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...the reason that
the college is here - all of your teachers and all of the people who
administer and support this institution - is to take care of the
library, the library and the laboratories, and all of the
accumulated human understanding that they represent. After all, the
books are bigger than we are in some important senses. They were here
before us, and they'll be here after us, and they embody a range of
experience far wider and more various than ours. We need them. But at
the same time, they need us. This care taking job is a job that should
humble us, but it isn't a humble job. The books need to be read and
understood and challenged and extended and added to, and they live on
only in the lives and minds of those who engage and value them.
- From the
inaugural Distinguished Professor Lecture, given by Timothy Peltason,
Professor of English, September 1999. |
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