h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The library I inhabited was much smaller and more modest than the one Pearlroth spent time in. Seven days a week? For much of the 37 years I worked there, six days a week was the most that it was open, and the doors were not open to the public after five for many of those days. Oh, well.

I managed to get a decent musical education by reading my way through "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians." I also pored over Wiesenberger's "Investment companies." Nothing beats slogging your way through topnotch guides like those. I used to joke that in the afterlife I would come back and haunt the stacks. That may still happen, though I will likely be a poltergeist who restores the Dewey decimal System to the current hodgepodge of classification-by-broad-word categories.

Yep, Pearlroth is a man after my own heart. I had a colleague who looked forward gleefully to the opening of a big new library in a nearby town. She couldn't wait to see their grand reference section. her eyes lit up like a kid's eyes at Christmas.

he nice little secret about knowing where the books are, and how to find things in them is this: somebody *else* handles the care and fee4idng of the collection. The books stay in the library when you leave for the night. You don't need to stuff your house or apartment with books. Finding space for them is *somebody else's problem.*

Pearlroth was a very wise man.

Yes, he was.