Hmm. This would mean, I think, that the utility of a large library is just the removal of the delay between needing some information and having it. But how valuable that is depends on what that delay tends to be - and if you don’t often need information only contained in books in a far off library, that’s not very much.
Yeah for sure. But I think also it’s only relevant for people who spend so much of their time researching stuff that those delays become a bottleneck to something. Most people can go and do something else while waiting for a library book to be transferred - or while waiting for an opportunity to buy a book with information they want. Maybe Umberto Eco was so frequently held up by this that it made sense for him. Or maybe hoarding literature was indeed a status symbol for him and he just had a convincing story for why it was actually practical.
Hmm. This would mean, I think, that the utility of a large library is just the removal of the delay between needing some information and having it. But how valuable that is depends on what that delay tends to be - and if you don’t often need information only contained in books in a far off library, that’s not very much.
The quote’s a bit dated. It’s pre-internet thinking. It’s aimed at people who want to be continually learning something.
Delays getting a book from some other library can be arbitrarily long depending on which book you need, even if the library is close.
Yeah for sure. But I think also it’s only relevant for people who spend so much of their time researching stuff that those delays become a bottleneck to something. Most people can go and do something else while waiting for a library book to be transferred - or while waiting for an opportunity to buy a book with information they want. Maybe Umberto Eco was so frequently held up by this that it made sense for him. Or maybe hoarding literature was indeed a status symbol for him and he just had a convincing story for why it was actually practical.