Bibliocide

Imagine a future where reading is unknown, where sentence structure is continually punctuated with the words "like" and "you know," where memorization skills are reduced to knowing which button to push. Difficult to picture? Just look around; it's happening right now.

There can be little argument that the widespread availability of cheap, mass produced books and periodicals in the late nineteenth century led to the formation of the most literate populace the world has ever seen. In a culture without distractions, reading became a popular, cheap form of amusement which was fostered by the rise of the lending library. Free circulation of literature and texts truly made the public library the "people's university." Sure, plenty of people were reading crap like "Deadwood Dick," but at least they were reading.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, where distractions in hand-held toys sap young minds of memorization powers, and libraries jettison books like a sinking ship throwing cargo overboard. Slowly young people are losing the ability to spend extended time periods perusing text, and the library has forsaken its primary purpose as a repository of those texts. So eager to appear "relevant," Biblioposers are touting eBooks as some sort of panacea that will reawaken the reading ethic among knuckle-dragging internet junkies. "Makerspaces" are taking the place of book shelving to allow library patrons the opportunity to hotwire garage door openers and produce effigies of Jennifer Lawrence on 3D printers. More and more floor space is devoted to screens and keyboards. As more Biblioposers pursue this tack, books become the victims, and have become the only thing with a spine in the whole library.

Archives must step forward to rescue the codex before it becomes extinct. Perhaps the future does not hold a populace that will resemble H. G. Wells' Eloi, or the drones who feature in the recent (and widely ignored) film Idiocracy. If so, they will be happy we rescued these under-appreciated artifacts; if not, at least they will be on hand to demonstrate to whatever alien race visits our planet a thousand years from now that a few brave souls tried to stem the tide of mass book murder. As it looks now, those brave souls will be archivists, and not librarians.

Buyer Be Aware!

In the quest to procure new and exciting research collections for their patrons, archivists often go to great lengths. Having an excruciatingly boring tea with the Daughters of the American Revolution, singing loudly off key at a Rotary luncheon, or even attending a politically charged local meeting of “Fanatics in Search of a Cause,” are all ways archivists have sacrificed their comfort zone and even their sanity to butter up potential donors. Another source for good archival stuff can be found in online auctions, either the highbrow ones where astronaut patches get hawked next to Lincoln signatures, or the more commonplace eBay, a giant, never-ending garage sale of items classified ridiculous to sublime.

The problem with eBay is the use by some savvy buyers of “sniping” software that allows them to come in literally at the last second to dash your acquisition dreams to smithereens. But perhaps there are more sinister dangers from this online auction powerhouse. Suppose the Information Scientists, in their desire to stamp out all resistance from analog information lovers, decide to entrap our archival brethren with offerings that are not quite the same thing as advertised? Even Biblioposers could get into the act, exacting revenge from archives as they come to realize that we will, indeed, inherit the earth (as far as books go.) Bottom line: double check that auction listing description! There could be danger in the mailbox!