Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The
Library of Babel
Evening Salon, 16 April 2010: Collecting and Knowledge, The Library
of Babel / In and Out of Place Exhibition, 176 Zabludowicz Collection
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, University
College London
1. Title Slide
Thanks to the collection for inviting me to give this paper, and for providing the images from
the exhibition that form my slides.
2. Oskar Schmidt. Girl with Book, 2005
It’s easy to think of the acquisition of knowledge through reading as a solitary activity, and
hard for us in 21st century Britain to think there was ever a time before universal access to
education, before WH Smiths introduced penny bookstalls at stations, before Gutenberg
invented the printing press. The written word surrounds us, and this picture by Oskar Schmidt
is startling for many aspects of its composition, including the stripped back nature of the
girl’s surroundings – no bookcases on the walls, no chair for her to sit on, not even a carpet;
just one girl and her book.
3. Candida Höfer. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris V, 1998
In contrast, this photo of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France by Candida Höfer presents the
stereotypical image of the Library as it occupies most of our imaginations. We picture books
arranged in stacks in some sort of order understood by librarians and other scholars, in a
hushed and reverent environment, waiting patiently on the shelves for us to discover them.
It is this image that Borges drew on and expanded in his short story The Library of Babel,
which uses the Library as a metaphor for the universe and, in turn, throws up questions about
the possibility and indeed, desirability, of ever housing all the published (and unpublished)
knowledge of the universe in one place. The story opens:
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and
perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between,
surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see,
interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is
invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides
except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely
exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow
hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the
rest.
Depending on the level of our bibliophilia, this image may attract or repel us.
4. Damien Roach. Chapter 1: Appearance and Reality, 2007
At the next salon, experts will be talking about the theology of The Library of Babel, so I
shall make no attempt to discuss that here, instead focusing on the philosophical questions of
Knowledge Organization that Borges raises.
The universal library has been widely accepted as an ideal since the term was first coined in
the 16th century when the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner attempted to list all the writers
who had ever lived in his Bibliotheca universalis. The unattainable aim of the universal
library is often stated as to collect all published knowledge, sometimes widened to include
unpublished archives, and often through practicality, narrowed to all the best books or all the
most useful books.
Examples of libraries with universal aims include national libraries like the BNF and British
Library and other copyright deposit libraries like the Bodleian, and Cambridge University
Library, to which all published books in the UK should be sent for addition to the collections.
Large academic libraries collecting across all subject areas might be said to have universal
aims. And, after the Library Act of 1851, our UK public libraries are supposed to have the
aim of collecting and providing access to universal information. Whatever you want to know,
whoever you are, the theory is you should be able to find it in, or through, your library.
And I say “through” because, increasingly, sources of information are online. Few people can
hear the words “universal library” these days without thinking about the Google Book
Project, or, for that matter, the tens of billions of webpages accessed most commonly by all
of us through a Google search.
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
5. Helen Chadwick. Wreath to Pleasure No. 7, 1992-3
Of course, universality can only ever be an aim. The practicalities of space and time, be it in a
real-world building or the virtual libraries of the Internet, mean that it is inevitable some
prioritisation of workload, some weeding of stock has to take place – has probably already
taken place before the doors are opened to the public.
In researching this paper, I went back to writings about the Library of Alexandria, often cited
as the first universal library. Part of the Museion (Museum) inherited by Ptolemy I in 300
BC, the Library was an active centre of scholarship, whose collection policies extended far
beyond its native Hellenistic literature. Emissaries in Athens and Rhodes, the centres of the
Greek book trade, collected passionately, often in their enthusiasm falling victim to forgers.
By the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes I, 246-221 BC, Alexandria was the busiest port in the
Mediterranean, and controlled the trade in papyrus, the dominant writing material of the day.
Ptolemy ordered all ships docking at Alexandria to be searched, scrolls removed and copied.
Significantly, the Library retained the original while the copy was returned to the ship. These
works, known as the ‘books from the ships’ were stored in a special section of the Library –
what the modern public library might term “World Literature”.
