The Glass Library: A Retro-Prospective

In tandem with the protracted debate over the ramificationsof the digital information technologies forthe library, there has been a surprising surge in theconstruction of new libraries over the course of thepast twenty-five years. The overarching intent behindthese new libraries has been to address the specificdemands and challenges of the digital age. However,the responses have not been merely programmaticand functional, or for that matter technological innature. In these regards, old and new libraries alikehave responded and adapted in like manner. Yet, inmark contrast to the punctured masonry frame oftraditional libraries, what distinguishes the majorityof the new libraries is their appearance as articulatedvolumes cladded often entirely in glass.Why for the last two and half decades “permeabilityand transparency” of the library’s exterior envelope(Dunlap 2002), has been considered a requisite virtue,and not so in the many preceding decades, is the focusof this paper. Given that there is no overt programmatic,functional, or technological correlation betweenthe incorporation of digital information technologiesand the aesthetic desirability of the display-case(vitrine) approach to the outer envelope of the library,this essay examines the overlap as an ideationalrather than a technological response to the uniqueconceptual challenges of the digital information technologies.The culprit is the virtual text that brings tosurface certain culturally unsettling aspects of writingthat the analogue age had carefully kept under wrapswithin the cover of the book, inside the confines ofthe library. Unlike the analogue text, the virtual textoffers no correlation between its temporal appearance(the screen) and its indiscernible spatial presence(the digital media). What it presents is a spatial andtemporal dislocation and dispersion of appearance andsubstance that the library for the “electronic present”is critically asked to recompense as the measure ofits aesthetic success. The less the “electronic text” islike the analogue text, the more the “library for theelectronic present” is wished to offer, by way of substitutionand supplementation, what the “electronictext” does not: a “perceptible correlation between theboundaries of the texts” and “the physical properties ofthe artifact” (Nunberg 1993), i.e., between appearanceand substance, or else outer-form and inner-content.

Volume Editors
Luis Francisco Rico-Gutierrez & Martha Thorne

ISBN
978-1-944214-08-1