Here in King County (Washington State) they have a library system that darn near makes up for the disadvantages of living here. (horrendous taxes, traffic - hundreds of thousands of apartment dwellers clogging the streets, etc.)
All the items in any library, or in central storage, are available thru their website, usually within two or three days. Although you might run up against a case where you find that, upon placing a hold, that you are number 367 on 85 copies, which may take a few months to drift down to you (usually on romantic best-sellers). But in most cases the system works fast and efficiently, and some of the libraries have fully automated sorting and handling systems. These are sometimes out in the open, and are as much fun to watch as a model railroad system. I’m well satisfied with their operation.
If you live in Southern California, you probably think of “The Huntington” as an amazing botanical garden and art museum. If you live outside SoCal, you probably don’t think of it at all.
Unless you’re an academic. The full title begins with “The Huntington LIBRARY…” and it is a research institution as well an incredible (non-public) resource for rare historical material of all sorts as well as more modern stuff, like Octavia Butler’s papers. There’s a point here, I’m getting to it.
The Huntington podcasts lectures by its distinguished visiting scholars, and they often show images (which you can’t see on a podcast of course). I just listened to one in which the speaker remarked, “This image is from a book in the Huntington collections, but it was easier for me to find it online than get it scanned here.”
Point being, even historical treasure troves of books are sometimes less useful for distinguished academics than teh Google.
I love books and I think it’s very important to preserve old and rare books especially, but I’m phlegmatic about the changes. I do love to read a real book rather than a screen, and my daughter is the same though she’s now into YA rather than picture books.
As an aside on the screen time discussion–we do limit her exposure, but there are plenty of times she will choose a book over the screen. I don’t know if we’re lucky; we did read to her a lot, but there were also plenty of Saturday and Sunday mornings at 18 months when I was too tired to do anything but let her watch TV. I had to wake up every 22 minutes to play the next episode–this was in the dark days before Netflix auto-play. :eek:
This is a good way to put it. A library is meant to be an information repository and community center devoted to learning and education. The tools needed to do that change as technology changes.
When I was growing up the library was almost all just books. Now it has books but also music cds, dvds, video games and endless ebooks. Also endless computers for people who cannot access the internet or printers from home.
Plus they have a wide range of educational programs (like adult literacy classes, financial classes, computer education classes). The physical books went from being the centerpiece to just another information tool available to the public.
The real question is what will libraries be in the future.
This sounds like a group that might like The Library Book by Susan Orlean. The book is loosely constructed around the 1986 fire in the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Interwoven around that backbone is a trove of library history and current practices. It’s full of past, recent, and ongoing changes to libraries. It is a trove of geeky goodness.
Example: because their catalog system had been destroyed in the fire, LA was one of the first libraries to shift to an online catalog. The result? They had to upgrade their book vans to trucks as interlibrary loan requests skyrocketed.
I’m a little more than halfway through and loving it. I was wondering how I had missed the biggest library fire in U.S. history but she answered that question a few chapters in. News of the fire was overshadowed by the Chernobyl disaster, so it didn’t make national news.
I’m looking forward to “reading” the rest. The quotation marks are there because I’m listening to the audio version.
you know in the 80s/90s when la county started using the computerized systems they still were trying to find out “Lost In Fire” titles because I was looking for a book it said they had and no one could find it and they figured out that’s what happened to it
So if you seen the cryptic “LIF” after the title that’s what it meant ……. especially after the riots when a few libraries were burned down ….
I must admit to being part of the reason our new library decided to have a couple of "community rooms"as we had a running axis and allies for about 5 or 6 years set up in a corner of the room…
the game took up two tables had about 800 pieces and had 6-8 players and took 2 hours for a full round …. We never finished a game ….
Then when we started the rpgs with all the dice rolling they moved us to the bound book room ……
Our local branch library has about the same amount of books as it did 40 years ago; the main branch maybe less so but still not dramatically different. The folks I know at the Pittsburgh libraries say its as much being able to access books quickly from any branch, or any other library within their system, as it is anything else. There is a move to make libraries more of a community and resource center than just a depository of books and records but that I see as a good thing.
I personally have noticed this in some of the newer libraries even here in Northern VA. It is all about meeting rooms and internet access. The funny thing is most libraries - I mostly use Chantilly - are about 1/10 tutors making $60 hr, a reasonably large children’s section (have to stay away as it gets noisy) and a lot of open space.
The newer library they opened near Tysons corner is nice but the extra space has been used for some dubious stuff. They have new book racks but someone thought it was a good idea to put in a couple of video game consoles. Just what a library needs.
When visiting my late mother in southern VA I would stop into the University of Virginia’s library which is actually about 11-12 separate libraries (including Business, music, Arts Science, Special collections, physics, and law library.) Their stacks are glorious - if you get off on stuff like that.
They are free to check out for any Va resident.
