regress to a state of sensation and the manifold distortions of the oral tradition.
It may be that O’Donnell and his ilk would prefer to exist in a world of myth and dimly apprehended reality—an ahistorical world of shadows and ignorance (a very odd stance for a classicist), but I stand with those who cherish the sta- bility, authenticity, and fixity of the frozen word and the onward transmittal of the human record.
A spectacular example of a literacy campaign in which public libraries play a pivotal role is the idea that whole communities can come together in reading one book at the same time. Such a project was first tried in Seattle in 1998 with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The city of Chicago (with the enthusiastic support of Mayor Richard Daley) took up the idea in the fall of 2001. The California Council of the Humanities is recommending that all Californians read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath as part of a project called “My story is California’s story.” Other towns and cities are expected to follow suit. It would be very easy to criticize such efforts as tokenish and the choice of reading as
“safe” and irretrievably middlebrow, but that would, in my opinion, be missing the point. In isolation, such projects might be futile, but as visible and news- worthy examples of a commitment to literacy and shared experience they are invaluable. Just imagine, for example, the effect on California’s life if everyone living there actually read and discussed The Grapes of Wrath. At a minimum, there would be a far greater understanding of one of the events—the Depression-era migration from the Dust Bowl to the Golden State—that helped shape modern California. Beyond that, there would be an understanding of the similarities between the treatment of the “Okies” in the 1930s and the treatment of Mexican and Southeast Asian farm workers today. This would induce a sense of community and an understanding of a complex and diverse state. Beyond even that, many who read Steinbeck’s book as their first book in years would have their eyes opened to the joy and value of reading—something that could well change their lives.
Some special libraries are so rooted in technology that their involvement in books is necessarily limited. Others have major print collections and can at least cooperate with other libraries and with their communities in promoting literacy.
Academic libraries of all kinds and sizes have a most important role to play in advancing true literacy. Not only should they maintain good print collections and engage in all the events, programs, displays, and lectures that they can, but they must work with teaching faculty and campus administrators to ensure that reading is a central part of the curriculum. Many have criticized the “great books” approach on the grounds of elitism and ethnocentrism, but such pro- grams, in the modern world, need not suffer from either flaw. Is it elitist to promote and reward sustained reading? Is it ethnocentric to identify and promote the greatest products of the human spirit written by men and women from all cultures, countries, and times? The writings of “dead white males” have much to offer, but so do the writings of women and those of people of color and from other countries and cultures. University and college curricula should be centered on the reading of all the best texts that the world has to offer and
should recognize that an educated person must possess knowledge of those texts and the skills necessary to profit from them. Academic librarianship cannot afford to ignore these truths or to remain passive at a time when the active promotion of reading and literacy is vital to the future of the academy and society.
N O T E S
1.Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Springfield, Mass.:
G&C Merriam, 1976), 1321.
2. Harold Bloom is an author and Yale professor famous for his emphasis on the value of reading.
3. Eleanor Roosevelt to Henry Canby, letter of November 6, 1929, quoted in Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Viking, 1992), 1:514–15.
4. Harold Bloom, ed., Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages (New York: Scribner, 2001).
5. H. R. Huse, The Illiteracy of the Literate (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1933).
6. Huse, Illiteracy, vi.
7. Russell Minick, “Teaching Center Stage: All-Star Teacher, Jaymee Harris,” Fresno Bee, December 27, 2001, p. B7.
8. Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory (New York: Bantam, 1983), 62–63.
9. Louis A. Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, Seven to Twenty-One, 1816–1830(West- port, Conn.: Greenwood, reprinted 1976), 210–11.
10. Huse, Illiteracy, 6.
11. Virginia Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book,” in The Common Reader: Second Series (London: Hogarth, 1932).
12. Lawrence Clark Powell, The Three Hs (Los Angeles: Press in the Gatehouse, 1971), 2.
13. Powell, Three Hs, 5.
14. James J. O’Donnell, “Trimethius, McLuhan, Cassiodorus,” in The Future of the Book,ed.
Geoffrey Nunberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 54.
15. George P. Landow, “Twenty Minutes into the Future,” in Future of the Book, 234.
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5
UNTIL THE LAST THIRD OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, GEOGRAPHERS CREATED MAPS OF
the world and of “newly discovered” regions that were a mixture of reasonably accurate graphic data about charted areas and wild guesses and fantasies about uncharted ones. These early maps showed the various terrae incognitae, invented islands and continents, and uncharted seas to be populated with dragons, three- headed men, krakens, hippogriffs, anthropophagi, and other fabulous creatures.
As late Victorian and twentieth-century explorers and mapmakers charted more of the land and oceans, such fantastic embellishments gave way to the factual depiction of real places, rivers, islands, etc. It seems to me that we are in the position of those early cartographers with respect to the Web. It is a fantastic world of which we know only some of the borders and the well-settled parts of the interior. People have even written extensively of the “invisible Web”—a term that rivals any in medieval cosmology.1We need to create accurate maps of the Web, both visible and “invisible.” Beyond that, we must enumerate its content and provide an adequate taxonomy for it. When we have those three things—
accurate maps, counts, and a taxonomy—we will be prepared to integrate the Web fully into library services.
The World Wide Web is a paradoxical, often counterintuitive presence in individual societies and in the global electronic connectivity—cyberspace—that is usurping many of the individual attributes of those societies. It is already ubiquitous in the life of the middle and upper classes in the developed world and the affluent in the developing world. The Web is as much a part of global- ization as the multinational corporations who use and abuse it every day and the various free-trade agreements between nations and continental blocs. It is both global and personal, a means of communication between all the people of
The Nature of the Web
the world and between the members of tiny, obsessive cliques that like to call themselves “communities.” It is a practical engine that delivers books, socks, gardening tools, and handmade candles at the touch of a keyboard. It is also a mythical presence—an infinite electronic hall of mirrors in which the thoughts and prejudices of millions carom, shift shape, and reverberate for nanoseconds, years, or periods in between.