Books Still Matter — By John Reed

Books Still Matter
While out of town last week I found myself with some extra time between meetings, so I spent a spare hour in their local public library. And wonder of wonders! They still had a complete set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas…and not just the cheaper brown cardboard covers. These were the high-end black faux-leather edition, the last set they printed before shutting down.
My parents and grandparents were all bibliophiles so I grew up with an appreciation of good books, especially reference books. Whenever I asked a question, the most likely answer was “go look it up.” I remember spending hours just leafing through those heavy tomes, marveling at their contents. That trend followed me into adulthood. By the late 1980’s my personal library numbered close to five thousand.
Then came the Internet. Suddenly all the world’s knowledge was a keystroke away, obviating the need for “hard copy.” Books were passé we were told, relics of a bygone age. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) allowed cross-referencing across multiple sources in an instant, making all those extra volumes unnecessary paperweights.
And yet.
Computer languages change. Operating systems update. Floppy discs and hard drives die. Power fails. Today’s instant electronic convenience becomes tomorrow’s outdated frustration. And yet the printed page endures.
While in New York recently, I visited the J. P. Morgan library and was privileged to examine one of three(!) examples of the Gutenberg Bibles in their collection. Over five hundred years old, and still legible. Still useful. Still relevant.
How many computer files will still be usable in even fifty years? A hundred? Five hundred? Information currently lives in the present, with little thought to when it becomes the past. Printed books may only provide a snapshot of what was known at one moment of time, but that moment is preserved for longer than we can know.
We’re currently celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of which was also in the Morgan Library. Something tells me it’ll still be there for the 500th.