Old Books
Today I went to the Archives and Rare Books section of the library I work in, and got to view a lot of very old books. It was shocking just how old the books were, some dating to the 1400s. I’ve always thought it was a strange job, to take care of very old things, but in a way, it seems like it could be very exciting. We look forward to the future, hoping interesting things will happen to us, but if you only look backwards, then you know you’ll find interesting things, because the world has been a very interesting place in the last several hundred years.
The other thing it brought up in my mind was just how difficult it must be to archive things. The first thought that came to me, having been fed technology since birth, was that it should all be online. But think how difficult that would truly be. Imagine how much the electronic world has changed in the past 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. Those rare books have been through hundreds of years of changing technology, and are still totally usable and readable. A 5 1/4″ disk from 10 years ago doesn’t work anywhere. Its dead to us. When you deal in a medium that must stand the true test of time, it becomes a serious undertaking to try to make it electronic.
0 comments Monday 22 Jul 2002 | Sam | Uncategorized