Doesn’t it make you feel warm and fuzzy inside just seeing the cover? (Amazon.com)

I love my girlhood copy of Anne of Green Gables — the spine is broken, the cover torn, the chapters dog-eared, and the pages stained an ochre-brown from who knows what. It’s seen better days, as have most of the books in my home library. I’m not a pack rat, but when it comes to books, I still have all of my Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears favorites, not to mention copies of Highlights and Ranger Rick magazines dating back to October 1990. As you can imagine, the books have taken over my home, but when my mom suggested getting rid of some books to make room for more recent acquisitions, I stubbornly refused.

But, while I may not have to part with my copies of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and The Giving Tree just yet, university and public libraries can’t ignore the problems presented by the sheer quantity of books. Some libraries have found the solution in new software that helps them select unpopular books to discard. Books that haven’t been checked out for 2 years, go the way of the typewriter. But this technology has people concerned that the local library will be transformed into the local Barnes & Noble, eliminating the shelves of hidden treasures in favor of a collection of the last 50 years of New York Times best sellers.

University libraries have found a better answer in virtual space — a place whose dimensions are boundless and where texts will be safe from all the elements — earth, wind, fire, coffee spills, even over-zealous highlighting. Digital libraries like Project Gutenberg and JSTOR have given us free access to thousands of electronic texts. And this is just the beginning — there are countless digitization projects in progress all over the Web, including Google’s 30-million-volume effort. And here’s another growing trend: cell phone novels, read in short installments via text messages. And for once, Penn’s not that far behind. Our own library, which adds approximately 110,000 volumes to its collection each year, went digital several years ago by launching the Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image, a digital library featuring scanned images of rare books and manuscripts.

Now, as a poor college student — and an English major, no less — I could easily sing the praises of free e-Books. But let me close by saying something on behalf of good, old-fashioned reading. As NPR linguist Geoff Nunberg puts it, there’s just something about curling up with a good book — something about reverting back to the fetal position, oblivious to the outside world, maybe with a glass of warmed milk. So while you might forego adding The History of the Peloponnesian War to your library, leave some room on your shelves for a few personal favorites.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 1st, 2007 at 4:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.