I recently read an article that in a library journal that as early as 1934, Ortega y Gasset startled librarians when he delivered an essay entitled "the Mission of the Librarians." Essentially insisting that the modern books have become uncontrollable, too many being published ergo,too many to read, and worse, "many of them are useless and stupid; their existence and their conservation is a dead weight upon humanity which is already bent low under other loads." Ortega Gasset, writes of this proliferation :

His solution: librarians in charge of what gets published!...gatekeepers of knowledge! imagine the implications of this, librarians repudiating the First amendment! We truly would be the Book Nazi!

Given what has happened with the Internet I wonder what would happen to a systematic man like Ortega y Gassett when faced with the 21st century's proliferation of information in not only print, that's bad enough, but in digital format!

Totally out of control!

It is amazing how limited some people focus on subjects. It reminds me of the head of the US Patent Department going to the President of the US and saying they could close their offices over one hundred years ago because everything that could be invented had been invented.

Not everyone has vision, or the ability to see that the scope of what people can think and do is being heightened by the written word and their imagination.

I imagine the guy from Patents is glad to have the company.

It does disturb me though that someone could suggest "limits" based on an individual human's concept of what belongs and what doesn't.

Wolf

Ortega y Gasset was actually serious about this. Needless to say librarians did not take his advice.

His rant really was a personal existential phenomelogical rant. He was no longer able to keep up with the literature of interest, too much was being developed and printed (reading Unamuno alone must have kept him busy) therefore someone had to remedy this and who better than the librarians. Ha!

The opposite, as we know happened, academic and public libraries flourished. The only limitations were ones of space to house the books, a healthy budget to buy the books, and the collection development policy, which varies from institution to institution.

Now, print is not the only avenue for the containment of knowledge. Digital information found in the Internet and electronic databases, offer readers even more and more avenues for accessing information.

If he were alive today, I wonder if Ortega y Gasset would hold this same worldview on information. I doubt it.

Our postmodern problem is not one of limiting information, but of authenticating information. The use that we make of digital information is on par with our individual ability to validate the information we find. Subject specialits know the literature, undergraduate students in Composition 101 lack this skill. There's no publishers, editors,lawyers, or peer review boards to authenticate what's on the Internet.

This is a very interesting topic, one that is older than espounded by Ortega y Gasset. He may have thought that there was too much information, but lacked the wisdom to appreciate that man has the ability a filter out what is out there in the world of thought.

About 1000BC a writer wrote of a similar theme regarding a vast amount of knowledge and writings, seeking to teach the correct words of truth. The book of Ecclesiates tells of the congregator who sought to do this...

Ecclesiates 12:9-12...9 And besides the fact that the congregator had become wise, he also taught the people knowledge continually, and he pondered and made a thorough search, that he might arrange many proverbs in order. 10 The congregator sought to find the delightful words and with writing of correct words of truth. 11 The words of the wise ones are like oxgoads, and just like nails driven in are those indulging in collections [of sentences]...12 As regards anything besides these, my son, take a warning: To the making of many books there is no end, and much devotion [to them] is wearisome to the flesh.

Simply put...there's a ton of information out there, it's up to you to use your head to figure out what's important.