Library: An Unquiet History

As I approach the end of my two and a half year path through library school, I find myself reflecting back a bit on just what it is I'm doing. There's an unspoken battle going on in libraries today, a battle over where the future lies. In one class, my professor says that libraries will no longer have books in them within ten years. In another, a professor who says books - that is, the codex - will be with us for years and years to come. Such battles have raged before, of course, with progress always being the victor. After all, when is the last time you came across an illuminated manuscript in your trip down to your local public library? Battles was a rare books librarian at Harvard when he wrote this book, and yet despite his obvious show more love for the book as a physical object, I would have to assume that he would smile knowing that information - and the knowledge that can come with it - will be freer and more accessible than ever before. I think that's what librarians, as a profession, want. This book is a fine introductory text, and love letter, to the last moments of libraries as they were, and as such, is a fitting book to read as I try to go out into the library of today, and hope that I can keep in mind how it all came to be. show less

When I started reading ‘Library: An Unquiet History’, my enjoyment suffered from compulsively comparing it to another book on the same topic. [b:The Library at Night|2452483|The Library at Night|Alberto Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328826506s/2452483.jpg|2459677] remains one of my favourite books of all time and a little voice in my head wouldn’t stop commenting, “This author is no Alberto Manguel”. Certainly, I didn’t get the same sense of profound and spiritual library-love from this book as Manguel’s, nor did I feel quite the same kinship. Nonetheless, this book covers ground that [b:The Library at Night|2452483|The Library at Night|Alberto show more Manguel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328826506s/2452483.jpg|2459677] did not and the two take different but equally valid approaches to the history of libraries.

I began to enjoy this book properly when it taught me fascinating things I’d not previously known (which shut up the little voice of comparison). To pick out a few, I hadn’t heard of Jonathan Swift’s ‘Battle of the Books’ and its mockery of ancient vs modern literary endeavours. Nor did I know of Antonio Panizzi, an exiled Italian who transformed the British Library with, inter alia, a ground-breaking cataloguing system and a new reading room, now the centrepiece of the British Museum. I also learned about the agenda behind Dewey’s transformative library innovations, of which his classification system was only one.

The highlight of the book for me, though, was chapter 6, ‘Knowledge on Fire’. Although upsetting, it gave a very powerful overview of book-burning across the ages. Unlike other such accounts I’ve read, it concentrated on the twentieth century. The burning of Louvrain Library during the First and then Second World Wars was a horrifying example I’d never heard of before. I also hadn’t realised that the famous Nazi book-burnings in 1933 were not master-minded by Goebbels. Instead, he encouraged them delightedly once a pro-Nazi student group began the bonfires. I also hadn’t realised that the Nazis kept lists of forbidden books but did not make them public, so the population at large destroyed many of their own books in case they were suspect. This chapter also covers the Bosnian war of the 1990s and the destruction of libraries that took place then, as part of the genocide.

In a way, I think reading ‘Library: An Unquiet History’ reminded me of a useful lesson - no one book is definitive and that is a major reason for libraries to exist. Having read an absolutely fantastic history of libraries in the past is no reason not to read further books on that topic. Even if they aren’t as sublime, they can still provide you with fascinating new knowledge and perspectives. show less

A great topic and title of interest to all bibliophiles that is badly executed. After a strong start, Battles loses focus and fails to present the broad ranges of libraries that exist. The part about Ancient and medieval libraries is readable and fairly complete. Later on, his Anglo-/US-centric approach might not matter to his primary readership and even to more international readers, if Battles had included more of the differentiated types of libraries of the modern world. Besides private, public, church and university libraries mentioned by Battles, there are also working, company, political, union, hobby and poor men's circulating libraries. Battles completely misses the introduction and competition brought by cheap paperbacks as show more well as the non-book-based social services many libraries offer.

Not recommended. show less

A short work, that is less a straight history, but more musings on the library through the ages. Written by a librarian at Widener, it dares to venture into the quiet of the stacks and discover the turmoil that is captured there. Battles discusses how libraries have been at the center of wars both literal and figurative, places where knowledge is secreted and entombed or efficiently spread. Destroying libraries as a means of destroying culture. And the Battle of the Books over what should be placed in the library in the first place: only the best books or the universal library? A fascinating account of the places I love most.

“Like most readers, Kazin believes that the stuff he wants has been lost here, forgotten, discarded – that show more the library is a genezia that offers up its secrets only to the most indefatigable scholars. Of course, someone acquired these yellowing, fading materials; of course, someone retrieved them from the shelves and will return them when the reader is finished. But in the library these assistants hide behind the curtains; the library becomes a stage with a mirror for a backdrop that reflects only the reader and obscures the multifarious origins of the books.” (p. 202)

“The centralization and consolidation of libraries serves the convenience of scholars and princes alike. But great libraries are problematic in times of war, disaster, or decay, for their fate becomes the fate of the literatures they contain. Much of what comes down to us from antiquity survived because it was held in small private libraries tucked away in obscure backwaters of the ancient world, where it was more likely to escape the notice of zealots as well as princes. show less

Michael Battles writes in an engaging, incisive and lucid style, which is good because he covers 2,500 years in less than 300 pages.

