The British Library is, first and foremost, a repository of all British production, and receives – at least – a copy of each and every book published in its territory, as well as books published for export to other countries.
It is estimated that there are between 170 and 200 million books, including physical and digital publications of books, manuscripts, newspapers, magazines, videos, music, sound recordings, speeches, radio broadcasts and programs, drawings, maps, stamps, projects, drawings and patent documents.
Each year, 9,600 meters of new shelves are needed, for 3 million new items added, either by donation or acquisition.
Digitization is necessary, not only as a way to enable remote access and research, but as a means of preservation, indexing for research, collection security and remote storage, such is the volume of square meters required for storage. There are multiple buildings and warehouses, increasingly larger and further away from the public and researchers.
While the British Library is able to administer, maintain, manage and make its collection available with just under 2 thousand employees, the American Library of Congress, a rival in terms of the size and size of its collection, requires 3 thousand employees, despite being less spread out, using fewer buildings.
China, France, Canada, Russia, Japan, Israel, all have in their national libraries the same spirit of respect and care for history and cultural production.
Brazil could not be any different, and our National Library, although much smaller in terms of collection, has a special case at its headquarters, in one of the most beautiful buildings in the center of Rio de Janeiro, on Avenida Rio Branco. An unmissable program for architects, geographers, historians, researchers and lovers of books and maps, the National Library also stores immigration dossiers and a multitude of historical documents, in addition to books, newspapers and periodicals. A true journey through time, it is a source of pride as a State institution (just for a change, it is necessary to register).
Imagine if, by an internal decision, the British Library or the Library of Congress (or even our National Library) chose, instead of filling their shelves and storage spaces to the maximum, they chose to occupy, say, 50% of each shelf, centering half of the books in the middle of the shelf and leaving a nice space for ventilation at each end.
It could be interesting, more ventilated, for sure. Easier for 2 people on opposite sides to see each other and, perhaps, talk while researching or arranging the collection.
Pleasant, friendly, encouraging interaction between people, but also with a physical problem, another with the size of the team and, of the two problems together, a third: costs.
Fewer books per shelf means more meters of shelves, which in turn means bigger buildings. The greater the distance to travel requires more staff, more furniture, more carpet, more wiring, more lighting, more fire fighting systems, more air conditioning devices, in short, more of everything.
And more of everything always means more money.
In a reverse calculation, the cost of storing each book increased, perhaps doubled, eventually tripled. The risk, although intangible, has also increased, because the response and action time for any problem increases disproportionately to the increase in space required.
Fire right there? a fire hydrant will do the trick. And on another floor, or 400 meters away? Has anyone had an accident or a sudden illness in a remote, distant place?
Well, it’s the same with cities, if you think that the library buildings are the neighborhoods, the shelves are the blocks, and the shelves are the lots.
If you occupy the entire lot, the infrastructure cost drops. If it only occupies one part, if it requires frontal and lateral clearances, the cost of implementing the infrastructure automatically goes up. It’s pure, basic mathematics.
And the costs of maintaining and improving the implemented infrastructure also rise, as do the costs of public transport, the complexity of traffic, mobility problems, the care of streets, sidewalks, squares and parks, garbage collection, the allocation of public resources in schools and hospitals, the number of people needed for operations, maintenance and janitorial work and, not least, the number of cars and buses on the streets, and – not to say that I didn’t mention of sustainability – emissions of polluting gases.
Again, increased costs, both for public authorities and concessionaires, as well as for citizens and companies.
And yet, it does not occur to any manager of one of these libraries (or the National Library) to fill the shelves with fewer books. On the contrary, they are always investing in new means and new technologies for optimizing storage, paying attention to accumulated empirical knowledge (and available on the planet), common sense, logic and facts.
They meet periodically in events dedicated to the management, storage, digitalization and democratization of access to their collections, in the same way that municipal managers participate in urban planning events, smart cities and the requalification of degraded areas but, for some unfathomable reason, neither accumulated empirical knowledge (and available on the planet), neither common sense, nor logic nor the facts learned in these events are translated into the Master Plans of Brazilian metropolises.
The Master Plans reflect, on the contrary (since the advent of Brasília and more specifically, since the 1970s), the low occupancy in the lots and densification as a rule, the reduction of construction potential, the problematization of the built environment and a exaggerated focus on works on the road system.
If there were in the world of libraries the divorce that prevails between the vision of the Master Plans and the accumulated empirical knowledge (and available on the planet), common sense, logic and facts, it is possible that the National Libraries, as an institution for the preservation of history and the culture of each country, had already lost their importance and ceased to fulfill their function.
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*This text does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Chaos Planned.
