Today I sometimes think of that library, assembled on a faraway speck of land by an American boy from Colfax, Iowa (population 1,749), because no such library will ever be assembled again. The world’s knowledge has been digitized, its literature is fast being Kindled. Does any architect still design a house with a “library”? Book-lined rooms were part of our shared domestic landscape. To walk into a house with books was an unspoken promise of conversation that would jump beyond the events of the day.
— William Zinsser, The Writer Who Stayed