The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone.  Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself.

–Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”

[This is a guest post by Jonathan Sterne, an associate professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His latest books are MP3: The Meaning of a Format(Duke University Press) and The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge). Find him online at http://sterneworks.org and follow him on Twitter @jonathansterne.--@JBJ]

Over the winter break, my partner Carrie Rentschler and I spent a few days organizing our library.   For humanist academics who spend so much of their time engaged with books, we don’t really …

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