What is a book? A book is knowledge, and knowledge is power. Especially today, when power has become = to being able to find information. Knowledge is at everyone’s fingertips. The key is being able to decipher all those millions and millions of gigabytes, decipher good information from bad information, reasoned information from babbling.
Today I go to my college, to remove books from the library. We are to remove as many books as possible, books not checked out in 10 years, books no longer having pertinent information, books in languages no longer taught at our college, BOOKS. Books books books.
We have a small library to begin with, something like 80,000 volumes. The library “space” is to be turned into a knowledge commons, a cool place to gather for students, with the Writing Lab and other helpful offices within its walls, plus: a coffeehouse.
I am right with the administration on this idea. I worked in a university library for 16 years and saw it evolve from a collector of volumes, to an interpreter of information mostly available online. Still, I love books. If there is anything I have trouble getting rid of, it is a book. An interesting, OLD book is even harder to get rid of. My office is a collection of books. Those by some famous theorist are the most valulable when old.
So this, today, will be a painful task, but also fun in some ways. It’s a treasure hunt. We are allowed to rescue titles that we want to keep back in our Departments. This is going to be a tough task.
I wonder about random musing of shelves in the future, times when you stroll through the shelves and randomly search, then find something wonderful that you never expected to find. What will that be like online? Somehow it just doesn’t “feel” the same to me. Is a relationship with a book you can hold in your hand, the same as a relationship with a gigabyte? That is something my great grandchildren and I will have to figure out.
Doctor Grandma 
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