libraries - C/D; S/D

did uk-ers know that nearly every public library gives you free access at home to online references like the OED, Dictionary of National Biography, Grove Art and Music, stuff that costs about a grand a year to subscribe if you're not at a university? but they just don't tell people! i only found out because i checked lewisham's library website, and they're about the only one that does mention it. i assumed they were just unusually forward thinking, but no. it's an amazing service, you just punch in your library card number to log in. it's crazy that they seem to keep it secret. or maybe it's just me that didn't know!

i did not know that. even my uni doesn't give me OED access far as i can tell. (do get dnb.) so thanks!

yeah i didn't know that, though i am not good with that whole world, & have only really dipped into journals etc in academic libraries. to be even dumber: i don't specifically know what those resources are, outside of the OED - what is it you're using them for, or might have access to?

dnb is what it says: high-quality essays on the great and good of britain. like wikipedia.

man, i always wished there had been a printed equivalent of wikipedia pre-internet.

thanks for that, i might start just blindly checking some of these out.

wow cool. Britannica Online, 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Oxford Reference Online Premium...can't believe i never noticed this

holy shit all those too? why the fuck am i paying for college.

here's a link from OUP where you can check what your local library is signed up to:

http://www.oup.com/uk/academic/online/library/

i don't know where you can check about other online services. lewisham has the times archive and some other great stuff, but islington is totally silent on the issue, despite being signed up to all the OUP sites.

Britannica is a "library edition" apparently.

am open to trades of library card numbers itt

cos we don't get Grove Music or Art apparently

just realised that the next time i tell the kids not to use Wikipedia for their homework i've got somewhere more useful to point them

:D

yeah but what if their homework assignment is about ayn rand references in south park? what then?

joel pretty much has South Park memorised

not sure this is the best place for this, but i think it's really interesting and wanted to share:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/04/23/harvard-library-pushes-open-access/

He never married. A love in early life refused him, and continued single after his death. This event increased his peculiarly reserved and retired habits, and he became and continued a recluse, never being seen in the New York society to which by birth and connection he belonged. He declined proffered visits from the most distinguished men of the Old World and the New. An eminent scholar, who was occupied for many weeks in consulting rare books not to be found elsewhere, failed to obtain access to the library of Lenox. He was assigned an apartment in Lenox's spacious mansion for his use, and to that apartment the works were sent in installments without his ever penetrating into the hall containing the precious collection, or to the presence of its possessor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lenox

I'm sitting at a library computer, and the guy beside me has a Ted Kaczynski beard, is about the same age, and he's intently jotting down notes from the Wikipedia page for the 1998 U.S. Embassy Bombings...onto an upside-down packing slip. Somewhat unnerving.

Picked up some ILL on Saturday and I saw a copy of Mein Kampf on the shelves. Wouldn't think much of it but since a couple of racist parties always put up candidates in any elections in my constituency...then again its neither here nor there. Sorta forgot about it till your revive.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/10/library-usage-falls-dramatically-services-visits-down-40m

Because I can log on to my account online and search through the network I can see what they have or not at any time and put in a request. Consequently I am borrowing more than ever. I can also renew at any time so am now better at avoiding fines too.

Libraries have always been an anxious body of an institution though - they always stocked records, CDs, films and have all sorts of workshop type activities (which the staff seem to dislike having - libraries maybe part of the community but there seems to be a quasi-social worker element to the role at times). That was before the web so now you have computer terminals too, just to get more people through.

there seems to be a quasi-social worker element to the role at times

The readers in my local library are overwhelmingly, for want of a better description, Care in the Community types, people with "issues" shall we say, some of them seem to more or less live in there. Severely harassed young mothers with toddlers are about the only other users.

Absolutely, same with my local. That + schoolkids who come in to use the interweb.

I think the cuts are having an impact on numbers as well as Amazon and the like. But it is an impression, hard to qualify. Also you can tell who is the librarian and who is the volunteer. The latter are annoyingly enthusiastic and ask you about what you are reading.

The council are consulting on cutting a couple more libraries, making them into 'community' type things, so that aspect will get worse as they don't have to pay people then. I did read the consultation paper with a couple of very dogdy graphs and stats. I wanted to write a letter but actually they are retaining the vast majority of the current network and I'll happily save that for the bigger fights to come.

even though i'm a librarian i feel horribly ignorant of the major issues facing a public library. academic libraries are really just a different beast

totally. i used to work with a young woman who abandoned academic librarianship for public, which idea to me is fucking bonkers.

in new orleans public librarians start at $30k, while surrounding parishes are cheaper to live in and pay (marginally) better. that means you have this self-selected and often highly motivated workforce in these urban libraries (who do all sorts of stuff, involved in the nola bookfair, books to prisoners, etc) and they just get shit on constantly with budget cuts and no respect and it's just infuriating. i'm sure it's the same across the country.

Ferguson Public Library has been doing some great & important work recently.

Had to use the PCs in my local library this week 'cuz my laptop's gone tits up. The library is ALWAYS packed btw, in the evenings anyway, so much so that sometimes people have to sit on the floor. Anyway, minding my business the other day when a guy sits down to use the PC beside me. Out comes a plastic bag with hundreds of crumpled bits of paper, ripped from notebooks, which he spends a while (very) noisily rummaging through pulling out ones that seem to pique his interest - though all of them appear to be almost identical, consisting of violently scrawled arrows pointing in various directions and the occasional mysterious symbol. Eventually he settles down to actually use the PC and I soon notice that he is very intently studying a web page and producing yet more pages of the arrows/symbols. Curiosity gets the better of me and I sneak a peek at the page, it's a YouTube page of Bruce Hornsby & the Range. I should made my excuses and left right there and then.