Library develops two themes in detail; the accretion and destruction of several grand libraries, and the development of the library in the West. The burning of the library in Alexandria is well known (though Battles paints a much more complex picture than the one we have of barbarians torching the joint), but three great libraries have been destroyed in the past 100 years: The destruction of the Louvain University Library by the Germans (twice- in 1914 by the Imperial Germans and in 1940 by the Nazi Germans), and, in the 1990s, the destruction of the Afghani National Library by the Taliban and the library show more at Vijećnica by the Serbian Nationalist army.

The most terrible and awesome story is the creation of the 100,000 volume library in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. It is profoundly moving and I will leave it to Battles to tell the story to you.

Battles also points out two ironies- the only library we have from ancient times is one that burned (the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum) and one of the greatest discovered treasure troves of ancient MS comes from what the West would call a dump (the geniza from the Cairo synagogue.) One burned and the other passed over because it attracted no attention.

The development of the Western library begins with the accumulation of books by popes and princes, at first open only to family and scholars, and the building of magnificent libraries open to the public (in that the public was welcome to ooh and awe). With the advent of printing the number of books available increased, libraries bulged, and the Western canon became diluted with plays, novels and other “highly seasoned” works. Librarians pondered how to store and retrieve so many books, and what kinds of books it was most meet to store and retrieve. The universal library was born- a large, (usually) free library open to the public, but still with a predisposition to try and move the right kinds of books into readers’ hands.

This is just a brief outline. Matthew Battles has written a detailed and lovely book that packs a wallop. It is of interest to all bibliophiles. show less

Battles offers a history of libraries as the site of violence against books, whether through burning, destruction, censorship, ruthless editing, or innumerable efforts to control their content, classification, and availability to readers. A counternarrative--the preservation of written / printed material--often overlaps, indistinguishably, the disquieting parts of this history.

Many slow bits in the middle, and Battles has a hypnotic tendency to segue from one vignette to another (I often found myself 4-5 paragraphs into a new story before realizing that I couldn't remember who it was about or why we'd moved onto talking about them), but things really pick up speed in the final chapter.

The book is organized more or less show more chronologically--one chapter each for antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the 17th-20th centuries--but mercifully a comprehensive history is not Battles' aim. He picks out and muses on representative ideas, writings, and histories from each era, noting connections across time, space, and seemingly disparate philosophies of the library and what/why it is.

Unsurprisingly (or should it be?) Battles was involved in developing the Digital Public Library of America. I found his continual references to Harvard's Widener Library as "the universal library" irritating, until the last chapter revealed the string of references as a setup for this:

Ultimately, even the universal library is less a true compendium of the totality of human knowledge--less a model of the universe--than simply another kind of ritual representation of the collective wisdom."

I wonder if he's since changed his mind, whether acknowledging the futility of aiming at universality in fact freed him to believe that a project like DPLA could succeed.

Based on his current work--PI at Harvard's MetaLab, Berkman Center Fellow--Battles has likely updated his thinking about digital preservation and the role of libraries since writing Library. Here's a line imagining a role for new [digital] media in cultural heritage:

Perhaps present-day written texts, translated immediately into these evanescent digital media, will be preserved for future generations. But won't those generations be as concerned to preserve the framing data that gloss and illuminate those texts?" (p. 212)

Library was published in 2003; the 10 years since have seen the turnover of many generations, technologically speaking. These days few question the need to preserve digital material, although NDIPP and other organizations still work hard to emphasize the scope of appropriate preservation (e.g. software environments or platforms matter). The past few weeks' NSA revelations seem to have introduced the general public to the concept of metadata and how revealing / dangerous / useful / meaningful it can be. Reading Library at this particular moment makes me wonder if--or know that--we continue to live in dangerous times for the pursuit of knowledge, for the social life of information. show less

It is a mistake that is so commonly made you would think more would be said about it. I speak, of course, of the attempts of library workers to read every book in their libraries. It is its own kind of insanity that comes in waves and leaves your living room awash in beautiful and obscure writings that you will never ever get around to reading. Matthew Battles discusses his experience with such an attempt and makes an intriguing kind of use of it, drawing his reader into the breathing of the Widener Library as the semesters begin and end, and finally leaving us on a shelf in its stacks.

Everyone who works in libraries knows how they live and how we become of them, rather than simply passers by in them. This work that follows the history show more of libraries, by no means a neglected topic, is one that stands out to me because I always feel that I’m not missing anything, that Battles is standing right next to the book I want to read to find out more about The Public Library Movement, or Herculaneum, or the development of parchment or even the multiple theories about the destruction of the library at Alexandria. It is, in many ways, a catalog of histories, without being pedantic or overwhelming or superficial.

My only real complaint about the book is that there is no bibliography as such. He includes his citations in the Notes sections, which is a very enlightening section, but still. I enjoy a good bibliography. show less