“The certitude that everything has been written negates us or turns us into phantoms. I know of districts in which the young men prostrate themselves before books and kiss their pages in a barbarous manner, but they do not know how to decipher a single letter. Epidemics, heretical conflicts, peregrinations which inevitably degenerate into banditry, have decimated the population. I believe I have mentioned suicides, more and more frequent with the years. Perhaps my old age and fearfulness deceive me, but I suspect that the human species — the unique species — is about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure: illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.”
―Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
1. Stockholm Library, Stockholm, Sweden
2. Philological Brain Library at the Free University, Berlin, Germany
3. Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Galway, Dublin
4. Iowa State Capitol Library, Iowa, USA
5. José Vasconcelos Library, Mexico City, Mexico
6. Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires, Argentina
7. National Library of Finland, Helsinki
8. Strahov Theological Hall – Strahov Monastery, Prague, Czech Republic
9. Stuttgart City Library, Stuttgart, Germany
10. The Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland
11. Special mention – Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
I liked the one in Buenos Aires.
It’s funny that one of them is in Iowa. Why Iowa? Odd.
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There are some in even more strange places I found out after I read this… lol
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