of library:     “Two primary functions occur in libraries: the storage of the information source… and the opportunity of having access to that information by individuals at a time of their choosing.  That this is a matter of a direct and individual relationship is crucial, and of primary design significance.  If this analysis is correct, one would expect libraries to contain spaces which in some way delineate the activity zones of individuals.  The carrel associated with the monasteries of the Middle Ages provides an early and important example for it provided a personal space within a larger whole.  In some ways, it was analogous to the niches of the west front of cathedrals that sheltered their statues of saints and gave each one a defined aedicule.”

(p.6, Brawne)

of reading: “…the importance of reading aloud, reading as declamation, and reading as group performance.  The practice of reading aloud for oneself or for others, common in ancient civilizations, continued to be the most pervasive kind of aesthetic reading until silent reading became the accepted practice among educated readers, beginning in the 16^th century .  This change from reading aloud to silent reading occurred only after Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes separated words in manuscripts, allowing readers to read much more quickly and to process more complex texts.  Silent reading was first monastic and then scholastic, interiorizing works of imagination and privatizing intellectual property.  Oral reading was and is public and phatic.”

                    The following are warnings due to the reading revolution during the second half of the 18^th century in England, France and Germany; the publication of books and newspapers rose, book prices fell,… and society was threatened?:

                    “Nothing so vexed the German ideologues as the habit their contemporaries had supposedly acquired of devouring greedily one after another of these new titles, [an act comparative] with cruising or philandering.”                                                                          (p.3, Travis)

“Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader.  The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of his victim.  Novels should be prohibited by the state.”

- Elias Canetti (p.44, Maitre)

                    Reading aloud inspired vocal expression and potential to continue off on one’s own path of thought.  Reading created an opportunity to think, to be exposed to new ideas - possibilities and supposed impossibilities. 

of book:       A comment on the book versus information technology: “There is of course something about the book as an object which is unlikely to make it obsolete for a long time to come.  This is not just historical conditioning.  No other form is quite so handleable, so easily used under all sorts of conditions from lying in bed to sitting on a mountaintop, or so independent of any support systems such as telephone lines…”

(p.9, Brawne)

“…[the book] was an object whose size and weight he obviously enjoyed.  The book is transportable, easily cross-referenced, reassessed and scrolled…”               (p.10, Brawne)