Saturday, January 18, 2014

{chuckle}

Mulluane asked an interesting question on her Old Bat's Belfry blog ( http://oldbatsbelfry.blogspot.com/ ) yesterday. (Over here: http://oldbatsbelfry.blogspot.com/2014/01/fun-fridays-let-your-imaginations-fly.html ) She asked what job we'd like to have in heaven.

I said librarian, and apologized for not being more creative and original.

She asked me to save it, and come up with another answer. My first answer was the right one for me. I just explained why in a follow-up comment:

"{blink} I don't think it would be much of a heaven if you didn't have stories to keep you entertained, or if you couldn't finally learn the answers to the burning questions you always wondered about.

If you have enough stories to keep everyone entertained with all their different tastes, and enough information to answer everyone's burning questions, including the highly technical ones of specialists within their fields... well, you'll have to store that information somewhere. Libraries started with wooden boards, clay tablets, and papyrus scrolls. They moved to parchment and vellum, then started cutting the vellum and binding it into books. Then they started getting audio visual materials and computer files. Every last type has been collected, organized, and preserved by libraries. Even if they stored al this in the minds of assorted residents, they'd need a very detailed catalog to tell you which resident to consult about what.

But I bet they don't, because who wants to have to drop whatever they're busy doing to answer a question every time someone thinks of it? So they'll have some way to store both stories and information that saves everyone from interruptions. Then it won't matter whether they store it books, or clouds, or stars, or atoms; they'll still have to store those materials,
 and organize them, and help folks find the specific information and stories they want when they want it.

The folks who do that will be librarians by definition... and I'd give anything to be one of them. {SMILE}"


I'm not sure what either she or David, the other fellow in the discussion so far, will think of that, but it really is the truth. {SMILE, wink}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin