In the music library

Working in the music library, my eyes go over to a shelf and I see a book called Opera and the Uses of Language.  That's a book I need to look at. On the other side, I see some books about Monk and Oscar Peterson. Every book on the shelf required someone like me, sitting in a library, surrounded by other books, most of which are not relevant to the task at hand. I might cite 30 books from this library, writing some articles, out of thousands. And if I wrote a book that would be housed in the music library, it would just be one book among thousands, of interest to maybe one or two other people sitting here in the future. 

That's not depressing; it's just scholarship.