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> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (con
by fovc 4y ago
> The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
I'd say just get a filing/search system and be happy to have a large antilibrary
- partomniscient 4y agoThe important distinction being that there's a tried and trusted method for sorting information in a printed book library. Not so much for a 'virtual anti-library' inconsistently spread out all over the internet in a multitude of different incompatible formats (e.g. forums, youtube subscriptions, twitter), as well as various 'local' ones like email and the 'todo' list. The value of a library also is largely dependent on being able to find things (or definitively 'not find things') in it quickly and easily.