''The True University of These Days Is a Collection of Books''

Ó American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/0094306114553213 http://cs.sagepub.com EDITOR’S REMARKS ‘‘THE TRUE UNIVERSITY OF THESE DAYS IS A COLLECTION OF BOOKS’’ The Library of Congress thought well and be thy guide, In thy most need to go by enough of this claim to display it in stone, thy side’’—the knowing slogan J.M. Dent as did the San Francisco Library (now the chose in 1908 to appear on the first page of Asian Art Museum). Yet fifteen years ago his many subsequent Everyman volumes. a noted statistician, an expert on the AIDS The original was composed anonymously epidemic, glanced up at these words embla- around 1485 wherein ‘‘Goode dedes’’ informs zoned at the entrance to a large university ‘‘Every man’’ that she cannot defend him at library, and smirked, mocking its earnest the Final Judgement, but offers solace: ‘‘I sentiment. ‘‘‘The True University is a Collec- haue a syster that shall with you also / Called tion of Books’? Obsolete technology!’’ the knowlege whiche shall with you abyde / To expert said with a smile, recalling long stu- helpe you to make that dredfull rekenynge / dent days spent in just such a monumental Every man I wyll go with thee and be thy building. ‘‘Obsolete’’ indeed, at least in gyde / In thy moost nede to go by thy part, for such a researcher, tied for life to syde.’’ To which noble gesture ‘‘Every man’’ the computer, alienated from the baronial replies: ‘‘In good condycyon I am now in chambers and overstuffed stacks of the con- euery thynge / And am hole content with ventional academic library. this good thynge / Thanked by god my When Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) gave the creature.’’ lecture that concluded with this famous There was a time not long ago, stretching, phrase on Tuesday, May 19, 1840 (‘‘The say, from the period of Carlyle and Marx, Hero as Man of Letters: Johnson, Rousseau, both zealous devotees of libraries, when Burns’’), he also smirked. Carlyle rejected Knowledge gave sustenance and inspiration the medieval notion that formal education to scholars, and the Knowledge they sought occurred only in a classroom, where the did indeed live within ‘‘a Collection of robed professor spoke in Latin to obliging, Books.’’ There are many readers today, espe- silent students, most of whom could not cially those eager minds dwelling hundreds afford to buy the canonical books from which or thousands of miles from a great library, the professor lifted his lecture material. who believe that digitized books—30 million Instead, Carlyle urged his readers to indulge so far we are told—remain ‘‘books’’ even if on in the Google of their era: ‘‘If we think of it, all a screen, and even if in many cases not whol- that a University, or final highest School can ly readable due to copyright restrictions. do for us, is still but what the first School Viewpoints of this type struggle hopefully began doing,—teach us to read’’ (Carlyle at making a virtue of technological necessity, 1908: 390). Books were becoming plentiful but the ultimate outcome for scholarship of and cheaper, public libraries were beginning digitization remains to be understood— to open, so Carlyle urged his middle-class whether a Good Dede for Every man, or audience to edify themselves, by reading. nothing of the sort. And they did. Huge numbers of books Every scholar has by now been faced with were printed in the nineteenth century, and the inscrutable workings of electronic periodicals thrived as well, many of them ‘‘books’’ in a research library’s ‘‘holdings.’’ bound by subscribers at the end of each The library buys a ‘‘book’’ in electronic form year for ongoing reference in the ‘‘perma- from a publisher, which charges considerably nent’’ family library. more for the ‘‘book’’ than it does for the Without electronic diversions, the printed printed version, arguing that since more word became every civilized person’s best readers are in theory capable of using the friend: ‘‘EVERYMAN, I will go with thee, screenal version, it is only fair to charge, 777 Contemporary Sociology 43, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on November 18, 2014 778 Editor’s Remarks say, $250 for the same title that in paper form say. The ancillary claim surely will be that is merely $125. (Never mind that the actual ‘‘Libraries are unnecessary now; we have production costs of the printed version hov- electronic ‘books’.’’ A few institutions of er around $5.00, and that authors’ royalties higher learning have already dispensed are negligible.) The scholar summons the with their ‘‘bricks and mortar’’ libraries— electronic manifestation to whatever screen a symptom of cultural thoughtlessness that is handy and capable, and provided all sys- appeals only to servants of the ‘‘bottom tems are working properly (not guaranteed line’’ who would be lost in a university by any means), is informed that out of 400 library. pages or so of monographic text, 50 printed When Robert K. Merton wrote about pages and never more will be granted to the role of ‘‘serendipity’’ in scholarly said scholar should a copy be needed for discovery—which in part at least concerns annotation or as a sentimental keepsake. the luck of ‘‘stumbling upon’’ the deciding Should the scholar need more than this sor- book or journal article ‘‘buried in the stacks,’’ ry limit, there is always Interlibrary Loan, an experience most college students now will which can be called upon to find a printed never know—he did not regard the phenom- copy at some other library that chose not to enon as trivial or incidental to the growth of buy the electronic ghost of the desired title. knowledge. We are tactile creatures, and Should all libraries elect, as they are being holding books ‘‘in the flesh’’ carries more vigorously pushed to do, to buy only the elec- weight and inspires more ideas than hoping tronic version, then the scholar might apply to find something meaningful as one scans for a ‘‘book grant’’ in order to buy the printed screenal representations. Flipping through version, or perhaps could join with friend- bound journals or the random monograph colleagues, and share a collectively pur- has been the great privilege and inspiration chased copy, the way poor undergraduates to untold scholarship ever since stacks were do when confronted by a $300 chemistry text- opened to researchers in the 19th century. book. Springer, the German firm which Recall George Gissing’s sentiments along prides itself on being a ‘‘leading scientific these lines: ‘‘I know every book of mine by publisher,’’ just offered Models of God and its scent, and I have but to put my nose Alternative Ultimate Realities (2013) in between the pages to be reminded of all sorts e-book form at the bargain price of $109.50, of things. My Gibbon, for example, my well- half the usual cost. The printed version can bound eight-volume Milman edition, which be had for $279 (free shipping). It is a large I have read and read and read again for more edited work, assembled by an emeritus pro- than thirty years—never do I open it but the fessor in Israel and an assistant professor in scent of noble pages restores to me all the Toledo, Ohio. Its Amazon book sales ranking exultant happiness of that moment when I is at 1,266,259 at this writing. Sad to say, the received it as a prize. Or my Shakespeare, reduced price is available only until Septem- the great Cambridge Shakespeare.’’ (Giss- ber 8, 2014, two weeks after the initial offer. ing 1914: 5-6). Perhaps you feel just this Perhaps the ultimate ‘‘ultimate reality’’ lies way when you return to your copy of Capital in the publisher’s realization that prices or Suicide or The Protestant Ethic, covered in such as these attract remarkably few buyers. your youthful annotations. Why are academic libraries ‘‘electing’’ elec- ************************************ tronic versus printed monographs in ever growing numbers? In part because librarians, One pertinent book which no-one is able to particularly administrators who must worry print from Google Books (though there is about budgets and buildings, seem to love another source, happy to report, which this technological innovation: no space con- makes it available: archive.org) appeared in cerns, no maintenance, no replacement costs 1923, self-published by Upton Sinclair. He when lost or damaged, and no reference is known, of course, for the novel The Jungle librarians to pay since everybody becomes (1906), which he dedicated ‘‘To the Working- their own source of wisdom. ‘‘Expertise is men of America,’’ and therewith prompted unnecessary now; we have Google and the U.S. government to begin monitoring Wiki,’’ as one young scholar was heard to meat production. Recently his novel Oil! Contemporary Sociology 43, 6 Downloaded from csx.sagepub.com at ASA - American Sociological Association on November 18, 2014 Editor’s Remarks 779 (1926) was converted into a very fine film, presidents and chancellors and deans and There Will be Blood, though it bears a weak regents and trustees and governors and cura- relation to the novel as written. In Oil! Sin- tors and fellows and overseers and founders, clair composed a Fathers and Sons type of and donors and whatever else they call them- work, pitting an idealistic son against his selves’’ (Sinclair 1923: ix). hard-bitten capitalist father, with lots of Nobody else did that before and no-one pro-union sentiment thrown in, little of has done it since. Veblen’s far more famous which appeared in the film (brilliantly acted book on the same subject, The Higher Learning by Daniel Day-Lewis as a demented tycoon).

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