Two reporters from the Harvard Crimson newspaper reached out to me for comments on the closure of the Wolbach Library at the Center for Astrophysics. I told them that I was not involved in this decision. But I chose to add some personal remarks using the WiFi connectivity of a JetBlue flight to Sanibel, Florida, where I was scheduled to give a public lecture and sign copies of my new book “Interstellar” a few hours later.
For me, any library closure is a sad moment because over the years I developed an emotional connection to physical books. A book signing event, like the one I was heading to, brings a deep sense of awe and respect to the words printed physically on a book. Just a few weeks ago, on February 18, 2024, I attended another book signing event at the birth town of Nicolaus Copernicus, Toruń in Poland, where the governor, Piotr Całbecki, awarded me a leather-bounded, physical copy of the historic De Revolutionibus book. Holding a physical copy in my hands instead of checking its content online is like meeting a person in three-dimensions rather than on the two-dimensional display of a computer screen.
Call me romantic, but I still reminisce on the days of going to a library to retrieve background information for my scientific research, on the pages of textbooks or papers in bound printed copies of scientific journals. The search through the shelves of tightly packed books, alphabetically or chronologically organized, was wonderful.
But in recent years, many academic institutions closed their libraries because the same materials can be found online. On a recent visit to the Weizmann Institute in Israel, I was saddened to find out that the Physics Library was turned into a lecture hall with most books transferred to storage. I still read the printed version of the newspaper every morning out of loyalty to the past.
A few hours later, I arrived at the beautiful Sanibel Island in Florida. I was supposed to give my public lecture there a year ago, but Hurricane Ian devastated the vegetation and infrastructure there. Strangely, the devastated beaches, closed gas stations and dead trees reminded me of what was left of the Weizmann Physics library.
The Sanibelians greeted me with kindness and generosity in the green room. They included prominent entrepreneurs and politicians. But the biggest surprise came from the audience which filled the auditorium with a record number of young children and teenagers who asked their parents and grandparents to take them to this public event because they had been following my research.
It was a love fest for the printed word. And seeing young people engaged in it gave me hope for the future. Just like the green leaves of the devastated forest near the bridge leading to the beautiful Sanibel Island. I signed one of the hardcopies with my favorite quote from Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” And most importantly, we better engage in the ritual of celebrating reality, not its substitutes online.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2023.
