begin a methodical work of reproduction, and come to an
agreement concerning the method of fulfilling a vast design which should
comprehend all the most precious archetypes of the various libraries in
the world, those which are the documents of the history of human thought
and which are the letters-patent of the nobility of an ancient greatness.
This, I think, would, nay, should, be the most serious and principal duty
assumed by the library of the future: to preserve these treasures of the
past while hoping that the present and the future may add to them new ones
worthy of public veneration. Think how vast a field of work: to seek
through all nations the autographs or archetypes to which have been
entrusted the thought of great men of every age and of every race, and to
explain them so as to render them accessible to modern readers. Thus
should we form the true library of the nations, which, with the
facsimiles, would bring together the critical editions of their authors
and the translations and the texts made for the explanations of the works.
But the first and most urgent duty would be that of making an inventory,
an index, of what should constitute this collection; and, first of all, we
should know and search out such authors as may have influenced the history
of the human race by their works in all times and among all peoples; and
we should have to find the venerable codices which have handed on to us
the light of their intellect, the beating of their hearts. Every nation
which is careful of its own glory should begin this list, just as we are
now beginning that of the monuments of marble or of stone which have value
as works of art. We should thus begin to prepare the precious material to
be reproduced, while at the same time it would be possible to calculate
the expense needed for carrying out the magnificent design. The Belgian
government has appointed a congress to meet at Liège next year for this
purpose, but its programs are too extended; for they take in also the
documents in archives and in museums. More opportune and more practical
would be an inquiry affecting libraries alone and beginning with oriental
and classical authors, with those who represent the wisdom of the
ancients. Thus the library of to-day would gradually prepare its work for
the future library, which will surely want something more than the
editions, however innumerable, supplied to it by the bibliographical
production of the years to come.
Internationalism will also be able to render great service to science, in
the field of photo-mechanic reproductions, if it find a way of directing
them to some useful goal, and if it prevent them from taking a merely
material advantage of the precious collections which every nation is
justified in guarding with jealous care. Photography with the prism,
which has no need of the plate or of the film, coasts so little and is so
easy of execution, especially if the process of the late Mlle. Pellechet
be adopted, that one can in a few hours carry away from a library the
facsimile of an entire manuscript. No doubt many learned men of the new
style find it more convneient to have these collections at their own
house, instead of wandering from one library to another to collect them a
the expense of their eyes, their patience and their money. To be able to
compare the various texts and to have the various readings of them under
one's eye is an inestimable benefit; but the true philologist will never
be contented with simply studying these facsimiles, however perfect they
may be; he will want to examine for himself the ancient parchments, the
time-yellowed papers, to study the slight differences between the inks,
the varieties in the handwritings, the evanescent glosses in the margins.
In the same way an art critic is not content with confining his study
simply to the photographs of pictures, but he observes the pictures
themselves, their patina, their coloring, their shadows, their least
gradations of tones and half-tones. In the same way, too, a musician
would not presume to the knowledge of an opera which he had only studied
in a pianoforte arrangement. If this manner of shunning fatigue took
root, our splendid collections of manuscripts would no longer be the goal
of learned pilgrims, but would become the easy prey of the photographer,
who would certainly embark upon a new speculation: that of retailing these
collections to the manifest injury of the libraries and of the states
which would thus lose the exclusive literary and artistic possession of
what is a national glory. Meanwhile a just jurisdiction will avoid these
dangers without injuring or hindering studies and culture. We shall adopt
for manuscripts, which excite other people's desires, the proposition made
by Aristophanes in the Ecclesiazuse (that charming satire on Socialism)
to bridle the excesses of free love. We shall permit a man to have a copy
of a manuscript when he has first had one of another and older manuscript
and when the latter, which is about equal in value to the first, has
already been given up to the library, which will thus lose none of its
property. *"Do ut des,"* "I give to make you give," base and foundation
of international treatises for customs duties, must be applied also in a
reasonable manner to the intellectual traffic that will be the
characteristic of future civilization, which will never permit one nation
to grow poor while another grows rich, and will insist that wealth be the
bearer of equality and fruitful in good. A well regulated metabolism, as
it ensures the health of our organic bodies, will also serve to maintain
the health of that great social body, which we all desire and foresee,
notwithstanding political struggles and the wars which still stain the
earth with blood. When the time comes in which we shall be able to use
for ideal aims the millions which are now swallowed up by engines of war,
of ruin and of assault, the library will be looked upon as the temple of
wisdom, and to it will be turned far more than at present the unceasing
care of governmnets and of peoples. When that time comes, the book will
be able to say to the cannon, with more truth than Quasimodo to Notre Dame
de Paris, *"ceci a tué cela,"* and it will have killed Death with all her
fatal instruments.
