#old libraries

[magicaloxford]

Oxford is a library-lover’s dream! I’ve put together a set of pictures from some of my favourites 📚🌠

Read magical Oxford stories here *:･ﾟ✧!

[eli-zab3th]

Abbey Library of Saint Gall, St. Gall, Switzerland

Pictures by @eli-zab3th

[i-will-arise-and-go-now]

𝑶𝒙𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒅

𝓟𝓱: 𝓙𝓪𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓙𝓸𝓻𝓰𝓮𝓼

[witchthewriter]

@radiantdanvers.

[masterblackoak]

   “Occasionally, she managed to steal a book from the room full of books, parchments, spiders’ webs, mould, which was called the Library and was kept locked, as the cellars were. Ivy grew everywhere over the walls of the keep, and right up to the Library window. Lilune had learned to climb through the ivy to the window and get in. But the shutters wouldn’t always open, and she hated the climb, was afraid of falling, being hurt.”

(Tanith Lee ~ The Castle of Dark)

[inatriestostudy]

Ok but old libraries. The only place where you can find such extensive knowledge on any topic your heart and mind desire. Old libraries with dust everywhere, huge creaking staircases, worn out carpets, yellow pages, forgotten books, secret passageways behind bookshelves and a ginger cat that's been here for longer than anyone can remember. Love messages of people who are now probably in their sixties carved out in the heavy wooden tables and cigarette stains around the windows, where thinkers, lovers and many, many others have once sat, admiring the beauty of nature. Forgotten pressed flowers, or black and white pictures, or old candy wraps falling out of books once you open them, landing on the ground for you to pick up and examine.

[miatsai]

just died of old. saw in the tags of the last post i reblogged that the user "didn't know library cards were a thing" until that post and i might have seized up in the chest and keeled over.

i miss library cards; i miss the huge stamps that made the ka-chunk sound; i miss card catalogs but not the dewey system (we use card catalogs at the garden library but it's all LoC and also we can't afford to digitize everything so every process is done by hand); i miss filling out the cards with my name and watching the librarians turn the dials on the small stamps to the day's date. i miss being the last person on the card and i miss being the first person on the new card.

tangentially, there's such a huge difference between millennials/people older than millennials and those younger than millennials in terms of how information is stored and organized. the older generations had physical access to archives and a physical organizational system that didn't rely on search strings to retrieve information. the younger generations have keywords, tags, algorithms making suggestions. i feel like as someone who straddles both modes that one of the best things i can do for my children is get them familiar with older methods of organizational thinking so they can be as agile as possible in the future.

or maybe i truly am just old and miss analog systems, as bulky and inefficient as they were.

[bibliotheque-la-nature]