I am in the middle of reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 post- apocalyptic novel. At the midpoint, the monkish sect that has been preserving sacred texts from the previous centuries (many of them scientific documents) is beginning to share them as part of an apparent renaissance.
There is an exchange between two central figures at this point as the thousand-year-old role of the abbey moves from archiving to sharing. It struck me as an eerily prescient metaphor for libraries now:
Benjamin smirked. "I have no sympathy for you. The books you stored away may be hoary with age, but they were written by children of the world, and they'll be taken from you by children of the world, and you had no business meddling with them in the first place."
"Ah, now you care to prophesy!"
"Not at all. 'Soon the sun will set' - is that prophesy? No, it's merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events. The children of the world are consistent too - so I say they will soak up everything you can offer, take your job away from you, and then denounce you as a decrepit work. Finally, they will ignore you entirely. It's your own fault. The Book I gave you should have been enough for you. Now you'll just have to take the consequences for your meddling."
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