Those of us who get paid to put words on paper get a little defensive when someone suggests that print - whether in the form of newspapers, magazines or books - is dead.

The recent announcement that Sam Weller's Books is leaving its 48-year-old perch on Salt Lake City's Main Street for an as-yet-unknown downtown location started another round of hand-wringing about the fate of books.

Ken Sanders (pictured), the sage who runs his own rare-book store a few blocks from the old Weller's location, offers his thoughts on the matter on his store's web site. In the end, Sanders - who professes to a lifelong worship of the God called Biblio - is an island of calm in a sea of worry. Take, for example, the conclusion of his article:

"Google, Wikipedia, the world wide web, Kindle, e-books, print on demand, and the next new thing threaten to extinguish the old-fashioned book. Perhaps. I think not: the transformation will continue. The value of books transcends the informational, and while some of us in the book world will become extinct, the rest of us will always be here, wherever here is, in the far-off reaches, in the margins, doing what we have always done: loving books, keeping Biblio alive in the world."

Amen, Brother Sanders - though it's mildly ironic that such an opinion is disseminated not through ink-and-paper, but via the Internet.

Labels: Books, Sam Weller's