Budgeting for Collection Development: A Suggestion Available to Purchase

Towards the middle of The Name of the Rose Adso of Melk realizes that “not infrequently books speak of books.… In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries‐old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.” With these thoughts in mind Adso asks his mentor William of Baskerville “what is the use of hiding books, if from the books not hidden you can arrive at the concealed ones?” William replies that “over the centuries it is no use at all. In a space of years or days it has some use.…” To which Adso, dumbfounded, asks “and is a library, then, an instrument not for distributing truth but for delaying its appearance?”