Please read with both hands on the table

On the Dashboard of my Macintosh, the widget for the Encyclopaedia Britannica shares space with that for the Wikipedia, which, as a reference source, I find somewhat patchy, but I have a soft spot for that project. Actually, more often than not it triumphs over the Britannica as a reference source: when I need a comprehensive overview of the Battle of Stalingrad I'll use the Britannica; but if I need a quick reference to what XML is all about the Wikipedia's a lot more succinct. By its very nature it'll never actually be "finished"; but at a certain point I think it'll actually reach a watershed point as a reference tool in its own right.

I'm just a little bemused that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is trying to keep itself from obsolescence by putting itself online, and just a little bit sad that they've given up their lordly position on the shelves of every middle-class home; there was something comforting about the authoritativeness of the dark maroon spines with gilded lettering; when you looked up it was as though the full weight of the British Empire was staring back down at you, and the unspoken message wa: "Here is all the knowledge that is worth knowing"; and if you listened carefully, the grand pronouncement was followed by a sotto voce "...you little upstart..." So in the middle of a sentence I would would hesitate, unable to resist the authority of those rows of gilded spines with their arms akimbo behind me, and double-check what I was about to dash off. Strangely enough, now that the Britannica can be called by pressing F12 on the keyboard, I rarely bother.

Credit must be given, thus, to the Oxford English Dictionary, which has resisted the temptation to give up the fight and lurk in cyberspace. Which is a ironic, considering that you need a certain amount of time to get through a Britannica article; whereas you'd think that with the OED you just want to look up a word. (To be honest, what I used to do was take the appropriate volume of the Britannica to the loo with me; its laxative powers are vastly underrated.) But perhaps the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary know that the people who really use the OED for what it is aren't just looking up the meaning of a word, just as Jane Grigson's cookbooks aren't to be used to look up a recipe. No, the Oxford English Dictionary was written by madmen for madmen, and is meant to be read like a novel. (Yes, really: there's a book about the making of it called The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester.) This is why it runs twenty volumes long and has entries 60,000 words long on a single word. Now that's what I'd like to have behind me while I'm at my desk; though if I went to the loo to check out the proper usage of "go" I might never come back.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about all these resources being moved online. I'm an impatient person, and more often than not my more esoteric desires aren't to be found at the local bookstore or music shop. Music is less of a problem; there's always Limewire; but the books I want are always the ones that take a couple of weeks to arrive, so that by the time I get them I tend to open the package with faint surprise. I wanted this? Badly enough to order it? Instant gratification is to be had by downloading e-books; but that means keeping the household up all night with the printer chugging away. Audiobooks I like, but I have a special designation for them; they're for the books that I know I should read (and actually want to read) but I can't bring myself to, like keeping up to date with the latest mathematics and media theory stuff. Based on my own reading habits, I don't think the printed word is going out of date anytime soon, but that's a whole different issue from that of reference.

But while we're hovering around the topic, I'd like to put in a word about libraries. Most people have given up on future survivial of libraries; and I agree, if it's community libraries we're talking about, the kind with little old ladies shushing you and taking twenty minutes to look for a book which turns out to have been lost during the war. But the big libraries will always have their place in the world, and for the same reason that the OED exists in printed form: reference. Every single book published in Britain is required, by law, to send a copy to five libraries: the British Library, the Bodleian in Oxford, the University Library at Cambridge, and two others I can't remember (in Scotland and Wales). Just wandering around the Bodleian is an enthralling experience; it's the same feeling has having the Britannica staring down at you, but a thousand times over.

The University Library at Cambridge is less imposing, both inside and out; in fact, from a distance, there's something remotely phallic about its architecture. There's an urban myth (that might be true; who knows) that the library houses its private collection of pornography (after all, *every* book in Britain is sent there) at the very tip of the phallic protuberance; they purportedly have pornographic material dating from the time of Galileo. Although the University Library (unlike the Bodleian) is a lending library, the ponographic material must be read in that special room at the foreskin; there is a large window through which the curators can check on you and a sign that exhorts you to "Please Read With Both Hands On The Table".

Of course, there are also Newton's papers, some portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls that scholars are working on; and the Bodleiand and the Library of Congress have their own treasures. Not to mention the papers from the trial of Galileo at the Vatican. But if I had free access to all the libraries in the world; that's where I would head first. After all, that's what libraries are for. And that's what you won't find on the Internet.

This way to the phallus
The unfinished project