Similarly, the same Ptolemy is said to have borrowed Athens’ official copies of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides, copied them and returned the copies, forfeiting the 15 talents he had
given as a deposit. On these stories and others like them, the Library of Alexandria’s
reputation as a depository of universal knowledge is founded.
6. Mary Kelly. Dear Andy, 2006
However, already in the reference I’ve made to “Athens’ official copies” of classical texts, I
have hinted that there are other philosophies of curation available, and different reasons to
collect texts.
At least three centuries before Alexandria, we are aware of active literary centres in the
Middle East. Archaeological excavations have uncovered libraries and archives attached to
palaces, in which have been found clay tablets and papyrus scrolls.
Many of these documents were records of official business – land transactions, tax records
and other legal works. One of the largest excavations, of the Palace Library at Ebla has given
us an insight into how these tablets and papyri were organised and stored.
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
In this case, the classification system was governed by the limitations of the media being
stored – wooden racks round the walls holding tablets and wicker baskets in the middle of the
room holding papyri. In the cases of small numbers of records, it was enough to have a loose
ordering, since it would not take long to sift through the few records in each silo. However, as
collections of literature and philosophy built up both library furniture and the corresponding
classification system changed. Small pigeon holes were used, one for each text, so that a
scroll could be removed and returned later, without disturbing the general order.
Already at this era, c600BC we begin to find evidence of scroll labels and the precursors to
the modern title page. Arguably, both archival and library science can date the foundations of
their disciplines to this point.
And an important observation to make is that these records did not aim to be universal. Just
as we dispose of last year’s housing insurance documents when we have received this year’s,
the scribes in charge of palace archives kept each class of material for as long as it was
useful. Similarly, there are few examples of duplicates in early collections of literary texts,
although it is difficult to state categorically that libraries did not hold multiple copies, since
so many texts have been lost through natural disaster.
7. Glenn Ligon. Stranger #26, 2006
In any case, the philosophy most opposed to the universal library could be said to be the
canonical library. Advocated by Seneca, who wrote in his Epistulae morales that “it does not
matter how many books you have, but how good they are,” the idea of establishing a canon of
literature – of ensuring that the very best works survived for future generations – is in fact at
the heart of the birth of all written culture.
It is most familiar to us in the stories surrounding the canon of the books of the Bible, and to
the Greeks, in the constant (still ongoing) battle to establish a definitive edition of Homer.
Shakespeare and Chaucer studies too have their fair share of battles fought over the exact
intention of the author. In fact, the discipline of textual bibliography has never been more
popular than today. Think of the newspaper headlines and column inches devoted to
Wikipedia inaccuracies and points of view.
In any case, before there was Alexandria, there were the glossaries Aristotle claimed were
used by the rhapsodists to elucidate and help them remember the works they recited and the
libraries attached to the academies, or schools of philosophy. Here, the emphasis was on
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
interrogating past works to establish more robust, “truer” understandings of the world. There
are even hints at early public libraries – the tyrant Pisistratus is mentioned by Cicero as the
first collector of Homeric epics, obsessed with forming a standard Attic written edition (now
lost).
8. Rebecca Wilton. Architekten (Architects), 2007
Indeed, this is one of the issues surrounding early literature: so much has been lost to us, not
only through the famous fire at Alexandria, but also through the prioritisation of some
literature over others.
Indeed, as I reread the texts about Alexandria, I realised that I had missed part of the role
played by one of my own library heroes, Callimachus. Born in c300 BC, Callimachus was
instructed to catalogue the books in the library. The result was The pinakes, literally ‘the
tables’ but essentially what Borges would call “the catalogue of catalogues”. Note the full
title, though, of this record of the world’s first and greatest universal library – Callimachus
called his work Tables of all those who were eminent in every branch of learning and of their
writings, in 120 books. So, not everything ever written, but everything written by those
eminent in their field.
In fact, Callimachus was asked not merely to list the Library’s holdings, but to pass
judgement on the textual integrity of the works, to assess the worth of multiple copies and
editions of works and to decide the authorship of unattributed works or of two works bearing
the same title.
