I am sitting in the reading room of the London Library, a place to which I often retreat when I have an afternoon in London. The room where laptops are encouraged is lined with reference works in various languages, and when I looked to my right I saw that I was next to a 24 volume biographical dictionary of notable Swedes, published from 1857 onwards. Before that is a five volume biographical dictionary in Dutch. I wouldn’t like to make a comparison between the self-iportance of the two countries based on that: the dutch volumes are very much larger. But this is the sort of wonderfully arcane resource that makes actual liraries worthwhile. No one is ever going to scan in those things or put them on the net.<\/p>\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\t
I am sitting in the reading room of the London Library, a place to which I often retreat when I have an afternoon in London. The room where laptops are encouraged is lined with reference works in various languages, and … Continue reading