Good bye, serendipity.
Just this month I unpacked my late father-in-law's set of World Book Encyclopedias and put them on my home bookshelf, creating a row of slightly worn red and gold books. I'm not sure the publication date of this set, but I guess they pre-date the moon landing.
That is fine; out of date doesn't mean inaccurate - I'm pretty sure "The Odyssey" is still attributed to Homer (whomever he or she might have been) and Micheangelo still gets credit for the statue of David. It was these types of basic facts that made encyclopedias indispensable in every middle class home when I was growing up.
I know my own parents went on a payment plan to buy our own set of Colliers, and boy, was that money well-spent! I and my three siblings spent countless hours pouring through the pages of the dozen or so volumes working on history, biology, and English reports.
But I also found them a source of entertainment as well. As a young comic book fan, I soon made the link between superhero and the mythological heroes and monsters of old. So while exporting the connection between the Flash and Hermes,I would also find myself stumbling across something else interesting in a nearby entry - maybe the Hermitage next to Hermes, and off I would go and soon find myself in the midst of the War of 1812.
Library shelves worked the same sort of serendipity, especially given the quirky (to the layman, at least) nature of the Dewey Decimal System. How many times I have plucked a volume from the shelf above or below mt intended book and thought, " hey, I've heard of this book - maybe I'll give ia a try."
It's that sort of exploration that will come to an end when the story linked below becomes common place, and that will be a great loss indeed.
San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries
No comments:
Post a Comment