There is something in the idea of the library that is pure fetishization. It is seen almost as a well from which all the monumental ideas of the world have ever arisen. The feeling, the smell, of the books. We see the library as the bearer of ideas. Perhaps a library is and should be considered the facilitator of ideas. The way in which that place exists, cemented in its silence (at least it used to be), allows for contemplation. It is the stillness that gives way to the chaotic search for the new. We see libraries as places in which great thinkers thought. Is this not then why we view libraries as high culture?

It is a lived-in world that is purely for thought and the engagement with ideas. Not necessarily work, which is wholly different. While libraries are institutions, there is a solitary existence and a freedom in libraries, a life lived with the books. Rather than seeing them as a store of information. Books, even within libraries, are ways to recall the past, to draw on ideas long forgotten, to revive what has long lay dormant. Books hold temporality. They are slowly decaying and you can smell it. You feel it in the types of bindings, covers, fonts, language and manner of thinking. Epochs are retained and returned to through books. The lived thought of those that are historical to us rethought, enlivened through the rethinking of them. It is an act that occurs. Are the books not, to use Heidegger’s phrase, a standing reserve? Are they not taken out of life and kept merely for our use? Do we use them up?

Surely not. The books themselves are not solely the information inside them.

The internet is significantly more difficult to fetishize. There is not a long history of great thinkers scurrying around using the internet. It is an entrepreneurial sphere rather than a specifically intellectual place. It is not a place, it cannot be, it is a store. It is not lived in. It is not lived in, it is lived with. It is a tool whereas the library is not seen in such a way.

The lack of materiality of the internet means that the information on it is merely that. In fact, it is more so simply data. Where as looking through a library can seem like wondering through a maze, taking time and making effort. The internet is instead more so an arrow to a target. Type in your query, press search and get results. It is then less satisfying because of its efficiency? Is that what efficiency is? The loss of satisfaction. While the internet is built on efficiency it exists with an unfocused content spread across a broad spectrum, so it rarely seems intentional.

The internet creates a sense of indifference, as opposed to purposefulness and focus. It causes a sense of drifting thought that rarely attaches on to anything for a sustained amount of time. The library in comparison induces contemplation. The internet draws you out and away from contemplative depth.

Is it merely a lack of history that leads to our derogatory thoughts about the internet when compared to libraries? Is the internet the low culture to high culture of libraries?

They are not the same.

The internet is disconnected from everything. It is abstract. Books are there, they can be held and are part of the world. They are material, the labour of the works is felt it is in the pages. The knowledge of the used nature of the books, the feeling that they have existed with others before is haunting. The internet is not felt. It is wholly devoid of time and space, devoid of life. The thought becomes somewhat sterile online. Less potent. Less valuable. It has no history – it is devoid of what it is. Digitalized its historic place is wholly dissolved. Gone. Books held in a library could be said to be within an institution that remove it from their historic place, causing them to not be alive any longer. But when we find it on the internet, or rather, when we find it on the internet there is no history at all. Where the information comes from doesn’t matter. What has been written an hour ago is not distinct from that which was written two hundred years ago.

If we fetishize libraries and can find information online with ease, meaning we can know more, why should we raise any issue in this area? We should raise issue because of the sense of place and the purpose and intention. The ideas of dedication that are evoked in the physical act of studying and more importantly thinking. To step away from the internet and, wholly in an analogue with the thinking that exists as the foundation of all thought to arise in this world. To allow thought to be lost, in the sense that it is devoid of place, from which it arises would be a shame. Should we then return to the quiet rooms of the library, free from internet connection? More than likely this would cause some monumental shift in thought. Not backwards, not into the past through a dependence on books but forward. This shift could and would only occur for the better.