IMG_3037 (by roddy macinnes)
I have begun to “crowdsource” the on campus book storage. This, of course, will not allow me the grace of serendipity, but it will keep treasured older volumes near at hand. I’m having visions of the Borges short story, The Library of Babel, overlayed with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.
Search algorithms will need to include some kind of perturbation so as to simulate serendipity.
As Doctorow wrote in Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, of what use is a shelf full of books that have already been read? The one’s unread are the ones full of potential, of the undiscovered.