As Managing Partner for Dragonfly Expeditions, one of my driving obsessions is our company library.  It is a running joke in the office that everywhere I go, I buy books about the culture, history and ecology of Florida and the Caribbean Basin and bring them back to headquarters like prizes from the battlefield.  I occasionally attack Amazon’s online database with relish.  Whenever we broach a new subject for a tour, I buy every relevant book on the subject.  For this reason, Dragonfly Expeditions has an already extensive and growing library.  We have whole collections of books on Florida Indians, the Everglades, Miami history, piracy, sailing, seaplanes, Spanish treasure, local wildlife, Cuba, the Bahamas, Florida architecture, Florida art, cracker cowboy heritage and books on almost every village, town and city in the state.  Of course, these are just some of the many topics represented in our collection. I am fanatic about this library.

My dreams for the library almost border on megalomania. I ask everyone I know if they have Florida books with which they wish to part.  I particularly savor old and out-of-print issues.  I want to have the largest collection in the state on Florida and Caribbean subjects.

Now, I’d like to be clear that the library is not just a collector’s obsession; I try to read as many of the books as I can.  It’s just that I collect faster than I read.  We use the books for research, scripts, guide education, stories, accuracy checks and iconography (pictures, lithographs and drawings).  My attention to the subject of libraries and book collections was further fed by Nicholas A. Basbanes’ masterwork on the subject; A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World.

Even as our collection continues to grow, I realize that my pursuit may already be an antiquarian counter-insurgency.  With bookstores disappearing and the landscape littered with cold, impersonal E-readers and Kindles, I may be heading entirely in the wrong direction.  I just don’t believe that one more electronic device can replace the texture, binding, colors, fonts, beauty and diversity of printed books.

In my mind’s eye, I see some future time when the wise legislators of the day will declare collectors of books printed on paper as tree-killing, old-school, anti-ecological terrorists.  When this moment arrives, I will build a huge underground bunker for my beloved library and retreat downward to hide out.  If the authorities of that future era are stealthy and lucky, they will ferret me out of my subterranean lair, bearded, guilty and still clutching an illegal (gasp!!) paper-based text.  But until then, I shall go on collecting.

By the way, do any of you have any relevant books that you would like to part with?