Dr. Richard Macksey’s Viral Yet Non-Existent Library
Ok, we all know Instagram loooooves this kind of image, but before you blindly double tap, read on!
The headline and sub-hed to this article in the NYT the other week: “Lots of People Want to Check Out This Library: An image continues to resurface on social media. The place no longer exists.”
According to social media, the owner/occupant of this library has been Umberto Eco. (Nope.) It exists in Italy or Prague. (No.) According to author Don Winslow who tweeted it recently (and who had no idea of its origins), “It’s clearly the home of a person who loves and collects books.” (Obviously.) But this personal library no longer exists; it belonged to the late Richard Macksey, a professor at Johns Hopkins. According to the piece, “After Dr. Macksey’s death [in 2019], a SWAT-team-like group of librarians and conservationists spent three weeks combing through his book-filled, 7,400-square-foot house to select 35,000 volumes to add to the university’s libraries.” (What a treasure trove!)
This is a great tale about how images can take on a life of their own and how we can bestow our own meaning on them. But I’m mostly intrigued by how a physical object, or a collection of physical objects, has become so synonymous with #goals or #cozy. Don’t get me wrong…I love that. But it’s really intriguing, right? Vinyl collections might beg for some admiration, but those are hard to display. DVDs? Um, no. (Also, please let me know if you still buy DVDs???)
Although it often drives me bonkers what “performs well” on this platform (graphics = no, pictures of your face = yes) and that posting a bunch of books artfully scattered around will garner lots of hearts, it does warm my own cynic heart that even if in just a corner of their brain, people think a story printed on actual paper is amazing. #books
originally published on instagram