libraries - C/D; S/D

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.