"Your occupation, Mr. Wordsworth?"
"A Librarian."
[Laughter]
"A what?"
"A Librarian, sir."
...
"I am a Librarian. That is my profession. That is my occupation. If you people choose to call that obsolete..."
...
"A Librarian. Having to do... with books... There are no more books, Mr. Wordsworth. There are no more libraries. And of course it follows that there is very little call for the services of a librarian."
Hat-tip to Damien, who started the discussion thread at Librarians-In-Singapore after, he came across this article; and to Cris who alerted us to the YouTube video.
Best line: 'Delusions! Deluuuuuusions, Mr Wordsworth... injected into your veins like printer's ink!'
ReplyDeleteScary...although the setting is different now in our high tech world, think we're constantly faced with the threat.
ReplyDeleteI remember there was 1 story about books being eliminated (can't remember if it's Ray Bradbury, Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock). But there were "outlaws" who would each memorise a book such that they become the walking book and continue to pass down the literature.
Ivan. Our problem today is not that books have become obsolete; but the opposite. Too many books and other forms of reading. Problem is how to sieve out the junk. And thus librarians role have become even more important.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the video clip. Brings back memories of our early tv days. Outer Limits was one of our favourites.
I have been wanting to share some memories of early tv days. But too many things to blog about and too little time.
hi Ivan
ReplyDeletethanks for your comment on my blog.
http://edwardcrosbydesign.blogspot.com/
i seem to remember a twilight zone episode where an old librarian was locked in a library for the rest of his days but then broke his reading glasses. books books everywhere not word to read.
cheers
ecofugal
Hi Edward, the episode you're referring to is the Nov 20th, 1959 episode “Time Enough At Last”.
ReplyDeleteI learned this from "Science Fiction Television" by M. Keith Booker. I blogged about the book, here. The episode you mentioned is cited from page 10 of the book (scroll down to the end of the post).
Hi! about your suggestion of co-organising a librarian-meetup session on this. Why not? Well, I'm not very good in organising these things, but it'll be interesting.
ReplyDeleteThink we are always faced with this nagging question all round in keeping ourselves relevant. Different schools of thoughts too?
Just a note to follow up on Tromperie's comment. You are referring to "Fahrenheit 451" the temperature that is supposed to required to "burn books" by Bradbury. The story evolves around a fireman [one who burns books for a living] who rescues a book and then becomes "the book" and an outlaw in his time.
ReplyDelete