You Need Emergency Books

This tweet warms my librarian heart. It's always a good idea to keep emergency books around. Hurricane season is upon us here in Texas, and I'm always careful to keep a supply of print books to enjoy if the power goes out for a few days.

(More seriously, I have expressed to my library director that, as a matter of collection development policy, it should be possible to rebuild human civilization from the print collection of any library. This saved some unread volumes from disposal.)


Actually, all humanity needs "emergency books" stored in Knowledge Arks in case of a calamity so devastating that it seriously disrupts, if not ends, our current civilization. Don't laugh, as it could happen: a repeat of the Carrington Event, a supervolcano eruption, a particularly virulent pandemic, an asteroid or comet impact, just to name a few.
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When I was 9, the books that I was allowed to borrow were such that I could read any of them in an hour or two. Only a few of the unedited "classics" like Twain took longer than that. I had to ride my bike several miles twice a week just to have enough to read during the summer.

I exhausted the libraries of my school, the local branch and the regional library before I entered high school, and had to order then from the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. Now in my 70's I still find time to read a book per day and though authors are more numerous and prolific, each year it gets harder to find new ones worth reading.

I would NEVER discourage a 9 year old, who loves reading so much that she thinks about what she'd do in an emergency, from taking as many books at a time as permitted by the library. The only dangers are that she may run out of books to borrow that she wants to read, or she'll learn to read a lot better than her peers. That second danger will give her a big boost as she progresses through school.

I WOULD get her a tablet and set her up with online access to a free lending collection ASAP.
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