Library of Congress
Aaron and I paid a brief visit to the Library of Congress, the world's largest library. On display were incredibly rare things such as Edison's lab notebook (with its original handwritten account of the "Mr. Watson, come here" incident), and the items Abraham Lincoln was carrying in his pockets when he was assassinated (including two pairs of Lincoln's eyeglasses). We went up to the gallery and looked out on the main reading room. I felt that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I was briefly practically overcome with emotion.
Part of that emotion and that sense of beauty came from the reading room's form and majesty, and part of it from the reading room's function. I remembered a dispute in The Name of the Rose about what a library's function is; because of the setting of that book, the dispute was case in abstract theological terms (whether, if I remember the issue correctly, libraries fight the Devil or aid the Devil).
When I looked out on the reading room, I thought "Here they are fighting the Devil".
Elsewhere at the Library of Congress, I tracked down a particular corner or alcove of which Sumana gave me a picture from her own trip to D.C. (its inscription says "Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words", which made me think of Bernstein and the other code-is-speech cases).
The biggest disappointment for me on that visit was that the Library's stacks are entirely closed to the public. (The reading rooms are closed to the public, too, but you can get in by becoming a registered researcher. But registering as a researcher can't get you access to the stacks; only getting a job with the Library of Congress can do that.)
