An interesting theme, worthy of discussion in our class, is the relationship between public and private libraries, that is to say between centralization and decentralization. Both have their advantages and drawbacks and perhaps their own place in history. Battles believed that “Above all… The needs and tastes of private readers and collectors determines what survives” (31). Particularly in ancient times, the willpower of the individual could supersede the whims, incompetency and fires that accompanied the libraries of the governments and their kings. Of course, privatizing libraries would remove egalitarian access to books but, when only the elites were literate we have to ask ourselves how egalitarian that access was to begin with. Another advantage of decentralized libraries is that they, for obvious reasons, make it much harder to erase a culture and its works. Perhaps it is because of the benefits of private libraries that Bobst’s Fales Collection is made up of works from that endured in tens of private libraries before they were donated and purchased.
Yet nowadays the idea of private libraries containing rare books is looked down upon because they to no allow for public access. While it might be prestigious to own a Gutenberg bible surely the owner will be asked whether he would not be better off donating the book so the public can view it. Truly the public library is now heralded as a center of learning and egalitarian access to books. Yet it and other large centralized bases of knowledge are still vulnerable to some of the same flaws. Biased curation can stifle access and while books are hardly being burned in the streets of the U.S Trump is certainly taking measures to drown out certain voices, by doing things such as forcing the EPA to remove its page on climate change.
There is one major difference between the libraries of Alexandria and the ones we have today: It is the internet. It and digital media make it almost impossible to deny access to information in the same way Shi Haungdi did. Yes countries such as North Korea, China, and, until recently Cuba have ways of blocking ‘dangerous’ information from the common person but, due to how easily we can now copy information these means become impractical and often difficult to enforce. American ‘capitalist’ music, literature and movies used to be smuggled into Cuba on USB sticks where it was then copied and sold.
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