A while ago, when learning more about nutrition, I was really taken with the idea that healthy eating isn’t about willpower and saying no. It’s about high quality food crowding out low nutrition food[1].
With all the talk about the decline in reading[2] and worry about cognitive surrender[3], I started thinking about what I could do to use that same way of thinking for my mental diet. My husband got me an Xteink X3 reader for my birthday and I’ve been reading Standard Ebooks on it for the past month. It’s exactly the same idea: high quality content crowding out content that wasn’t serving me as well. In this case I’m putting it in a place (the back of my phone) that I can’t ignore every time I’m tempted to scroll and habitually open apps.
My institution just inaugurated our new president. If you care about higher education, the importance of research and knowledge, and the role of education in shaping people, you should definitely watch President Rodriguez’s address. I have not seen another speech so perfectly capture what we’re trying to do in higher education, while shining a light on the diversity of disciplines that expand our knowledge and contribute to humanity’s flourishing.
But the most moving part of the speech was his quoting of Jorge Luis Borges, whom library types might first think of as the author of the Library of Babel[4]. President Rodriguez quotes an interview “‘Jorge… Who are you?’ ‘Well, I’m not sure that I exist, really. But, I am all the books I’ve ever read. I’m every friend I’ve ever made, I’m all the women I’ve ever loved. I’m all the cities I’ve ever visited. And, I am all my ancestors.'”
And isn’t that the truth. Aren’t we all a collection of the books we’ve read, ideas we’ve encountered, the relationships we have had, all the varied experiences of our lives? I think about this all the time from my leadership role: that what works in one community/culture/context won’t work the same way in another. And in Standpoint Theory’s clarity that your position shapes what you can know[5]. And that the curation of a collection of resources creates the conditions for serendipity. And the courses you put together in pursuit of a liberal arts degree are specific to your life up until that point and shapes your life thereafter.
The entire speech was rich with themes to draw upon, and I’ve spent time reflecting on them since Friday afternoon. But the librarian in me continues to circle around this idea of curation and our own construction.
The Voyager Golden Records are another example from within this address. The idea that we might be able to capture humanity through images, music, and science and the idealism of sending that collection out into the universe so that it could be found by another civilization is beautiful. The curatorial work to do so is nearly unimaginable. But once again: to the ones that might find those records, we are the experiences captured on them.
So here I am, nearly a week later, still reflecting on how we become what we read and encounter as individuals, as institutions, and as cultures. And I’m still reflecting on that theme, whether personally, on the tiny ereader on the back of my phone or institutionally, in the collections that I walk past in my library every day.
- Greger, M. Putting the Daily Dozen to the test. In Nutrition Facts with Dr. Greger. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/daily-dozen-diet-put-to-the-test-for-weight-loss/
- Kuta, S. “Reading for Pleasure Has Declined by a ‘Deeply Concerning’ 40 Percent Over the Past Two Decades.” in Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/reading-for-pleasure-has-declined-by-a-deeply-concerning-40-percent-over-the-past-two-decades-180987228/↩︎
- Hogenboom, M. “AI chatbots could be making you stupider.” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider↩︎
- If you want to know more about this short story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel↩︎
- I’ve talked about this before: https://laurenpressley.com/library/2026/04/06/the-library-creates-conditions-for-knowing/↩︎