When I was 13, I went to Ireland and Scotland with my family. My dad’s half Irish so we wanted to explore our family roots and culture as it was important to my Grandparents to go, experience, and see other places. While we went to many places during our two-week trip, a city we all enjoyed was Dublin.

As my cousins, siblings, and I, were all teenagers at the time, we didn’t necessarily appreciate the constant walking tours of tombs, ruins, churches, and museums. And I, especially didn’t like that we stopped at least once a day to go to a bar. I got so mad one day that I made my family stop on the side of the road and go pet goats and sheep as penance. But Dublin, we all enjoyed.

One stop we made was Trinity College, where we did a tour of The Old Library, holding volumes and stacks of old books. One such book we saw on the tour included with The Old Library was The Book of Kells, mentioned in Borsuk’s The Book Chapter 1. I didn’t quite understand the importance of it at the time, and I wasn’t in my book fascination and fetishization phase yet, but I can tell you that it is a beautiful book and a beautiful library. I was at the time intrigued with the images and manuscript drawings that weren’t in modern books.

After my siblings and I finished the tour walk-through quite quickly as we didn’t see the importance of seeing a random library, we were heavily scolded by our tour guide that waited outside. She stated “Education has been wasted on you. History has been wasted on you.” And while we didn’t understand her words and ignored her judgement at the time, I did get it years after.

What we ignored was history. We didn’t understand the importance of a religious book because we have millions now. Why would it be important? We didn’t understand the weight that manuscripts hold to the accessibility and history of knowledge and information sharing. That library and what it contains, is the history of the Church, it’s spread and power of information, which leads us to where we are now. It also shows how intricate details and drawings woven into writings has mostly been lost to time and aren’t used anymore.

She was right. We didn’t appreciate that we got to see a piece of history, literature, and culture, and a part of the system that helped the accessibility to knowledge because of Christian texts and copying.

I very much want to go back to see that library and book with the appreciation I do now. I think now I would be in there for hours admiring the work and sacredness of the texts and the beauty of the library. Every old piece of paper or writing or drawing isn’t just that, it’s a piece of history and one of the reasons we have the knowledge and critical thinking that we do now.