Incidental Synthesis

windofderange:

erstwhiletexan:

humansofnewyork:

“I’m a rare book librarian. I get to touch books every single day. My colleague and I have a joke that we are Defenders of Wonder. A physical book assigns a sense of reverence to the content inside. It’s the same feeling you get when you look at a painting or hear a piece of music. And I think that’s something worth defending. And just like a book gives reverence to it’s content, I think the library gives reverence to books. The building itself is a masterpiece. So many famous thinkers have come here to study and write. Just being here connects you to that lineage.”

#I have mixed feeling about this because it’s a lovely sentiment #but it comes a little too close for comfort to being a whiny old school ideology about the importance of physical books #I love paper copies and think books are beautiful and smell nice #but I’m sick of that being an either/or conversation with digital #misanthropic librarian aesthetic (via relenafanel)

See, I read this and I just get mad. Because it is true that there is something special about old books and rare books, some unique property of awe, compounded by being in a historical space—believe me, I know this. I spent my first master’s degree gently caressing unique medieval manuscripts in the goddamn Bodleian Library. There IS a sense of reverence inherit in being in a certain space, from looking at and touching books and paintings in person.

But the way this is phrased here makes it seem like you CAN’T get that sense from digital media—from an ebook or a digital painting or a work of fanfiction or fanart. And that is just bullshit. I feel no less moved by or reverent of the content of a novel when I read it on my iPad than when I read it in a print book. If something moves me, it is not the content’s medium itself. It’s the content. And no, it’s not the same physical experience, but it can be an equally powerful emotional response. And just because you’re experiencing a piece of literature or a piece of art on a digital screen in your bedroom doesn’t invalidate the feelings that arise from that moment. Neither does simply sitting in a historical space, reading a novel in print make an experience more valid.

LET ME STAND ON THE ROOF TOP AND SING THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE: LIKE WHAT YOU LIKE. CONSUME MEDIA HOWEVER YOU WANT TO. YOUR EMOTIONAL RESPONSES ARE VALID AND IMPORTANT NO MATTER WHAT MEDIUM EVOKES THEM.

Reblogging because erstwhiletexan is my One True Librarian.

(via windofderange)