Summary: Langdon and Sophie consult with Pamela Gettum, a librarian at King’s College who specializes in religious studies, and a friend of Teabing. Gettum begins a computerized search of the library’s extensive theological, historical and symbological holdings for key words from Saunière’s cryptic poem.
Analysis: What a difference less than a decade can make! Whether fifteen minutes sounds like a reasonable time for a search of “a few hundred terabytes [of information] with multiple cross-referencing fields” or not (p. 410) in our increasingly rapid world of information technology, Langdon’s apparent ignorance of simple Boolean searching strains credulity somewhat. Nevertheless, this chapter serves primarily to keep advancing the protagonists (and the readers) closer to the solution of Saunière’s puzzle, and not as a primer on 21st-century library science. King’s College in London does indeed house a respected religious studies program, even though, as one online travel site points out, “The official website of King's College does not seem to mention any recent digitization project as described in The Da Vinci Code; this may be a fictional addition. However, King’s College does pride itself on the use of new technology to faciliate learning, and Oxford University is currently cooperating with Google to digitize its extensive library collections” (http:www.sacred-destinations.com/england/
london-kings-college.htm
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