9. Glenn Ligon. Condition Report, 2000
These are some of the tasks undertaken by modern day librarians and curators. We weed
stock to declutter our users’ search results, we attempt to predict the number of copies
required, we disambiguate items by authors with the same name and track down the creators
of works that are anonymous or pseudonymous (although sometimes the odd genius, such as
‘Banksy’ slips through our net).
Because whether we live in Hellenistic Alexandria or 21st century London, how can we
orientate ourselves without some signage, some order? In The Library of Babel, Borges
writes
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first
impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be
the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world
problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe
was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of
hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of
apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in
the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the
greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways,
urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims
disputed in the narrow corridors, proferred dark curses, strangled each other
on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met
their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote
regions. Others went mad ... The Vindications exist (I have seen two which
refer to persons of the future, to persons who are perhaps not imaginary) but
the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man's finding his
Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.
And this really is the nub of the matter. It is no use having everything if we can find nothing.
To that end, librarians build catalogues, archivists finding aids, and curators structure their
exhibitions with a recommended route to follow.
As I prepared for this evening, I wondered whether to talk to you about the bearded elders of
my profession, Panizzi who created the British Library catalogue; Jewett, who mooted the
first universal catalogue, a forerunner to OCLC’s WorldCat; Dewey and his universal
decimal classifications. That’s certainly where I start with my Masters students.
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
But then, I kept coming back to Ranganathan’s Five Laws:
Books are for use.
Every book its reader.
Every reader his book.
Save the time of the reader.
A library is a growing organism.
Contemporary with Borges, I am struck by how the final law takes us back to The Library of
Babel. Without Callimachus’s Pinakes, the “catalogue of catalogues” Borges tells us
There are official searchers, inquisitors. I have seen them in the performance
of their function: they always arrive extremely tired from their journeys; they
speak of a broken stairway which almost killed them; they talk with the
librarian of galleries and stairs; sometimes they pick up the nearest volume
and leaf through it, looking for infamous words. Obviously, no one expects to
discover anything.
10. Barnaby Hosking. Untitled II, 2007 [side view]
And this is the truth, in a large collection, much less Borges’s imagined universal library,
without finding aids, without catalogues, without a classified shelving order or a suggested
route through, nothing can be found.
Without Google’s brilliant algorithms, we would be staring into a blank screen, or worse, one
so crowded with nonsense, with babble, that a blank screen would be better. Borges writes
We also know of another superstition of that time: that of the Man of the
Book. On some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book
which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian
has gone through it and he is analogous to a god. In the language of this zone
vestiges of this remote functionary's cult still persist. Many wandered in
search of Him. For a century they have exhausted in vain the most varied
areas. How could one locate the venerated and secret hexagon which housed
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Knowledge Organization: the universal versus the canonical in The Library of Babel
Anne Welsh, Lecturer in Library & Information Studies, UCL
Him? Someone proposed a regressive method: To locate book A, consult first
book B which indicates A's position; to locate book B, consult first a book C,
and so on to infinity ... In adventures such as these, I have squandered and
wasted my years. It does not seem unlikely to me that there is a total book on
some shelf of the universe; I pray to the unknown gods that a man -- just one,
even though it were thousands of years ago! -- may have examined and read
it.
In the end, Borges’ unhappy narrator, unable to find meaning in the Library is left only with
himself.
And that, I suggest, contrary to the story of The Library of Babel, is the joy of its exhibition.
Books do not need order; objects do not need order, but people do. As we walk through the
crowded gallery we find our own narrative to make sense of what we encounter, we impose
our own order, irrespective of the numbers on the tiny map pins that relate each work of art to
the gallery guide.
When we examine old classification schemes, be it Linnaeus’s classification of plants or the
Walpole’s cabinets of curiosities at Strawberry Hill, what we learn most of all is not about the
universe but about the man (or woman) who created the scheme. When we look at the user
tags applied on web sharing sites like flickr, the most popular tends to be “my family”.
[click] Barnaby Hosking. Untitled II, 2007 [front view]
When we look at the world of print and try to order it, what we see reflected back most
commonly, is ourselves.
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