I just read “the library of babel” last night ( http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html ) and this morning saw these beautiful images. I remember when I was a child I saw “Beauty and the Beast”, after seeing the scene where the Beast reveals his library to her…I’ve always wanted to see a library like this…do you think things would be different if libraries were still made like this?

“Their name is execrated, but those who deplore the “treasures” destroyed by this frenzy neglect two notable facts. One: the Library is so enormous that any reduction of human origin is infinitesimal. The other: every copy is unique, irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles: works which differ only in a letter or a comma. Counter to general opinion, I venture to suppose that the consequences of the Purifiers’ depredations have been exaggerated by the horror these fanatics produced. They were urged on by the delirium of trying to reach the books in the Crimson Hexagon: books whose format is smaller than usual, all-powerful, illustrated and magical.” – Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel
“For not only did he find himself confronted by problems which have puzzled the wisest of men, such as What is love? What is friendship? What is truth? but directly he came to think about them, his whole past, which seemed to him of extreme length and variety, rushed into the falling second, swelled it a dozen times its natural size, coloured it a thousand tints, and filled it with all the odds and ends of the universe.”
– Virginia Woolf, Orlando