Periodontist In Canada

public library, reading and Librarians

Libraries, reading and libraries for building another world is possible and necessary *

Javier Gimeno Perelló

Workshop: "What to do to strengthen dialogue among civilizations, the defense of cultural diversity and a world of Peace? " Havana, Cuba. 11 to June 15, 2007

The library is the place or one of the best places to read, as it may be the bank of a river, the bend of a trail or in the shade of a chestnut. But unlike these sedate places where we are with the book's author and nature, in the library are crowd in equal dialogue. His shelves are filled with thoughts, ideas, thoughts and artistic creations that challenge us and claim us. In the library, time stops and asks us to read in a quiet, slow act, an act of reflection and dialogue, which is just as adverse to the competitive world of debauchery. When we read, we thinking and talking with the author and ourselves. There is no dialogue more fruitful than the one who struck up with the inhabitants of the libraries. "We read to know we are not alone," wrote one day the author Charles Lewis. Seldom are answers to our questions, but almost always find new questions. The author challenges us and makes us challenge ourselves. Reading is a meeting with us and with others.

The capitalist model of postmodern societies can not afford time for reflection and retained reading because the city hates reader, which is critical thinking and time. Reading, and literature in particular, that for many, for me, too, is reading itself requires detention, slowness and reflection, if only for pleasure (which is wonderful). For the pleasure we do not care if he was truly alone Crusoe on his island, or if preferred La Maga Buenos Aires or Paris if Aureliano Buendía loved or tender rain of Macondo, or Alonso Quijano was really crazy or whether hopeless fools are their readers. Fantastic madness in any case. It is not necessary to find the Emerald City of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Island Wendy of Neverland in Peter Pan, The Secret Garden Mary Lennox, LE Aute Albanta or Cavafy Ithaca or Lluis Llach. Havens that we will not find: We find it to us if we can open ourselves to wonder. "The great thing reminds us of the writer Gustavo Martín Garzo, contrary to what they say, not us from the world but that world does the realm of possibility."

"Libraries serve to give the world a semblance of meaning and order," says Alberto Manguel. Open and dynamic libraries where it can be the happy meeting of the speaker, reader and word, regardless of medium containing the substance, whether magazines, are DVDs, CD-ROMs, files, remote links, books ... Libraries able to provide different types of reading up to the full reading, which is comprehensive and thoughtful reading, which goes far beyond access and consultation and cold raw information of the Internet and its resources unaffordable. The libraries provide reading that requires an effort of thinking, an exercise to select, to settle and sort. Required to transform the real time-time reader, quiet time. Reading that has little to do with the culture of zapping and click to which we have spoiled the market societies, the culture of this continuum, the frantic pace of the speed of light, free reward the culture of no effort, the fierce competition to come early to nowhere culture of unhappiness and isolation in an interconnected world alone. The library provides reading that brings us pleasure, reading emotions, feelings and imagination, dreams of freedom. And none of this scheme is typical of the market, nothing to do with the worship of the Golden Calf

"The beauty and culture make the subject more responsive, more intolerant of vulgarity, "says the philosopher Jünger.

Reading learn that this is not the only thing between us, things are also made history, past, memory. We learn that men who preceded us and who are no longer here now, also had similar concerns, perhaps the very many of them have committed similar or the same mistakes as we had so many doubts, and felt loved and were beaten. And all this has left indelible mark on the language. Well, is nothing but the word's true history. Our real evolution, not technological.

"Reading is not only important for fun or because they provide information or because it lets us know the Golden Age literature, but for something more radical: because Human intelligence is linguistic intelligence. Only through language can we develop, understand the world, invent great things, live together, clarify our feelings, our problems, make plans. A full understanding of Images and empty words is a minimal intelligence. Tosca, almost useless, "said José Antonio Marina.

Reading helps us learn who we are. Also survive. Reading makes us more human, we can always lead to another and think and see clearly all around us - "We read with open eyes," said one anonymous voice again, "and realize it is not fair and what is not well done, ask your reasons and to realize that the world can and must transform into a better world. Us themselves and one another, thanks for reading. There, at the turn of each page, Walt Whitman would say, always the man is hiding.

For what it provides essential reading is the task of thinking, learning to think. "Read, says Fernando Savater, is always an intellectual activity itself, an outline of thought, something more active to do mental images: after the spoken word, the written voice is the most powerful tonic ever invented for growth intellectual. "

When power has never liked his subjects think. Therefore, at this time perhaps more than any other from the press, the reading becomes, as Manguel says, in an act of rebellion, because reading invites and encourages the thought, it to question the world, and then, to action when we realize that the world can change. That the world must be changed as a moral imperative.

That awareness of moral imperative that allows us to see clearly how capital devours the natural world, how has plundered more than half the world with its wars and its greed for wealth and plunder. In a few years, if men and women, sensitive and aware does not intervene we will not have a clean, healthy and peaceful place to live.

