Dorothea Fleiss
(Born Romania; lives in Stuttgart, Germany)

Proposal for the Cambridge Public Library
Band-Aids for over 177.5 children and teenager's books.

Too many kids today are denied the touch of a book's pages, the sparkle of imagination that comes from dreaming of written worlds. These sensations are lost for too many of our children.

Why is this happening? It is simple: We live in the 21st century, the century of technology, of computers and mass media, all of which are separating our children from the written word.
In a few years, if this direction of our civilized world continues, books will disappear. Therefore I want to mummify them to preserve them for the future.
177.5 books because the year has 354 days and we are now half way down the road to our books' extinction. Why? In October, a German company had a brilliant idea--audio books for mobile phones, which would increase the speed of extinction of our once precious little books. Additionally, Google has announced its intention to scan all the existing books to date, an idea that sparkled a diverse debate and signaled the approaching death of our precious books. Our children are mesmerized by TV, cartoons, video and computer games. They become educated by aggressive consumerism and totally depended on it.

Materials intended to be used:
Cloth for mummification, natural bee wax, ropes and of course 177.5 of our dear books.