UVA has plans to renovate two of the older libraries and the plans are showing - you guessed it - more meeting areas and less books. Their extensive computer book section has been all online since around 2008 and all online materials are for faculty and students only.
I have bought e-readers and even checked out books that way but it just doesn’t work for me.
On the bright side there are still tons of young people who seem to like checking out loads of books.
You know what I miss at public libraries? Quiet. Even as a child, I loved the cathedral hush in a library that bespoke a reverence for books and thinking. I liked the reprieve from the jangling chaos of the world outside.
I’ve been to my local library exactly once since I moved here two years ago. Happily, it was crowded. Unhappily, it was noisy, and the “quiet room” was an alcove with no doors–and no room. A librarian once told me people were put off by shushing librarians and enforced quiet. Not me. Noise seeps into almost every waking moment of our lives. I miss having a haven from all that.
I’ll have to ask my dtr - I remember her saying something about their library considering what they could/should do WRT people who essentially use library facilities for profit. I think their concern was not so much tutors, as private businesspersons, essentially operating their business out of the library.
When I used to tutor ESL adults (gratis), I greatly appreciated being able to reserve a meeting room at the library.
I think “information-centric community center” is as good a term as any. I think it a valid function of government. And if not centered at the library, where?
Speaking of the 86 LA fire, I was in college/grad school from 78-86. I well remember the huge card catalog in the main library. At some point during my time there they started adding computer terminals. I remember it being a novelty at first, but ISTR that by the time I left, they were ubiquitous and the old card catalogs were gone.
Sounds terrific, although since the Fairfax County public library system is so replete with books I read for free, any incentive to brave Route 28 into Manassas is minimized (until Danica Roem fulfills her plan to decongest traffic there).
Some libraries have an Honor rack of paperbacks. There’s a cost to cataloging and monitoring books and they were getting more donations of romance and other genre paperbacks than they had budget to catalog. So if you want to borrow from that rack you do it without checking them out. Bring them back whenever you’re done and put them back on the rack. If some of them get lost or kept, there will be more donated soon.
Our neighborhood branch of the Spokane library isn’t that big, but I can put anything in the entire county system on hold and it will be delivered to my branch for local pickup. Plus, I’ve requested many purchases for things they didn’t have, and they almost always come through if the item is available. I got no complaints. I use the library more now than I ever did.
Thanks for the recommendation! When I was in high school back in the Dark Ages in Culver City, friends and I would go downtown to this library to do research for papers. It was always a blast. I loved the look of the library (and the California room), we’d go the the Googie’s coffee shop for lunch walking by the winos on Pershing Square, and then take a short cut through the Biltmore on the way back. Cheap thrills!
I worked at L.A. County Public Library (which is completely separate from the L.A. Public Library – which is the city system) starting in high school and all through UCLA. I ended up getting a librarian job with the L.A. County Data Processing Department after graduation, which eventually led to me becoming a programmer/systems analyst. Funny how things turn out!
I worked in a closed-stack library in college, and “paging” book requests was a great way to discover books, plays, even whole subjects of study. That element of serendipity is a little lost now; algorithms to predict your taste narrow the range of possibilities rather than broadening them, it seems to me. I suppose going down a Wikipedia hole is sort of related, but it doesn’t have the “thereness” of browsing the stacks.
Also, there was a special collection in the basement and I was terrified to go down there at night…
All of the public libraries around here (in two and a half separate systems) don’t allow their rooms to be reserved for for-profit tutoring-- I’ve asked. It probably happens anyway, but the tutors have to lie about it.
I’ve noticed this myself and as a unrepentant lover of real books (the dead tree variety), it disappoints me greatly. I don’t like e-books at all and I refuse to read them if I can get a physical copy instead. I used to keep up membership in my local university library so I could have access to specialist books for my research, however I’ve found that most of the new books they’ve acquired are e-books only and many of their existing physical books have been moved off-site to the warehouse due to lack of being checked out any time recently. I’ve found it way easier to just buy the books I want for my research, though it’s a lot more expensive than library membership. My book-buying now runs into the thousands of dollars per annum. I guess that’s the price of “progress.” I wonder how long it will take before I have more books than the bloody library!
Do you have a Carnegie library in your area? Is there a system where you can order books from another branch, at least?
I guess I’m lucky – the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh SERIOUSLY kicks ass. They still have tons of dead trees, get new ones all the time (and I’ll NEVER give mine up!) as well as e-books.
If you don’t want to buy an e-book reader, you CAN download the software onto your computer – I did that, for books that are only available as e-books.
Modern libraries highlight something interesting beyond themselves: How do you reinvent yourself to be the same but different? You realize that circumstances have changed and so should you but you still want some link to your “essence” for lack of a better term. Movie sequels, businesses in industries undergoing disruptive technological change and workers face that problem.
So, both generally and specifically for libraries, how do you determine what you’re really about and what that implies in a changing world?