libraries - C/D; S/D

I loved all libraries when I was a kid, I'm not sure why. There was something both welcoming and mysterious about them, in a way that was different from toy stores or whatever other places I venerated. I will make sure my son spends a lot of time in libraries.

D: Limerick City library, the fucking psychoes who work in the NUI Galway library

But like most institutions I do support them in the good works they do, whatever it is they do.

For some reason I really like reading banged up old books, I'd say I get the opposite impression from yours, really. There's something so lovely about a book that's held together with tape and whose back is so creased or broken that it's nigh impossible to figure out what the book is.
The town libary here has some great books published in the late 19th century that are absolutely lovely in this regard.
There's something really depressing about borrowing books from libraries and having to cut apart the pages, despite the stamp saying that the library bought the cursed things over fifty years ago.

In other words, bookfetischists would cry if they saw how I sometimes treat my own books. Death to this ghastly "respect for the author" joke that some people pretend that their tweezer-pageturning madness is founded on.

It's not possible to be banned from ILB, right?

That being said, I was pretty pissed that my paperback copy of "Blindness" was in five pieces by the time I'd finished reading it. Cheap glue ist krieg.

Cujo which was a cheap paperback I bought in a drugstore in the US and New York 1960 - which collapsed under its own weight.

I suspect that it has a lot to do with the fact that I am a very eclectic reader and that like Oystein I like books which are not perfect and have obviously been read and loved (or hated)before. In a bookstore you can almost always get what you want. This is not the case with libraries; often that book you were looking for has been taken by someone else that was also looking for it. So you end up having to search around, look at other books on the same subject or by the same author, taking a punt on a book which may interest you but you just would not be willing to buy new. I have found many interesting new authors and subjects via a mixture of frustration and serendipity in a library.

And yes for a while harboured thoughts of being a librarian before real world considerations intervened.

i just moved out though.

http://static.flickr.com/24/50293372_cf4bc2b503.jpg

Building, land, & furnishings were donated by a lumber baron in, like 1890. The reading room features a fireplace, leather chairs, & stained glass windows with literary greats (pre-dating the Barnes & Noble cameo campaign by, like, 100 years). Just going there was magic enough without it being full up with literary treasures -- they have one of the few reproductions of the Book of Kells, extensive stacks (some of which are located on a mezzanine level with a GREEN GLASS FLOOR), and tons of kids programs. We used to drive the 30 miles each way on the weekends and fill up grocery sacks with books which would keep us quiet for a few days and furnish a week of bedtime stories, although there were some conditions: one old policy I loathed was that I was allowed 25 books but at least 5 had to be non-fiction. Also, I learned about BD/SM from a sci-fi book taken out of the YA section -- CLEARLY no one had any idea what it was about BUT HEY, science fiction is for kids, RIGHT?? Because it's about things that AREN'T TRUE. Mwahaha.

We just seem to have grown apart, it's nobody's fault... oh who am I kidding DAMN YOU LIBRARY IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. You simply don't have enough books to satisfy my appetite. You also think you're a book shop. You're not. Which means that IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE to put out lovely themed displays which change all the time, because unlike Borders you only have ONE COPY of that book you are displaying, and how can I trust your fancy catalogue if it's just as likely that the book is on some revolving flourescent platform by the entrance, or in the special 'new books' basement, or part of the art exhibit on the ceiling, as on the shelf WHERE I MIGHT ACTUALLY BE LOOKING FOR IT. Libraries are supposed to share and ORGANISE books, not sell them.

So fuck you and the £2.85 I owe you.

I mean surely the problem isn't that it's not on the shelf, right? It seems like half the books at my library aren't on the shelves at all, they're in the cavernous basement stacks. Not finding a book on the shelf is common; you just ask the librarian to find it for you, and they do so, and la dee dum da.

For example, their small collection of American poetry is respectable enough (more than 300 volumes) but their collection of British poetry is a scandal (fewer than 50 volumes). Their collection of Greek and Roman classics consists of a few paltry volumes of Homer, Virgil and Ovid. Thousands of murder mysteries, though.

I understand this perfectly. I don't blame the librarians. But it makes my heart sink.

It's fine to have that system, if it's explicit. The problem is that the library staff often have no way to find the book either. And that it conflicts with their nice brand new RFID self-issue thing, which is supposed to empower the user or whatever. Instead of feeling empowered I feel stupid for not being able to use a library when I'm a librarian.

I think it's good for libraries to modernise (I wouldn't mind dog agility shows! though maybe not IN the library...), and I also use them myself in a serendipitous way, looking at the displays etc. But I want a sensible orgnisational system AS WELL.

I like the auto-check-out machines. Now I can take out issues of Victorian Spanking Pornographie Monthly without having to explain to the human librarian about "my thesis".

I used to mostly use libraries for their reading rooms. Some problems I had with libraries: the book you want isn't in that physical library, or the catalog says the book is in the library but you can't find it on the shelf; the books are dirty, or other people have touched the books. I used to buy mostly new paperbacks, at least a couple a week, until I finally realized after moving for the xxx time that I couldn't keep ferrying boxes of books around, or storing them in my parent's basement. I ended up donating most of the books I had bought to . . . libraries, or Housing Works.

Once I started using libraries to browse, rather than find a specific book, I became a lot happier, and ended up with a lot of interesting books from various NYC libraries. I also started doing inter-library-loan, but ordered more books and movies than I could carry away when they all arrived at once.

Now, I work at a library and I haven't bought a book since last summer. (Except for some books I had to buy for my graduate degree program in libary science.) The fact that books are old or used doesn't bother me at all now. I enjoy knowing that many people are able to make use of one object. Similarly, when people check out arty, foreign DVDs, certain films circulate heavily, and there is a certain economy and purity in one film serving so many.

Patrons be hating to pay their late fines though.

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

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.