Processing Post: Idiosyncratic and Unorthodox Libraries
This week’s readings offered new and fun ways for me to approach the topic of libraries, namely their organization. To begin, the trip to the Morgan Library proved very helpful to this week’s readings because like the libraries discussed, we were able to view the thoughts/interests of Pierpont Morgan in the form of his personal collection; he becomes increasingly present with each book browsed, with each painting absorbed.
From the Perec piece, the reader gathers that books within a library should be thought of as assembled, not dispersed; people can bring a wide array of categories to bear upon the organization of their collected materials. Yet, despite the use of different categorizations, Perec wants to remind us that with or without disorder, “bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms.” Looking around my room now, there’s a particular stack of books that’s functioning as a display piece for a jar of loose change. Though this Perec reading wasn’t nearly as engaging as “Think/Classify,” it nonetheless served as a foundation for the reconsideration of what it means to be a library, what it means to choose placement, what it means to assign importance.
Far more whimsical and stimulating this week was definitely the words written by Alberto Manguel. From his “distant astrologer” metaphor to his more religious-sounding statements on our books and their effects on “judgment,” Manguel offers his readers a perspective on the library as a place that is simultaneously alive, intimate, spiritual, and fragmented. How amazing would it be to organize a library based on how much your imagination was expanded, was exercised after reading a particular book, how alive the words became after reading them? However as Manguel warns, “Neither the solid library on my shelves nor the shifting one of memory holds absolute power for long.” Libraries are geared towards motion, inspiring and imitating exploration as exemplified by the Warburg and Prelinger libraries. And while the Prelinger interview offered a ton of interesting insight into their organization methods, what stood out the most was their emphasis on the creative tension created by their arrangements, not competition.
Thanks, Michael. I’m glad you enjoyed that “distant astrologer” metaphor, too 🙂 “Reading” (as one would read a palm, or the stars) *any* of these authors’ libraries (or even Morgan’s library, as you point out) would reveal, as Manguel says, the “configuration in [their] mind[s].” What’s more, the significance or meaning of Perec’s, Warburg’s and Prelinger’s libraries all derive from the *associations* between items in the collection.