Professors and their libraries: pilgrimages stories

Abstract

We can understand the library as a wanted space gathering books and accumulated knowledge. According to Chartier, it is a striking feature of Western civilization, the result of the search for titles and the desire to keep the memory of a group or even our individual memories. The history of the texts, their forms and appropriations refer to the multiplicity evoked in the famous Library of Babel imagined by Borges. In it, each shelf groups a universe of books. In each corridor and floor, the texts multiply, forming a mosaic in constant movement because it houses various paths and readings. We propose here to describe our personal libraries, marking what we read at different times in our lives, during our childhood, at home, at school, in our research work and in the exercise of teaching. It is not just a matter of remembering the remarkable books that make up the catalog that each one has been building in their trajectory. It is inevitable to think about the place of these titles in our formation. How do we know them? Why do we choose them? What “shelves” do we have access to at every moment and space in our lives? It is in this sense that our narratives, as students, teachers and researchers, constitute a reflection on our relations with reading.