Entry #2

• Gwynn, Lucy (2011). "The design of the English domestic library in the seventeenth century: readers and their book rooms." Library Trends, 60 (1), 43-53.
• A "Dig Deeper" article from The Beginnings
• Accessible online at http://bit.ly/2l11ixy

Why am I reading this?  For one, because my boyfriend and I are looking at houses and in every prospect, we immediately zero in on what room we can convert into a personal library.  (We're both lifelong readers, one who is a librarian and the other who works in a bookshop...as you can probably imagine, we have quite the collection between the two of us!)  And for two, this article right in the second sentence mentions Dumbledore and Gandalf!  Good job, Gwynn, you got this nerd's attention.

Dumbledore's office library...probably way cooler than
any other English library I could find

The concerns of 17th century English noblemen, as it turns out, are similar to our concerns.  Do we have enough physical space for all our books?  What do we get rid of to make room?  (May we not end up like Sir Edward Dering who blew a lot of money installing more and more shelves, and hidden drawers, only to die and then have his son stash the entire library away in old chests, in a forgotten closet.  At least donate the books somewhere when we die, future children!)  And how do we organize them, by size, by color, or by category? 

But where as we are really only concerned with creating a reading nook for ourselves with plenty of shelving, personal library owners were concerned with "the use of space to stimulate intellectual and social associations."  After all, what is the point of owning a lot of physical books if not to use them to impress others with your vast knowledge?  I would also eventually be concerned with decorating our library; seventeenth century Englishmen were not.  "The[ir] intention was to strip away distractions and to express austerity and sober dedication to learning."  But perhaps that shows the difference in reading habits over time--the personal libraries of old would be collecting informational and educational texts, while readers today lean largely towards fiction.