Toronto exhibit lets visitors tour the libraries of the world, virtually

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“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” If that quotation from Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges stirs something in you then you may want to check out The Library at Night, a virtual reality exhibit that lets visitors explore libraries of the present, of the distant past and even of the imagination.

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Inspired by the book of the same name by Alberto Manguel, and created by director Robert Lepage and his creative company Ex Machina, the hour-long experience begins in a physical recreation of a library that Manguel himself set up in a medieval church building in France at the turn of the century.

From there, visitors take a stroll through a kind of forest-library, its tree leaves made of books, with more paper leaves littering the ground. Among the trees are heavy wooden tables and swivel chairs, illuminated by green lamps, recalling a century-old reading room.

Here is where you don VR headsets and earphones for a virtual tour of 10 different libraries. Some no longer exist, like the famed library of Alexandria, about which ironically little is known, except that it likely ended its days in flame, some time in the third century.

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You can also visit the fictional library within the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s submarine from the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Here we learn that Nemo gathered some 12,000 volumes on a variety of subjects but never added to them after the day the Nautilus first set sail.

There are real libraries too, including the Sainte-Geneviève Library in Paris, where the introduction of gas lighting in the 1850s allowed for it to stay open into the night. We see the National Library of Sarajevo, which was almost destroyed by shelling during the 1992 war there. Each visit includes a brief talk recorded by Manguel.

Some of the archives connect the literary with the spiritual, such as the vast monastic library in Admont Abbey, Austria, or the Hasedera Temple in Japan, where a bookshelf containing scrolls of Buddhist wisdom may be rotated for a meditative experience originally designed for pilgrims who could not read.

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Visitors can view the 10 libraries in any order. I saved Ottawa’s Library of Parliament for last, since it was the only one I’d seen in real life. But the VR experience had a surprise in store. As you stand before its main desk, a librarian opens the library’s massive copy of Jean-Jacques Audubon’s Birds of America, and the creatures within take life and flight, settling around the building’s circular interior until a guard arrives to shoo them away. A heavenly experience indeed, and highly recommended.

The Library at Night runs until May 29 at 1 Yonge St., Toronto. Tickets are $45 per person and can be purchased at libraryatnight.ca.

Article content

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” If that quotation from Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges stirs something in you then you may want to check out The Library at Night, a virtual reality exhibit that lets visitors explore libraries of the present, of the distant past and even of the imagination.

Article content

Inspired by the book of the same name by Alberto Manguel, and created by director Robert Lepage and his creative company Ex Machina, the hour-long experience begins in a physical recreation of a library that Manguel himself set up in a medieval church building in France at the turn of the century.

From there, visitors take a stroll through a kind of forest-library, its tree leaves made of books, with more paper leaves littering the ground. Among the trees are heavy wooden tables and swivel chairs, illuminated by green lamps, recalling a century-old reading room.

Here is where you don VR headsets and earphones for a virtual tour of 10 different libraries. Some no longer exist, like the famed library of Alexandria, about which ironically little is known, except that it likely ended its days in flame, some time in the third century.

Article content

You can also visit the fictional library within the Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s submarine from the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Here we learn that Nemo gathered some 12,000 volumes on a variety of subjects but never added to them after the day the Nautilus first set sail.

There are real libraries too, including the Sainte-Geneviève Library in Paris, where the introduction of gas lighting in the 1850s allowed for it to stay open into the night. We see the National Library of Sarajevo, which was almost destroyed by shelling during the 1992 war there. Each visit includes a brief talk recorded by Manguel.

Some of the archives connect the literary with the spiritual, such as the vast monastic library in Admont Abbey, Austria, or the Hasedera Temple in Japan, where a bookshelf containing scrolls of Buddhist wisdom may be rotated for a meditative experience originally designed for pilgrims who could not read.

Article content

Visitors can view the 10 libraries in any order. I saved Ottawa’s Library of Parliament for last, since it was the only one I’d seen in real life. But the VR experience had a surprise in store. As you stand before its main desk, a librarian opens the library’s massive copy of Jean-Jacques Audubon’s Birds of America, and the creatures within take life and flight, settling around the building’s circular interior until a guard arrives to shoo them away. A heavenly experience indeed, and highly recommended.

The Library at Night runs until May 29 at 1 Yonge St., Toronto. Tickets are $45 per person and can be purchased at libraryatnight.ca.