Nostalgic for looking things up like we used to
I recently discovered I have a collection of rare, antiquarian books that have been carefully preserved in an archival layer of dust. Actually, it was more of a rediscovery. They weren’t hidden away in some remote corner of my house where I seldom visit like, say, with my cleaning supplies. No, they’re very prominently, if not ironically, displayed in a high traffic area. I’m talking about several shelves of reference books above our family’s computer. When you’re so focused on getting immediate answers, you can sometimes overlook what’s hiding in plain sight.
The collection includes a number of dictionaries, books of quotations, and a thesaurus, as well as reference books on mythology, literature, and architecture. I was surprised to find we even have an encyclopedia of chemistry, but not surprised to see it looked untouched.
Even without all the dust, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve pulled a book off this shelf because one of my favorite reference books in the collection was “Leonard Maltin’s 2003 Movie and Video Guide.” According to its cover, the guide tells you which movies are available on videocassette. It does not say it will tell you where to find a time machine so you can travel back to 2003 and watch them on your VCR.
As easy as it is to look up movies online today, I remember there was something satisfying about looking things up in Leonard Maltin’s movie guide. I could spend a lot of time leafing through the pages, reading a movie synopsis in 4-point type, and try to remember if I’d seen it while wondering whether my eyesight would recover if I ever decided I wanted to see it again. I thought it would be fun to get an updated version in case any new movies had been made in the last 15 years, but discovered that the last movie guide was published in 2015. Now, if I want to read a Leonard Maltin movie review, I have to look it up on his website.
Which, I guess, is easier and faster than looking things up in a book. And when you need to know something, easier and faster is better. When I was a kid, I knew the answer to almost any question I asked my parents, other than what’s for dinner, would be “go look it up.” That was never the answer I wanted when I needed information right away because it meant I had to stop what I was doing, get up, go to the bookshelf, take down a book, and look through it only to find it didn’t have the information I was looking for, meaning I’d just wasted a lot of valuable time. Now, I can simply Google “fresh and new insults for my sister” and a whole list of resources appears. Kids today have it so easy.
My parents must have sensed my frustration because at some point they decided to buy a set of encyclopedias. There were many different companies selling encyclopedias then, sort of like choosing between Siri or Alexa today, and my parents decided to go with
World Book. I remember the salesman sitting in our living room and congratulating my parents on making an excellent investment in their children’s education. And that claim proved to be correct because some of my best work was plagiarized from those pages.
My husband and I never bought a set of encyclopedias for our house and if you asked my kids if they felt they’d been educationally disadvantaged as a result, you can bet your Funk & Wagnalls they’d say no. Still, there was something quaint and reassuring about relying on a set of encyclopedias that were updated once a year with an annual yearbook containing all the new information you needed to know instead of being blasted with round-the-clock updates containing the latest developments.
And they won’t know the fun of seeing where a couple of hours spent turning the pages of a reference book can take you. Sure, you can end up in unexpected places when searching online, too, but I’m always at a loss to explain how a search for “how many moons does Jupiter have” ends up with me looking at the latest Kardashian beach photos.
My children may never appreciate the joys of a reference book, but that doesn’t mean I can’t crack the spine on our dictionary of idioms or atlas of imaginary places once in a while. I may even open the chemistry book if things get really desperate, like while I’m waiting for the latest software update to download. And I’ll even keep Leonard Maltin’s movie guide — it would make an excellent mouse pad.