Take a peek at the world's most exquisite libraries

It's kind of sad in a way...Libraries, as repositories of books, may slowly be going on the way out. Up until college I collected a decent sized library of books and a few shelves of professional books since then. My personal library fills up a small bedroom comfortably. It's not fancy, a little over a half dozen IKEA bookshelves, packed to the ceiling with books that decorate the room. My books are roughly arranged by personal theme, not any formal system. Books on ancient history on these shelves, light sci-fi/fantasy on these, serious literature here, technical references on these, etc.

But about 3 or 4 years ago it just...stopped. Pretty much everything I want to read through leisure is digital, and almost all of my professional needs likewise.

I realized that what I liked about libraries was not just the books, but the notion that it's a place to collect knowledge, organize it, make it available -- to celebrate knowledge. I decided to move a small desk, a chair, some lights, my NAS, a wifi router and an old laptop to control the digital bits. My library now has gone high tech and I think it fits right in with the book collection. I put my CDs, DVDs, etc. in the same room.

I now access all of my collected data, from my library either digitally or physically from Tablets around my home. It's cleaned up lots of the rest of my house and makes a kind of cognitive sense to do it this way. Toss in various curio I've picked up, a few instruments, various other sentimental items and it's one of my favorite places to be and I'm very proud of it.

I love the libraries in this article, but I'm often more interested in the large personal libraries of well-read rich folks. The curio they've chosen to collect, the way they've designed and built the place. http://flavorwire.com/261320/

It is usually against the rules to drool in libraries...

It's great but it looks to me that those libraries are not intended for people to work in, except for the Utrecht library in Holland.