Awareness also lets us see how their greed is undermining the intellectual world surreptitiously. Neoliberalism has been another twist in its quest glitch predator: fine to the countries of the European Union that have not complied the directive that imposes a fee for lending books in public libraries. Predatory ruin of pure law that requires pay to read.

When do you pay for dreaming? When the imagination will go public?, We wonder. Advancing barbarism, now gets into the library - "enter the loan payment, says author Gopegui Bethlehem, is to open the doors to the wolves" - one of the few places where there is no commodity, where everything happens free because free is to be the act of thinking embodied in language, the act of free delivery to the other and apprehend and enjoy free. Because the act of providing a book is, above all, an act of generosity, as well as law and justice, and not due to a business transaction. But this does not fit into the logic of capitalism scavenger.

As it enters the philosophy inherent in the idea of \u200b\u200bthe public. The library is a quintessential public services where the offer is the satisfaction of a fundamental right, a human right, but also a need and desire, the burning desire and a pleasure to admire and enjoy the work of Others the need to grasp the knowledge and experience of others. In exchange for nothing and paid for with money from everyone. This and all utilities are in danger of extinction by market forces and their means of action: WTO, IMF, World Bank, GATS and other equipment of usurpation of public into private hands. Except as serving the interests of power. Countries like Spain, will pay for their old and obsolete institution of the monarchy for all its citizens, that no vote anywhere, and around the world, the arms trade and the existence of hosts will be due to public input.

now also want to take away what belongs to everyone and also inexhaustible, whose invisibility and intangibility should not blind us to its significance: the ideas and knowledge, thought, art and culture . They intend to sell our common heritage, the current and traditional knowledge that have shaped our human condition. From Platonic Idea Poetics of Aristotle, Archimedes' Theorem, to Law of Universal Gravitation or Theory of Relativity , El Paraíso Lost of Milton, The Rite of Spring Carpentier or Stravinsky, The Naked Maja de Goya, Rayuela or the poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Garcia Lorca, everything that man has imagined and we are being shaped usurped with vileness.

have invented the information society euphemism to disguise what really is, marketing knowledge, and cognitive or informational capitalism surrogate ideology that sustains it. Intellectual property laws and copyrights are the barriers erected to limit and limit the infinity of man's ideas of creation, that abounding and intangible resource that exists only because there is a thought, memory, imagination, because there are fantasy or dreams, passions or feelings like love, melancholy or sadness. Commercialization and privatization are ways to restrict access spurious democratic, free and universal access to what is the common heritage of mankind. "The laws of capitalism, Che Guevara warned, invisible to ordinary people, act upon the individual without his being aware."

"We did a sort of mirror eye turned inward," lamented the characters in Saramago's Essay on Blindness when they realized they were blind transfer.

When capitalism threatened their existence relies on its most ferocious, war, and its first task, along with destroying the lives of men, is fulminating their ideas, expressed them in any way, in any form. What makes it even when dictatorships for their livelihood. People, books, art, libraries, museums, schools, universities are the main victims of the wars of the capital. Destroying books, destroy libraries and museums is to destroy part of humanity. Is destroyed. The enemies of human rights and freedom have always used one of the most destructive barbarism: the fire, regardless of her were heretics, women, witches or books. The ruins of the National Library Baghdad, Sarajevo, National Library of Madrid university or bombed by the Fascists during the English war, are examples of what we have ceased to be. Fernando Báez wisely we can illustrate this.

destroy or burn

art or books is also a metaphor for something worse, says Caballero Bonald, "represents more than an order atrocious: a new metaphor for slavery."

"That the reasons for the strength, Saramago tells us, no longer prevail over the force of reason, that the positive spirit of humanity that we are engaged , once, to heal the countless miseries of the world. "

"We are not so naive to believe in an eternal and universal peace, we also illustrates the Portuguese Nobel prize, but humans have been able to create, throughout history , beauties and wonders that dignify and ennoble us all, it is time to put hand to the most wonderful and beautiful of all tasks: the continuing construction of peace. But that peace is the peace of the dignity and human respect, no peace of submission and humiliation that too often come disguised under the mask of a protective false friendship. "

There were the makers of those fertile Educational Missions of the ill-fated Second English Republic. There are those books now come to the world's remotest places in the Biblioburros of Colombia, the Chilean bibliolanchas or libraries of many countries. All were and are and remain living ambassadors, emissaries of dialogue, peace-builders stubborn. They have been and are a compelling example of all that is the library: meeting, relationship, friendship, dialogue, imagination, harmony, hug, language, imagination, respect, solidarity, dreams, equality, love, justice, peace, freedom ...

Because library welcomes various forms of expression, the authors heterogeneous languages uneven, beliefs, ideas or knowledge. Is a natural place for the intertwining of orality and literacy. Promotes the various expressions of language, its various uses and encouraging respect for themselves and dialogue within the community. The library promotes intercultural dialogue, supporting the oral tradition and promotes understanding of artistic, and historical bibliography.

