An antilibrary is a collection of books that are owned but have not yet been read. The term was coined by

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb (; alternatively ''Nessim ''or'' Nissim''; born 12 September 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist. His work concerns problems of randomness, ...

. The concept it describes has been compared to the Japanese ''

tsundoku is the phenomenon of Book collecting, acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one's home without reading them. The term is also used to refer to unread books on a Bookcase, bookshelf meant for reading later. The term originated ...

''.

Etymology

The term ''antilibrary'' was coined by

in his book '' The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable'' to describe the books that many people own but have not read. Taleb argued that such collections of books make people more humble and curious. He based the concept on the books kept by

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian Medieval studies, medievalist, philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular ...

—who used the term "antilibrary" to describe Jonathan Swift's description of a library on

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

—writing that Eco "separates visitors into two categories": those who praise the size of his library and those who recognize that a library is a tool for research. Describing books that have been read as "far less valuable than unread ones", Taleb stated that "the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an ''antilibrary''." Taleb additionally referred to people interested in antilibraries as ''antischolars''.

Analysis

The Autumn 2015 issue of '' HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory'' included an editor's note which stated that "a scholar conscious of the power of his antilibrary is not concerned with treating knowledge as a property to possess or consume; rather ..how much you don’t know—and how to find out that information when you need it." The editor, Giovanni da Col, further stated that the lower cost of

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

publishing "generates more genuine possibilities of an ''open antilibrary''". In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' in 2018, Kevin Mims compared Taleb's concept of the antilibrary to the Japanese term ''

'', which also refers to books that have been purchased but not yet read. Mims additionally stated that "people like Taleb ..and whoever coined the word ''tsundoku'' seem to recognize only two categories of book: the read and the unread", pointing out that many

reference books A reference work is a document, such as a paper, book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually ''referred'' ...

are not meant to be read in their entirety and stating that he owned many

biographies A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...

which he had not fully read. Writing in

Big Think Big Think is a multimedia web portal founded in 2007 by Victoria Brown and Peter Hopkins. The site publishes interviews and round table discussions with experts from a wide range of fields. Victoria Brown is the acting CEO and Peter Hopkins is th ...

in 2018, Kevin Dickinson stated that the value of the antilibrary comes from the way it "challenges our self-estimation by providing a constant, niggling reminder of all we don’t know", fostering

intellectual humility Intellectual humility is a metacognitive process characterized by recognizing the limits of one's knowledge and acknowledging one's fallibility. It involves several components, including not thinking too highly of oneself, refraining from believ ...

Etymology

Analysis

References

Further reading