Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Libraries Want $300,000 To Buy Games
AirborneGamer writes "The Toronto Public Library is asking for $300K to build up a collection of video games. They have not said if they will buy all types of games, or leave out the M-rated ones. As the City Councilor of Toronto said about the project, 'It may be the only time a young person comes in. It can act as a magnet to attract people. Once we get them in there, you can be darn sure that our librarians will be hard at work to introduce them to everything else the library can offer.' This is a good plan actually, and besides bringing kids into the library it will bring in parents and or guardians who otherwise may not visit the library on their own."
Words can change to refer to new things. It's called semantic shift. It's a normal, everyday phenomenon of human language. The vast. vast majority of people are completely unaware of the etymology and have no problem in understanding libraries as fundamentally places where information is stored.
And now that I think of it, can you source your etymology of liber? In Latin the word was used not only for writings written into wax tablets, papyrus and vellum, as well as for literary creations that hadn't even been written down. Martial refers to his body of epigrams, which he delivered at recitals (and only then were written down and preserved by the audience) as libri. Paper produced from wood pulp was unknown to the Romans.