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We are not only rendering service to God in preparing volumes of new books, but also exercising an office of sacred piety when we treat books carefully, and again when we restore them to their proper places and commend them to inviolable custody; that they may rejoice in purity while we have them in our hands, and rest securely when they are put back in their repositories.Richard Du Bury goes on to say...
And in the first place as to the opening and closing of books, let there be due moderation, that they be not unclasped in precipitate haste, nor when we have finished our inspection be put away without being duly closed. For it behoves us to guard a book much more carefully than a boot.
A sound article. When I have my castle my priority will be building a safe library, God willing and weather permitting.
(The last clause was included so that my mother might learn the meaning of D.V. & W.P.)
'When I have my castle my priority will be building a safe library'
ReplyDeleteWhen you have your castle you will spend most of your time protecting book-free rooms from being overwhelmed from the boxes in the cellars. I will be a librarian in my next life - all these people buying books, and inheriting books, and me trying to keep an eye on books, and get them from temporary resting places - from garden to attics - back to where they belong, never mind correctly shelved.
Books need keepers. No, book-keeper is not right. Books need readers, pointers, and retrievers. That's better. They need carers with the memory that works by picturing an object in its last observed surroundings too. From where I sit now I can see these titles:
Relevance; Holism; Want to Play?; Jerusalem the Golden; and Chaos. Sums up the problems really.