But another and more important aspect of scientific internationalism which
will preserve the library of the future from becoming a bazaar of social
life, will be the importation of the most wholesome fruits of ancient
wisdom collected with wonderful learning by the great scholars of the 17th
and 18th centuries, hitherto looked upon by experimental science with
disdain, was collected with laborious detail all the learning of past
centuries, that of the Holy Books, of the Oriental world, that which the
Fathers of the Church and after them the Arabs, and later on the
Encyclopaedists of the Middle Ages, and then the astrologists and the
alchemists and the natural philosophers, condensed into encylopaedias,
into chronicles, into treatises, into all that congeries of writings which
formed the libraries of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance, into that
infinite number of printed books which still fill the ancient and
classical libraries of Europe with voluminous folios and quartos. The
desire of classifying and bringing into line all human knowledge, of
reading this immense amount of material and gaining a thorough knowledge
of it, armed those first solemn scholars with patience, formred those
legendary librarians who, like Antonio Magliabecchi or Francesco Marucelli
themselves, were living libraries. The Latin anagram of the celebrated
founder of the Florentine Library, Antonius Magliabechi, is well knwon:
*"Is unus bibliotheca magna;"* but it may be, and at that time also could
be equally applied to others. These devourers of books were the first
inventors and asserters of the scientific importnace of a card catalog,
because armed with cards they passed days and nights in pressing from the
old books the juice of wisdom and of knowledge and in collecting and
condensing it in their miscellanies, in those vast bibliographical
collections compared with which the catalog of the British Museum is the
work of a novice. They not only appraised the known literature of their
time, but they classified it; not by such a classification as we make now,
contenting ourselves with the title of the book, but by an internal and
perfect classification, analyzing every page and keeping record of the
volume, of the paragraph, of the line. The skeleton of the encyclopaedia,
of the scientific dictionary, which at the end of the 18th century
underwent in France a literary development, may be found within these
bibliographical collections now forgotten and banished to the highest
shelves of our libraries. Any one who has looked through and studied one
of these collections as I have done, has wondered at the treasures of
information, of learning, of bibliographical exactitude contained in those
dusty volumes. Above all, the precision of the references and of the
quotations, the comprehensiveness of the subjects and of the headings,
render them, rather than a precious catalog, an enormous encyclopedia, to
which we may have recourse not only for history, for geography, for
literature, for moral sciences, but also, impossible as it may seem, for
natural sciences, for medicine and for the exact sciences.
In the library of the future, classified on the Decimal system, or Cutter's
expansive, every section should contain a sheaf of cards on which should
be collected, arranged, verified and even translated this ancient
material, which may thrown light on new studies and on new experiments;
for the empirical methods of our forefathers, like tradition and legend,
have a basis of truth which is not to be despised. Meanwhile the modern
library, which in this land prospers and exults in a youth strong and full
of promise, should collect this material and thus spare the students at
your universities the long researches needed to assimilate the ancient
literature of every subject. The modern library, the American library,
would not need to acquire and accumulate with great expense all the
ancient mass of human knowledge in order to make use of the work of past
generations; it need only collect the extract of this work, opportunely
chosen, sifted, classified and translated. This would be an immense
advantage to its scholars, and the internationalism of science, of whose
certain advent I have spoken to you, would find in this first exchange, in
this fertile importation, its immediate application. Why should students
and specialists be sent to begin new researches in learned and dusty
volumes, when this wokr has been already done by the great champions of
erudition in their miscellanies, in their bibliographical encyclopaedias?
Let us rather try to spread abroad a knowledge of this treasure, this well
of science; let us publish information about it; let us draw largely from
its pure and health-giving waters. You will not be without guides who
will lead you to it, who can and will give you to drink of its fresh
waters. Thus shall these noble and solitary spirits who worked unknown in
the dark of the 17th century and in the wan 18th century, be joined, by an
invisible chain, to the vigorous intellects which, in the last century and
in that upon which we have just entered, are working, are toiling, in the
diffused light of civilization, and will continue to work and will
continue to toil for Science, for Humanity.
And the card, the humble card, the winged arrow of the librarian and of the
student, will fly from continent to continent, a messenger of knowledge
and of concord.
_________________________________________________________________________top
L I B R A R Y J U I C E
ISSN 1544-9378
| http://libr.org/Juice/
|
| Library Juice is supported by a voluntary subscription
| fee of $10 per year, variable based on ability and
| desire to pay. You may send a check payable in US funds
| to Rory Litwin, at 1821 'O' St. Apt. 9, Sacramento, CA 95814,
| or, alternatively, you may use PayPal, by going to:
| https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=rlitwin%40earthlink.net
|
| You can also support Library Juice and Libr.org by buying our
| wonderful swag at http://www.cafeshops.com/libr
|
| To subscribe or unsubscribe, email Juice-subscriptions[at]libr.org
| with a request worded in plain english and "Subscribe" or
| "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. Tell me what's up!
|
| Library Juice is a free weekly publication edited and
| published by Rory Litwin. Original senders are credited
| wherever possible; opinions are theirs. If you are the
| author of some email in Library Juice which you want removed
| from the web, please write to me and I will remove it.
|
| Copyright to material in Library Juice should be considered
| to belong to the original authors unless otherwise stated.
| Works by Rory Litwin may be used freely for non-commercial
| purposes with appropriate attribution.
|
| Your comments and suggestions are welcome.
|
| rlitwin[at]earthlink.net