Why, after being called "Libraries," for centuries, are these hallowed college institutions being renamed: "Learning Centers," and "Resource Centers," etc? What's wrong with the time-honored and venerable name: "Library"? What is to be gained?
Last Updated: 21.06.2025 14:12
They are not “libraries”. Libraries were where books “libros”—were housed. These places have often shipped out and sold off their books, and now they house computers and other electronic means of access to “resources”, which are not books, newspapers and periodicals, like in the “olden days” when I went to a university with one of the top four research libraries in my discipline in the nation. Students can’t read anymore anyway, coming out of our desiccated public school system, so why would they need books? They need “resources”—access to “blogs” where self-styled pundits with a million or more “followers” tell them what they need to think. Union Theological Seminary in New York, once the premier theological seminary in the country, years ago sold off its vaunted Union Library—the most extensive theological library in the USA—to Columbia University. Libraries, one of the key building blocks of Western civilization, and one of the critical elements that delivered Europe out of the dark ages, are passing into the sunset, and we are entering into a new dark age on account of technology—calculators, cell phones and AI—rendering human learning and knowledge obsolete in the eyes of our corporate overlords. Doesn’t anyone read “Fahrenheit 451” anymore?