Libraries and Life

Susan Orlean has an interesting essay in The New Yorker about libraries and life here. Near the end of the essay, a reference is made to Amadou Hampâté Bâ who "once said that, in Africa, when an old person dies, it is like a library has been burned." Orlean's reflections on libraries and life brought two passages from Ecclesiastes to mind: 1:11 and 12:12.