Winter Solstice

In 2006, Ernest Gaines visited our community as part of a “Literary Legends” grant co-sponsored by the Champaign Public Library and Parkland College. He gave a very moving presentation on how he came to write “A Lesson Before Dying” and then afterward took questions from the audience.

One person asked him what he was currently reading.

“I no longer read anything new,” he said. “Nowadays I just turn to my personal collection.”

This was, perhaps, merely a gentle way for a famous author to say, “Please don’t send me your manuscript,” but I took it to heart and have incorporated it into the procedures I use to evaluate and weed my own book collection. “Will I be glad to find this on my shelf when I’m old?” Yes? It’s a keeper!



Over the past year, I have been repeatedly assailed by people proclaiming ”books are over.” They refer, of course, to the codex: printed paper pages bound together with a cover — a format largely unchanged since its introduction in the first century.

The demise of the book has been predicted for quite some time.

A “paperless society” was already overdue when I was in library school nearly 25 years ago.

Market reports for 2010, however, suggest that the time may finally be nigh. Globally, e-book reader sales are up over 79 percent; Apple’s iPad, introduced in April, has racked up sales estimated at nearly 10 million.

In the words of Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, the “creative destruction of capitalism” will eliminate publishers who fail to adapt. The future is in the hands of those who control the dominant device, software and access to content. Format is merely packaging and of no interest.

I was thinking about this recently, lolling on my sofa, surrounded by my books. As a librarian, I have no fear of the digital world. I read my newspaper on a 3-inch-by-2-inch screen, I need a keyboard to write a coherent sentence, and when patrons tell me that they miss the old card catalog I can hardly muster a smile.

I have devoted my professional life to the library’s mission of resource sharing and believe that the democratization of information access is the most valuable aspect of new technology.

That said, I also like books of the codex persuasion, and I like to have them around me. I read many more books than I buy, but the years go by and the collection grows.

I assume my collection is typical: childhood favorites, the shelf of life-changing treasures, everything Jane Austen, a few useful reference works, and a motley crew of others, each with a story meaningful only to me.

I realize that some of my books are merely artifacts. Periodically I re-read my mother’s 1930 edition of the first Nancy Drew mystery, “The Secret of the Old Clock.” No other “package” would tempt me. But that reflects my experience. I believe, I swear I do, that a child of the near future will treasure a digital version of A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh” with decorations by Ernest H. Shepard in exactly the same way.

But what I like best about my collection is that it is limited; if not initially carefully chosen, it is, at least, carefully evaluated and refined. The digital world seeks to offer everything. I really only want a small piece of that.

Books and e-books do not represent a VHS/Beta choice. I believe they overlap and even complement each other. Ironically, print books may initially remain as the affordable resource for the poor, but ultimately, like vinyl records, become a symbol of the connoisseur.

I still want to read new books and as I do, I’ll want to tell you about them.

But as I write this, on the darkest night of the year, I look around at my old “keepers” and think, “This is enough.”

Photo by cliff1066 (Creative Commons) of the painting "Chicago Interior" by J. Theodore Johnson.