The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Paradise in Danger

The Library at Night is my Bible, Quran and Vedic guide on the aesthetics of this somewhat odd institution called the library. Odd because the concept of a warehouse filled with printed volumes available for general consultation is a rather late development in European civilisation, and odd because it is a concept that seems to have run its course as that civilisation becomes more technological. For this latter reason alone Manguel's aesthetic observations are critical: something is being lost in the technology, quite apart from the books.

I have supervised a small collegiate academic library at the University of Oxford for the last 10 years. But I am not a professional librarian, by which I mean I have no degree or other qualifications in so-called Library Science. I am not, in other words, a member of that fraternity. In some ways this is an advantage since, unlike many of my colleagues in the university, I can actually pay attention to books and readers rather than technology and 'best practice' techniques.

Having said that, my first experience of librarianship was over forty years ago. I worked at the time for a well-known firm of management consultants in New York City. On my first day with the firm I was assigned to a pro bono project with the New York Public Library. The Library's card catalogue, much of it on highly acidic paper produced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was crumbling away to dust. Informed just of these minimal facts I was dispatched to 5th Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan

The client was the chair of the Board of Trustees, the formidable Mrs Brooke Astor. Mrs. Astor asked if we could meet daily for tea so that I could brief her on the seriousness of the state of affairs and suggest what might be done. It turned out that the situation was more acute than Mrs. Astor had assumed. It was even worse than anything Manguel had encountered in his exceptionally thorough research.

Not only was the NYPL card catalogue disintegrating, but when a card was lost or severely damaged, it meant that the associated volume was irrecoverable. The reason: since the library opened in 1911 its books had been catalogued with a shelf location according to, not subject or title or author, which might have allowed a proximity search, but date of receipt by the Library. That is, for all intents and purposes books were stored in an entirely random order. A missing book therefore was the needle in a very large haystack.

Fortunately, solving the problem was easy. The library was closed for 2 months. The catalogue boxes were sealed and crated in situ. All of the approximately 2 million cards were shipped by air to South Korea where a small army of data entry clerks who neither read nor spoke English completed a virtually flawless electronic transcription. In fact, it was because they knew no English and could not therefore erroneously interpolate that their accuracy was so high.

This was my first lesson in the concrete importance of library aesthetics. It was also my last until I wandered into Blackfriars Oxford. I wasn't aware either of Manguel's book, or my need for It. So I stumbled blindly into his aesthetic categories without assistance.

Whatever else it is, a library is about the relationships among books and between an entire assemblage of books and some specific group of readers. Manguel's sense of the library collection as a whole is consequently vital. My first task at Blackfriars was the disposition of approximately 10,000 books left from several legacies and stored in boxes in every available nook and cranny in the college. So I was immediately forced into acts of wanton vandalism and arbitrary censorship. Books are not equal, even if they're free, even if they're economically valuable.

Making a choice about which to keep, which to sell, and which to give away is in some way soul-destroying to anyone with a fondness for books. But it also forces a decision on what one thinks the library is. Blackfriars is both a research and undergraduate library so there is a tendency is to keep as much as possible. On the other hand, our members have access to the enormous Bodleian collection as well as to other collegiate libraries. Rational prudence dictates therefore to only take unique new items.

Ultimately the only thing a librarian can do is make an aesthetic judgement about the coherence of the entire collection. But he or she must make this judgment that no one else feels obliged to. And the judgement must be advertised as widely as possible until its challenged. My judgement was to develop certain major classifications – the European Holocaust, North American Philosophy, South American fiction for example. These classifications have become sharper over the years but no one has challenged me yet. And we have developed a certain reputation in the university as a consequence. I'm supposing that my taste and sense of balance has been accepted. That or I'm considered too irascible to contradict.

Manguel's appreciation of the aesthetics of power in the library is something I know many of my colleagues in other university libraries lack. Deciding who can be a member, who can access the collection and for what reasons is an exercise in power, one that has significant effects in academia.

The original great library of Alexandria was meant as both a storage place to access printed material and as a meeting place for scholars. At Blackfriars, this is still the case. But physical space is limited and there is a significant population of riff-raff that one does not want on the premises even at Oxford. I'm forced to make snap-judgments daily about the scholarly value of individuals applying for access. Once again the only way I know of to avoid arbitrariness is to be as explicit as possible about the criterion for membership and the reasons for it. Sometimes a smile has swayed me I admit, but overall there haven't been too many complaints.

The ordering of books on the shelves is not a trivial matter as Manguel notes. Quite apart from the NYPL issue, the placement of books determines the types of random encounters that readers are likely to make. We use a modified Library of Congress classification. But the LC is notoriously bad in theology. So in the 1950's one of my predecessors modified the system, using the then unassigned class of BQ for Christian Writers. Since then BQ has been designated by the LC for Hindu studies. Consequently we get a number of calls inquring whether our exceptionally large Hindu collection is available for browsing.

I have an ongoing aesthetic battle with the technical establishment of the Bodleian itself. As a collegiate library, we are entirely independent of the Bodleian but participate in the university-wide catalogue which is maintained by them. The Bodleian, like the Library of Congress and other large institutions, essentially sells its cataloguing information to lesser libraries and so has a commercial interest in the technical precision of catalogue entries.

The 'language' in which the catalogue is expressed is a cross between computer-code and a group-constructed corporate memo - highly structured but entirely irrational. It is ugly, it is costly and it is a symbol to me of bureaucratic domination. The Bodleian has an interest in it. I do not. Our readers can easily find what they need through the traditional author, title and subject headings plus a little local knowledge. The Bodleian demand conformity; I find their demands unpleasant and presumptuous. Our modus vivendi is that I do it my way and they spend any additional effort necessary to do it their way. High-tech aesthetics are clearly not my cup of tea..

I could go on commenting on the relevance of each of Manguel's categories – the library as workshop, as imagination, as mind, as myth, as memory, as a snub to death - but I think the point is made. His view of the library as an essentially aesthetic object is correct and it is operational. Everything from architecture to the order of books on shelves can be subsumed under an aesthetic. The aesthetic is not arbitrary but it is also not linearly rational. It is certainly not limited to the purely economic or technical constraints that seem to dominate discussions among librarians. Ultimately the aesthetic is some manifestation of a shared ideal. And there are better and worse ideals depending on how inclusive they are.

Jorge Luis Borges was director of the National Library of Argentina for 18 years. His idealised vision of the library carries some weight given his career as a writer. Reflecting his regard for the Jewish mystical treatise, The Zohar, Borges conceived the universe itself as a book. For him paradise "existed in the shape of a library" where one could constantly encounter the unexpected, the disconcerting, and, with a bit of luck, oneself. That's the most inclusive ideal I've yet to encounter.

Postscript: Just to show how inclusive, this piece just showed up in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/27/blood-bookworms-bosoms-and-bottoms-the-secret-life-of-libraries

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