Thoughts on Libraries
by Matthew Koslowski on February 17, 2010
in Essays
In This Essay |
| “Do School Libraries Need Books?” from Room for Debate, The New York Times, February 10, 2010 |
| “The Library, Through Students’ Eyes” from Room for Debate, The New York Times, February 14, 2010 |
| “A library without books” by David Abel, The Boston Globe, September 4, 2009 |
| “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, by Nicholas Carr, The Atlantic, July/August 2008 |
I remember reading in The Boston Globe last September that a private school in Massachusetts had given up its collection of books. I was aghast.
That Cushing Academy gave away collection of books, turning its library into a digital media center, continues to bother me.
Since reading that article, I have thought a lot about the role of libraries in our society. I have library cards for three different library systems here in Massachusetts. I joined the Boston Athenaeum, a membership library, last December after writing about them in a December 11th’s Weekly Review.
Libraries are important places. Digital technology cannot yet replace — and I hope never will — brick-and-mortar libraries.
I love going to physical libraries. I love browsing the stacks.
One afternoon while wandering through the shelves, I came across The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke a collection of fragments from Rilke’s letters, collected into thematic chapters by Ulrich Baer. Without the serendipity of walking through the stacks, I would never have found the book because I would never have thought to look for it.
I walked into the Boston Athenaeum on Saturday to visit again the art exhibit I reviewed last week, An Artist + A Poet. Walking around the new acquisitions displays on the first floor, I found Young Rilke and His Times by George C. Schoolfield. Again, I never would have thought to look for this book but I’m glad to have borrowed it.
That’s one weakness I find in my own Internet research. There is so much information out there, that unless I know what I am looking for, I have trouble finding anything at all. Reading from the Internet encourages us to read shallowly and seek a particular piece of information and continue on.
We have become sifters.
But when we enter a library, we are looking for knowledge in a broader sense than we are when we begin an Internet search. When we begin an Internet search, we are looking for answers to specific questions. When we enter a library, we are looking for answers, yes, but I think we are open to letting those answers inspire additional questions in ways we aren’t on the Internet.
All the same, I am no luddite. I know that the Internet is changing the way that we think and organize information. Perhaps libraries will become obsolete.
But I hope that we continue recognize the value of books and libraries. There are no pop-up advertisements in books, nor banner ads in libraries. Just as online, there are other things — more books, though, rather than more sites — vying for our attention in a library. Yet, I find myself able to become immersed in a book in a way that I have never seen translated online.
I hope that we keep these quiet bowers.
What are your thoughts? Share them with us.
Do libraries hold any special memories for you? Have you moved completely online? Do libraries have a future, or only a past?
No Fixed Stars: Thoughts on I.Q. Testing
by Matthew Koslowski on February 3, 2010
in Essays
In This Essay |
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
by Ken Robinson, Ph.D., with Lou Aronica
|
| Alfred Binet, Wikipedia |
| Lewis Terman, Wikipedia |
I have always been aware of ideas of intelligence and, therefore, ideas of Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.).
Unless you count a silly Internet test I took in college, I have never taken an I.Q. test. Often I have wondered what my I.Q. was, assuming as I did that I.Q. was a valid measure of intelligence. Since I did well in my scholastic subjects, I thought I would score high on an I.Q. test and I wanted in my insecurity about my own talents an objective verification of what I wanted to believe about myself but doubted.
When I moved to Ohio for college, I learned from friends that administering I.Q. tests is routine procedure in Ohio. I felt cheated then that Massachusetts did not do the same.
Now, however, having read more about the history of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, I am thankful not to have had my I.Q. measured in this way.
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Letter from Birmingham City Jail
by Matthew Koslowski on January 20, 2010
in Essays
In honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
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Patrons & Saints
by Matthew Koslowski on December 24, 2009
in Essays
To one of my saints, my dear friend, Emily Baum, with the deepest appreciation.
In This Essay |
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (C.D.N. Costa, trans.)
|
| Late Bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Annals of Culture, The New Yorker |
| On Dying Young by Matthew Koslowski, Literature&Literacy |
| William Stafford, Poet, Wikipedia |
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell, trans.) |
Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell, ed. and trans.) |
The Second Four Books of Poems by W.S. Merwin |
“Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Just show me a writer — a poet, preferably — who did not a pickup a pen before he was 27 or 30, who amounted to anything, who history remembers.”
These conversations are common.
I expect the normal, well-intentioned platitudes. Often I begin to despair because I have not dedicated myself to my writing. I begin to think that my time is up. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it,” Seneca whispers. “Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.” And I begin to think about how I have not invested my time well.
Rilke writes, “…if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all.” Haven’t I been living without writing? I have not worked on my novel in weeks. Or have I been existing and drifting? Do I really feel that I could live without writing?
“William Stafford,” she says.
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Digitally Divided
by Matthew Koslowski on December 16, 2009
in Essays
In This Essay |
| Digital divide narrowed, but lives on for students across US by Annie Gowen, The Washington Post via boston.com |
How do we provide equal access to education when one-third of households do not have Internet access?
In our fervor to embrace technology, we are leaving children behind. We are creating a two classes: the digital haves and the digital have-nots.
The idea of a digital divide had occurred to me before I read Annie Gowen’s article. But the full impact had not occurred to me. I had not thought of how stressful it would be for a child of eleven or twelve to try to juggle getting to and from school when is computer lab is open with getting to and from the library when its computer lab is open.
When I first moved back to Massachusetts after more than six years in Illinois and the Midwest, I lived something of the digital divide myself. My experience illuminates problems the students have.
