St. Paul's Cathedral Library

Check out the website: https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/the-collections/the-library

While I am pretty nonreligious, I am pretty educated in religiosity, having studied world religions in high school and college. Although, I was disappointed there were no religious connotations in our tour. While the art library dealt with art, and the law library dealt with law, our tour and visit to the library did not indicate any religiosity. While yes, having some religious context can deter tourists even if presented from a secular view (high school world religions was pretty controversial), it is a cathedral. Frankly, I was just excited to see how religion at least in the St. Paul's Cathedral affected the library, but I am grateful for the wisdom of Mr. Wisdom.

Despite the library being comparably small to the entire cathedral, Mr. Wisdom unleashed some philosophical topics for us to consider about preservation and restoration of not only the books, but of the library itself. It was like being back in theory of knowledge class, and I loved the discussion even if it was small. While the information presented in books are important, if the room or building is deteriorating, then it would be wise to save the building to prevent any further damage to the books, and being a stone building, dust always ever-present. This decision came because of a lack of budget, a common trope in libraries. 

There is also the topic of preservation and restoration. Both are similar but results in different outcomes. Preservation keeps the historical value at the expense of damages, but restoration prevents damage at the expense of historical value. Which is better will always be up to debate like any philosophical or even religious topic.

While the library will be closed for a while due to their efforts to save the library's structure, I do hope that next year's class will have the chance to encounter Mr Wisdom's efforts.