Lest we get carried away with these notions of librarian organizing power, the limits of this ability must be admitted. First and foremost among the obstacles is the rate of information pouring forth. Knowledge is doubling at the rate of 100 percent every twenty months. “What you know now will be obsolete by Christmas,” claims Frank Ogden.16 Especially with the Internet, the flow of information is overwhelming. The idea that this tidal wave of inundating in- formation (to return to the water metaphor) can be harnessed, captured, and controlled for even a millisecond seems quaint at best. Foolhardy seems a more apt description.
Though librarians have made valiant attempts to treat Internet sites like books—describing and organizing them with controlled vocabulary and structured hierarchies—to date these efforts have met with limited success.
Though technological developments may improve such efforts in the future, for the time being it does not appear that librarians will be able to locate, de- scribe, categorize, and arrange the totality of electronic information.
Some have argued that librarians never have been able to control the flow of printed information because the task of organizing knowledge itself is im- possible. As anyone who has pursued academic study recently knows, belief in a purely rationalistic, ordered universe with universally applicable rules and standards is distinctly out of fashion. One of the only definite laws governing the postmodern academic world is that there are no definite laws. Belief in an overarching reality—one that purports to be the same for everyone regardless
of perspective or personal stance—is no longer accepted on face value. When rationalist thought itself is called into question, belief that any structure can adequately organize knowledge also grows suspect.
If there is nothing absolutely the same for all, how can one organizing principle universally apply? Attempting to organize all of human knowledge into ten categories—or even ten thousand categories—seems a futile, even im- possible task. According to this theory, if every person on earth has a legiti- mate way of viewing and organizing the world, there must be at least that many organizing systems.
Even without calling the process of organizing knowledge into question, it could be argued that libraries never managed the task adequately in the first place. Even the revered Dewey decimal classification system is decided by a committee. After the publication of the fifteenth edition of this national clas- sification standard, the editors solicited criticism so that successive editors could “bring out the perfect book.” Despite their optimism, no future edi- tions have claimed perfection.
And perfect or not, many classification systems are simply too complicated for many libraries. Dewey’s first decimal classification system, published in 1873, was 42 pages long. By 1894 it had grown to 467 pages but was too complicated for many small libraries. An abridged edition of 194 pages was published that year to remedy the problem, but recurring complaints insisted that even the shortened version had become “too detailed and complex for the small collections for which they were intended.” Though most libraries struggle to contain the information on their shelves through some organiza- tional structure, the effort can be daunting. Just like the scrolls heaped into precarious piles, some small and large libraries today manage to maintain
“only a kind of generalized order.”17
Despite these limitations on their ability to organize knowledge, a percep- tion still exists that libraries manage the task well enough. With the “general- ized order” they offer, library users can locate the information they are seeking or stumble upon that which they need but did not know existed.
Linda Weltner believed that having access to the library’s world wisdom was all she needed in life. “As long as I can read, nothing human is beyond my understanding.”18 Anne Lamott extolled the virtues of stumbling upon unknown treasures. She credits her mother with teaching her how to use a li- brary when she was a child. “If you insist on having a destination when you come into a library, you’re shortchanging yourself.” Instead, to find small mir- acles and truth, one must “wander, letting the book take you where it will.”
Lamott poetically described the pleasures that await one who follows this
advice. Finding and reading library books “is like breathing fresh ocean air,”
or eating homegrown tomatoes. In the space between words, in the margins, she found the “juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship.”19
NOTES
1. Brooks, On Paradise Drive, 210.
2. Maxwell, “Seven Deadly Sins,” 42. For more on the chaos of the Internet, see Rosen, Talmud.
3. Roberts, Who We Are Now, 221.
4. Cox, “Market as God.”
5. Tolzmann et al., Memory of Mankind, 30, 31.
6. Battles, Library, 6.
7. Dewey, Abridged Classification, 14.
8. Morris, “Theological Librarianship.”
9. Brisco, “Dewey or Dalton?” 36–37.
10. Battles, Library, 25, 28.
11. Ibid., 104, 142.
12. Bostwick, American Public Library, 181.
13. Battles, Library, 139.
14. Ibid., 6.
15. Ibid., 131.
16. As quoted in Sapp, Brief History, 203.
17. Battles, Library, 28.
18. As quoted in Griliches, Library, 51.
19. Lamott, Plan B, 142–43.
ibetan monks are required to spend one week sleeping in a cemetery. Christians must put ashes on their foreheads once a year to re- mind them that they are but dust.
Jews annually recite in unison the most horrific list of disasters that could possibly befall them. Religions force these rituals upon their adher- ents because of the inherent ten- dency in all of us to forget our mor- tality. As theologian Harvey Cox noted, by ensconcing themselves into gated communities and pur- chasing expensive health insurance policies and retirement plans, people fool themselves into thinking they are beyond mortal danger; even so, disaster can strike at any moment.1
Often it takes a life-threatening illness or other tragedy to awaken the fragility of life. A woman who worked with cancer survivors came to see the world divided into two kinds of people: those who have been in contact with their own fragility and those who have not.
Those who face death squarely in the face never leave the experience un- changed.
Religion is vital in helping people confront their mortality. For some an everlasting heaven triumphing over
48
Librarians and
Libraries Bestow
Immortality
T
Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t come to yours.
—Attributed to Yogi Berra
I don’t want to gain immortality through my work; I want to gain immortality through not dying.
—Woody Allen
the finality of life is imagined and embraced. Other religions offer faith, works, and grace as hoped-for avenues to everlasting life. Still others imagine their good deeds on earth and loved ones’ memories granting them eternal satisfaction.
Along with these religious paths to immortality, secular pathways also lead to an imagined life beyond life.