by Jas Faulkner
In those odd moments when there can be plenty to do and yet the mind wants to wander through Binkley’s anxiety closet, it is easy to come up with hypothetical catastrophes that put us through a Green Beret-level obstacle course. We see the thin veneer of civilisation stripped away as a mob mentality nudges thousands of people off the side of a cliff in a carb-fueled rage, all neatly battered, fried, and served on a biscuit with a side of fear and loathing of The Other.
Those of us who are caretakers of libraries, whether they’re large public archives of wisdom passed down through the centuries or linen closets that have been converted into repositories of books we have known and loved; we have all wondered what we would do if we only had a small, undisclosed time to save what we could. What would we grab first? Who could we trust to protect what we hold dear? As a bit of woolgathering, it’s scary but there is the comfort that, at least for now, the chances of seeing our libraries destroyed is fairly remote.
