Sophistication or Bibliomania?

In a time where sophistication wasn’t measured by the size of one’s flat-screen television or the apps on a smart-phone, the library was where one proved one’s merit. In my travels, the library of the Festetics Castle in Keszthely, Hungary mesmerized me and put my own personal library to shame.

This library, as you can see from our video, is two stories high, with volumes across genres, across languages, and from across time. The detailed, dark woodwork and marble floors lend grandeur to the words protected on these bookcases. My only complaint was that these dusty manuscripts weren’t accessible to the literary tourist, but I could understand the desire for preservation.

My favorite room had a hidden door covertly concealed within the shelves. This was a library overflowing with stories, and surely not all of these tales were those written upon pages.

In 2010, those among us who treasure and build our collections of tomes might just be considered hoarders. There’s even a psychological disorder for those addicted to collecting books: bibliomania. But there’s something about the collection of books that can never be matched by a “library” on a Kindle. There’s something nostalgic and magnificent, something we as writers understand more than anyone else.

Am I alone in my ardor?

Google and Bookswim Aren't Enough

Netflix will send movies to your door, so that you can avoid that pesky drive across town to the video rental store. With the appearance of Bookswim, that same convenience can be delivered in book form. Who wants to peruse shelves full of imagination and possibility at a local library, search out hidden mysteries, or mess with the Dewey Decimal system anyway? (Speak up now, bibliophiles!)

Perhaps I am a voice in the minority here in the twenty-first century, but I love libraries. I have since I was a child and my mother took my brother and me to find our summer reading list books. Posters of Winner the Pooh and The Cat and the Hat pulled me into a world of wonder that I still feel every time I walk in those familiar doors.

But here we are in 2010, and Bookswim isn’t nearly our only issue. State budgets are in crisis, and hard decisions need to be made. Libraries, with their dusty, relaxed, modest ways, are becoming easy targets of elimination.

The cozy, intriguing aspects of libraries are important, true, but the loss of that facet is not the worst problem at hand. Students are no longer learning to sift through research, to peruse others’ ideas, to evaluate, to analyze, to make up their own minds. Why not? I’ll give you a one word answer. Google. I am a huge fan of Google, myself. I fully admit this. However, if internet search engines become society’s only research tool, superficial knowledge and amateur scholars will be the norm.

Losing local libraries means losing a valuable resource for bookworms and lovers of the written word, but we aren’t the ones who will stop reading. Literacy, curiosity, and analysis skills of future generations will be the casualties.

For that reason, while Bookswim has its appeal, I will stay true to my local library. You should all do the same.