Libraries: Where the world’s memory is stored (2018)

Umberto Eco on memory at the then-newly opened Bibliotheca Alexandrina:

> WE HAVE THREE TYPES OF MEMORY. The first one is organic, which is the memory made of flesh and blood and the one administrated by our brain. The second is mineral, and in this sense mankind has known two kinds of mineral memory: millennia ago, this was the memory represented by clay tablets and obelisks, pretty well known in this country, on which people carved their texts. However, this second type is also the electronic memory of today's computers, based upon silicon. We have also known another kind of memory, the vegetal one, the one represented by the first papyruses, again well known in this country, and then on books, made of paper. Let me disregard the fact that at a certain moment the vellum of the first codices were of an organic origin, and the fact that the first paper was made with rugs and not with wood. Let me speak for the sake of simplicity of vegetal memory in order to designate books.

* http://www.umbertoeco.com/en/bibliotheca-alexandrina-2003.ht...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina

He himself had quite the collection as well:

* http://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-umberto-eco-walk-th...

A lot of the world's memory is also stored in shadow libraries such as Library Genesis and sci-hub.

Pretty pictures but perhaps too much focus on historical art and religion and not enough on working, utilitarian libraries?