I’m feeling a little tongue-tied, or would that be finger-tied? today since this blog managed to make it into the book pages of the Wall Street Journal. To Ms. Crossen I send my thanks for her kind words, and to all of you new visitors I say welcome!

I’m never quite sure what to think of Umberto Eco. He is a fantastic writer and I have enjoyed a few of his books immensely. I have a couple books of his criticism I look forward to getting to one of these days too. He’s one of those people who know they are important and is puffed up by it, but at the same time he has a great sense of humor so I forgive him for his self-importance.

He has an exhibit opening at the Louvre and a corresponding essay/book, The Infinity of Lists: An Illustrated Essay. Today, via Arts and Letters Daily, I found an entertaining interview with Eco in which I ended up feeling rather puffed up by the end.

He talks about lists and how important lists are to culture, he even says right out that “The list is the origin of culture.” As an inveterate list-maker myself I felt an instant affinity with Eco and, as I said, rather puffed up with self-importance of my own. How can you not feel part of something important when he says this:

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order–not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.

See, so what I am doing with my ever expanding list of books I want to read is attempting to grasp the incomprehensible and face infinity. A noble and important thing, don’t you think? I suspect you probably make lists of your own, so we list makers, instead of being anal and unspontaneous, are now elevated to greatness. Okay, maybe greatness is a bit much, but we now have a defense against those who never make lists.

Towards the end of the interview Eco complains about kids and Google and how children need to be taught to be more discriminating in what is good and what is bad information. As someone who works in a library and is attending library school, I can assure Mr. Eco that if teachers in classrooms aren’t teaching children how to be discriminating, and I think many are, librarians definitely are. Information literacy is one of our missions and libraries and librarians have and will always be about teaching people how to find reliable sources.

And now I’m off to a ballroom dance lesson. Have a great weekend everyone!