Yesterday, I spent the day cleaning the George Peabody Library. This library was the brainchild of George Peabody and his goal was to create a publically accessible collection that contained the best and latest literature in all branches of knowledge except law and medicine. This library was created in 1860, and was acquired by Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s. The library is an absolutely gorgeous interior, and is most known these days as a wedding and reception venue.

Today, the collection that Peabody amassed remains mostly intact with a rare book and special collections that includes such works as first editions of Huckleberry Finn, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, and the largest collection of Don Quixote amassed anywhere in the world. While I was there, I got a tour of the special collections room, and was shown some very interesting books and manuscripts dating back to the 15th century. Also got to flip through some signature books preserved from the 18th century. Amazing how neat the penmanship was in those days, and done with quill pens. The rare book room is as spectacular as the overall architecture of the library, and as spectacular as the general collection once was.

The library gets cleaned top to bottom once a year, whether it needs it or not 😉 . I was on dusting duty, and started on the 6th floor, dusting every ceiling, railing, grill, and bookshelf on my way down to the first floor. There were books of all shapes and sizes. Some of the folios were 2 or 3 feet in height, and were too large for shelves, so were laying in the hallways betweens the shelves. As I spent the day going through the stacks, I was wonderig how much of this will ever actually be used in the future. 150 years ago, this collection was amassed and was incredibly useful. Tombs of data and knowledge from that time still span these shelves. But will anyone ever read it? Someone had to spend their time writing it, printing it, binding the books – a more expensive process back then. It was much harder in those days to pen a book and distribute it.

How interesting though are the books to today’s audience. Or more importantly to tomorrow’s. I bet the only time most of these books are touched is when we are dusting them. And only then one of us may occasionally pull one off of the shelf for perusal, rather than for scholarly purposes. I work in a library, have done so since 1998. THe mission of libraries is to provide and preserve access to knowledge.

I find it somewhat sad that there is so much knowledge in this building that is being preserved, but will likely never be accessed. Is it worth even keeping it? I am not sure. And I wonder if my calling is really to work in a library. I was not excited to preserve this much knowledge. I did not have a deep sense of wonder when going through the stacks. I was happy just to stay to my work, dusting. However, one book did catch my eye. It was about 2 feet high and had a cover with the Presidential seal on it. It was titled Presidents of the United States. It had pictures and blurbs of all of the presidents of the United States until 1907. I believe this was a government produced document. It was very brittle and the leather deteriorated on my hands and the pages crumbled somewhat as I leafed through them. If only for a few minutes, I found something in my perusal that fascinated me.

Well, I spent the day cleaning the library. And so, I share below some ‘after’ pics of the library in all of its clean splendor!