(btw I'm writing this in the library and the guy (a different one) sitting beside me has just pulled out a large smelly quiche/flan of some description (in one of those metal foil bases) and started eating it. I'm sitting in his seat you see, because today was the first time I'd been in this library, be it morning, afternoon, evening, weekday, weekend and NOT seen him sitting at this particular PC. He came in slightly later than me, saw me sitting here and rushed off, coming back to sit at the PC beside me. At one point, I got up to ask one of the library assistants a question, my arse was not 2 millimetres from the chair when he asked, "Are you finished?" "No, I'm not finished". Anyway, having shot me a worried look, I think he's gone to make sure he can book this PC after I'm finished before anyone else can get to it first.)

is he sharing his quiche

Sounds like you are having fun Tom. I know I'd be in no hurry to sort out any laptops if I was in your position.

(xp) Unlikely given how territorial he is over 'his' PC, don't you think?

Here's what's been going on at my library lately:

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/news/police-probe-porn-show-at-windsor-public-library

I always feel like some tourist in libraries, like some writer on holiday, faintly scared by all the borrowed ambition I worry into existence when faced with lots of books.

haha i went to a real bookstore constructed in physical space last night and i felt exactly like this

Back in the library today, the Quiche Man is in his usual spot, I assume he spends all day in here. Anyway, the guy opposite me just went through the longest most elaborate leaving ritual I've ever seen, standing up, organizing cables of the numerous electronic devices he had on him, opening rucksacks to take out various folders and then putting them back in, putting various newspapers in bags and then taking them out again, putting on sunglasses, pausing to drink some strange liquid from a jar wrapped in a black plastic bag, taking off sunglasses, taking out folders again, fiddling about with his numerous electronic devices, putting folders back, putting sunglasses back on... and after all that he still left one of the folders on the table! Hey, hold on, he's back, carrying a plastic bag stuffed with victuals, when did it become a thing to eat in a public library? So he's just opened a packet of biscuits and has started in on them ... oh now he's on to a banana... I forgot to mention that all the time he's been wearing a large set of headphones so, give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably doesn't realize the extraordinary decibel level of biting into a carrot and eating it open mouthed. A second banana, alternating mouthful of banana with biscuit shoved forcefully in open gob. Another cacophonous carrot. Time to leave.

poor guy

a lot of modern libraries in london at least dont seem like the libraries i grew up with. or the idea of a library at least.

good to borrow stuff from, on the whole, but between the removal of librarian desks as the entry and exit point, and their replacement with self service checkouts, and the increase of libraries as community spaces where most footfall seems to be about IT use (with people just using it to look at FB or YT or whatever), the idea of libraries as quiet places to work and study has basically vanished.

not to be all fusty about it, but they used to be a good place to read, and work, or study, now theyre so casualised and reformatted as 'community spaces' that you have none of that. if the computers were just in one space, that would be fine maybe, but often theyre not.

OTOH i did read something about lambeth libraries being turned into gyms (or more bizarrely, gyms that also act as libraries), which is crap for anyone who likes reading/needs books, but might be a better use of space (and maybe make people healthier.... praps) if gyms are likely to get used more. i do often wonder how much libraries are used these days. but then thats prob what the tories want me to think.

my best recent memory of libraries is having to ask three middle aged female librarians to quieten down a bit as i was trying to study something. theyre as bad as the kids who come in to 'study'.

Lambeth is closing libraries to cut costs, replacing them with 'community hubs', unstaffed libraries plus private gyms. During the transition the buildings are being secured by private firms costing three times more than it would to keep them open.

The one I used a few times was a small and dismal place with a very limited selection of books though.

half the staff at my local library actually seem to have a contempt for books so sometimes i wonder if unstaffed libraries would even have any effect.

see recent letter from Friends of Lambeth Libraries to the council after councillors made hay from an erroneously quoted £ figure in the Friends' previous letter and press release.

http://www.brixtonblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/LS-TO-LIB-PECK.pdf

Back in my local library this morning. Minor panic as Quiche Man arrived, at high speed, to find a young woman already sitting at his PC; happily she left fairly quickly but thereafter followed much bustling to-and-froing from the main desk to the PC and back again as he secured his PC from any further encroachment.

the idea of libraries as quiet places to work and study has basically vanished.

This isn't my experience in this library, people are very respectful and quiet. Also, it's not all people on PCs, a lot of people do seem to be here to work and study or read newspapers etc.

... and the library staff are always the loudest people in the library, by some distance.

Depressing article about conservative Trump donors getting elected to a suburban Chicago library board and destroying it from within:

https://bookriot.com/niles-public-library/

among the many lowlights:

The Board suggested volunteers could handle a number of those outreach activities, and they purposefully slashed the funding for books in non-English languages. During the debates prior to election, the topic of inclusivity at the library set off a range of responses, including Makula making it clear he believes in assimilation.

“We should concentrate on people learning English because that’s the language here,” Makula said. “Instead of stocking up on books in seven different languages, if we got people to assimilate and learn English better, I think we would do more good than increasing our inventory of foreign language books.”

It's been ages since I was in a library that invited a sense of treasure hunting when I browse the stacks. Public library collections I've browsed in the past few decades tend to be ruthlessly culled of older volumes that haven't been checked out a sufficient number of times lately to earn their shelf space.

The best musty old, unruly library I ever encountered was attached to the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia, back in the late 1970s. It was kept for the use of the legislators and their staff, who apparently had forgotten about its existence. I could roam around in the stacks and was happy as a hog in a wallow on a hot, hot day.

I think our local library does a pretty decent job of both. They really do keep up to date with more modern, tech reliant services, but they also cordon those off to separate floors of the library and there are indeed still corners where I do manage to still feel lost in the books. I'm pretty pleased with how they manage the balance in 2021.