Library Paperback by Matthew Battles

Product Details

• Publisher: WW Norton (2015-07-10)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780393351453
• Item Weight: 221.13 grams
• Dimensions: 20.9 x 13.89 x 1.6 cm

"Engrossingly saturated with fascinating lore, colorful anecdotes, and deft portraits." —Hilarie M. Sheets, New York Times

Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge. Now they are in crisis. Former rare books librarian and Harvard metaLAB visionary Matthew Battles takes us from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries and on to the Information Age, to explore how libraries are built and how they are destroyed: from the scroll burnings in ancient China to the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia to the latest revolutionary upheavals of the digital age. A new afterword elucidates how knowledge is preserved amid the creative destruction of twenty-first-century technology.

About the Author

Matthew Battles is the author of Palimpsest and Library: An Unquiet History and a program fellow at the Berkman Center of Harvard University, where he is associate director of metaLAB, a research group exploring the bounds of networked culture.