The appreciation of the arts and achievements of science are, among others, the library mission emphasis for the UNESCO Manifesto for the Public Library, which proclaims as "a living force for education, culture and information ... essential agent for the promotion of peace and spiritual welfare through the minds of men and women." The library as a site of recovery, conservation and dissemination of traditional and contemporary and all those who through carelessness or negligence, or malicious intent, have been neglected, abandoned or destroyed.

The library endorses the recognition and strengthening of cultural diversity "for the benefit of present and future generations", adopted by UNESCO in the Declaration Universal for Cultural Diversity so necessary for human beings as biodiversity is for all other living species. Mosaic consists of original features such heterogeneity in their individuality, reflecting unique values \u200b\u200band features. Many cultures as individuals, "Living Human Treasures" nominated by UNESCO that embody a people's cultural life and the sustainability of their heritage.

Meeting of cultural identities, they revitalize the individual and the community, they feed on in the past and help build a future of dignity. Identity that is dialogue with others, with the traditions of others in a cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences. "Conservatory of sense" for the anthropologist Michèle Petit, which can be much of human experience, aesthetically transcribed by writers, which condenses the thought to relanzárnoslo, while widening and ordered both the world around us as the worlds of other cultures, languages \u200b\u200band identities, as well, "regions interior shape us "(Michèle Petit).

Therefore, the library is a tool for transformation. In a world essentially unfair to the majority of whose inhabitants are denied the satisfaction of their basic needs, food, health, water, housing, education, and anesthesia was unbridled consumption, with the invention of artificial and unnecessary requirements, to marketing and advertising (quintessence of true) or television, we urgently need tools to shake off his blindfold and the mind that prevents us from seeing and realizing how imperative it is to change this world outrageous. One such tool is undoubtedly the library and the pages and shelves containing ideas and memories and multiple ways to extend and disseminate so much knowledge creation and housed them.

And

words. As the library is taught and practiced the language is known, means, enjoy, live, whatever their medium or its support. The word in the library regains expression of life. Library therefore also decreases the gap between rich and poor because it extracts from the pages or disks and bits of words to give the reader without any payment (so far), making continuous and permanent learning, information literacy , an elementary and necessary task. The library, therefore stimulates and energizes citizen participation, building common areas shared visions, given channel the expressions of each community. The library enriches the experience everyday people, encourages communication.

to this has undoubtedly helped the survival of oral tradition, the words flow from the thousands of migrants who have enriched the language with new expressions, with twists, new idioms, nuances that are making a colorful expression of cultural language, knowledge, visions. The recreation of the Indian language that in many cases very beautifully expressed through writing. Maybe in Mexico where, currently, is written in more than fourteen indigenous languages \u200b\u200bwith English. In other countries such as Paraguay, there are two or more languages, living on par with the language of power. Bilingualism is a vehicle and construction of thinking of many people. This heterogeneity of the word and the multiplicity of speakers and writers make up a fascinating kaleidoscope seductive words that breaks the confines of a world so often possessed by the silence or obscurity.

Perhaps that is why, says the former director of the BN of Chile, Clara Budnik, Neruda preferred name, fables ... "Each of my poems wanted installed as a palpable object, each of my poems intended to be a useful working instrument, each of my songs aspired to serve in the meeting room as a sign of where they crossed the roads, or as a fragment of stone or wood on which someone others, those to come, could place the new signs. "

"Neruda described with clarity and beauty," said Clara Budnik also sign-that space where we belong and in which they live libraries. His verses lead us to experience once again, that drunk. " Well, do not are crossing those different languages, our fusion product, a mixture of roads where they cross the speakers with the readers, these and those with the authors? What are libraries but rallying point, common meeting space? The library is the opposite of a "semantic cemetery, they have been transformed to Luis Goytisolo Western developed societies, where the predominant larval single thought for a simplistic language maimed in their expressions, which are expressions of a non-thinking . Through the library access that pluralistic world formed by the landscape of the diversity of multiple and diverse cultures where the language is based, is disclosed, becomes, grows, multiplies. Which language is the expression of thoughts and fruitful living. "The library is a summary, a mirror of the universe" in the words of Alberto Manguel, and its catalog a mirror of that summary, a mirror of the mirror.

This is precisely why we multiply our libraries throughout the Iberian Peninsula here in Cuba, in the Caribbean, throughout Latin America in Western countries in the Arab world in the world, that our languages \u200b\u200bare more typical, most common, of all languages \u200b\u200bof the meeting, harmony, peace languages, so that each day there are more and more places and times made of books, made of language, literature, knowledge, places and times made of words.

Not surprisingly Borges imagined "paradise as a kind of library."

Finally, let me finish my words with words of José Martí, who surely have read and heard PC thousands of times, and I want to do well myself and share with you:

"Being educated is the only way to be free, and being good is the only way to be happy "(José Martí).

Thank you.

* Paper presented at the V International Congress on Culture and Development

.- public library.