“Why would a library that has served its constituents well for nearly a thousand years need to become, as you say, ‘wired’?” He was imagining the priceless books of his beloved library—the objects that soothed and stimulated and educated him, that connected him to scores of generations past and that he believed would connect him to generations yet to come—replaced by blinking lights and metal boxes and flickering screens. It was a horrific vision.
“But who are your constituents?” said Bethany.
“Our constituents have been everyone from monks learning how to raise sheep to priests writing sermons to students studying history—”
“Sure, in the past, but Gwyn said almost nobody uses the library these days.”
“I do,” said Arthur.
“Is that really an efficient use of resources?” said Bethany. “An entire library for one reader? In the digital world, anybody on the planet could be your constituent. And it works both ways. Let me ask you this—what’s keeping you from finishing your guide to the cathedral?”
“To be honest, it’s the dearth of information on our founder. She was a Saxon saint called Ewolda. We know she founded a monastery here and we know she was martyred sometime before the early eighth century, but that’s about all we—”
“OK, imagine this scenario,” said Bethany, interrupting excitedly. “There is a manuscript at, say, the Huntington Library. That’s in California. And this manuscript contains information about your St. Ewolda. Now, in the old days you would first have to stumble upon the knowledge that such a manuscript existed and that there was a mention of your saint in it. Then, with no safe or cheap way to copy a medieval manuscript, you would have to fly halfway around the world and examine the manuscript in person. When this project I’m working on is done, you’ll type ‘Ewolda’ into a search engine, in two seconds it will tell you that she is mentioned in a manuscript at the Huntington and you’ll click a link and go directly to a high-resolution image of the passage in question. You can’t tell me that’s not a better way to do research.”
Arthur could feel himself being drawn over to the dark side. “I’d love to go to the Huntington,” he said at last. “Would I rather go on an exciting journey, visit an amazing museum, work in a beautiful reading room where I might meet other scholars, and get to feel and see and smell the manuscript that holds the key to my research; or would I like to sit alone in my study with a computer screen? It’s an easy choice for me.”
“Yes, but you’re saying research should be elitist. That only people with lots of spare time who can afford to fly around the world deserve to have access to information.”
“Point well scored,” said Arthur. He was enjoying this.
“You asked why your library should become wired. It’s not just so you can access information; it’s so you can share information. After all, the purpose of a library is to disseminate information,” said Bethany.
“Is it?” said Arthur. “I have always felt that the definition of a library in the Oxford English Dictionary was a rather good one. ‘A public institution or establishment, charged with the care of a collection of books, and the duty of rendering the books accessible to those who require them.’”
“Yes, but at the moment nobody seems to require the cathedral’s books.”
“At the moment,” said Arthur, “but let me tell you a story. When I was working on my graduate thesis, I needed to consult a copy of a catalog from an exhibit held in Paris in 1875. There was no copy in the Bodleian or the British Library, and when I rang the Bibliothèque National de France, they didn’t have a copy either. So I started making the rounds of the college libraries in Oxford, just in case one might turn up, and, to my great delight, I discovered there was a copy where I should have looked first, in my very own college library. Now, Lazarus keeps excellent circulation records, and when I checked the book out, the librarian, who was of course a friend of mine, informed me that I was the first to do so since it was acquired in 1875. I laughed and said to him, ‘Who on earth do you suppose they bought it for?’ and without pausing a second to think he said, in all seriousness, ‘Why, Arthur, they bought it for you.’ That’s the point of a library. A book that no one wants to read today may be essential for someone in the future. So we save them, we protect them.”
“But don’t you think,” said Bethany, “that libraries should be more proactive in getting the books into the hands of . . . what did you call them, ‘those who require them’? A book shouldn’t have to wait around a hundred years for a reader to take interest and a reader shouldn’t have to stumble around from library to library hoping to find the book he needs. Libraries exist for the active sharing of information.”
“Libraries exist to preserve culture,” said Arthur.
“But we are preserving culture.” said Bethany. “By scanning texts, we remove the danger of fire or flood or bugs or careless readers or theft. Books are safe online.”
“Let’s assume for a moment your statement is true, even though clearly the Internet is much more susceptible to bugs and viruses and power outages than the Barchester Cathedral Library.”
“In other words, you’re not assuming it’s true.”
“Right. Perhaps I should have said let’s set aside that obviously incorrect statement. Would you rather look at a work of art online or in a museum?”
“Does the museum have a good café and a nice gift shop?”
“Say yes, for the sake of argument.”
“And you do love a good argument. It’s the first thing Gwyn told me about you.”
“Guilty,” said Arthur.
“Obviously I’d rather look at art in a museum. I’d rather see the original. In that case, there is so much you can’t discern in a reproduction—the texture of the paint and the way a sculpture changes in different light. But text is text, no matter where I read it.”
“Yes, text is text, but that’s not the same as saying books are books whether physical or digital.”
“Isn’t it?”
“A library is like an art museum where you’re allowed to touch the paintings and embrace the sculpture, run your fingers across every brushstroke and chisel mark.”
“OK, I admit, I would love that museum.”
“In my nondigital world I can feel the smoothness of vellum, the softness of well-worn rag paper, the crispness of a new novel printed on acid-free stock so fresh the pages still stick together at the edges until I wet my thumb to turn the leaf over. What about that thrill of taking a new trade paperback and fanning out the pages—seeing the entire book at once. Can you do that with a digital file? And the smell. Blindfold me and I’ll tell you more about a book from its smell than you could ever tell from a computer. How old it is, where it’s spent those years, how often it’s been read—the smell of a book can tell you more than you think.”
This speech left Bethany silent for a change, staring at her empty glass. Arthur hoped she was thinking about what he said, not envisioning some fresh digital hell. Computers smelled so . . . lifeless.
“You make some good points,” said Bethany at last. “But still, why not let the two technologies live side by side, each doing what it does best? What happened to make you hate the digital world so much?”
“Why did something have to happen?”