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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Your Local Library

11:34 / 03.09.05

Pardon my French, but my local library (Jubilee Library, Brighton) is fucking fantastic. I go there several times a week, they've got a great graphic novel section, lots of free internet computers, a rare books section with a grimoire bound in human skin, a good music and dvd section, regular art installations, friendly staff, comfy seats and a fabulous looking building inside and out that looks so 21st century it's not true. I love it.

Do you use your library? If not, why not!? FREE BOOKS, dude, what do you want a pound of flesh?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

14:29 / 03.09.05

22:48 / 03.09.05

Geez, I remember this ...they're building that library in slo-mo. They just planted some trees outside. I don't know when it's going to actually have books and be open.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

21:40 / 04.09.05

I use the Vancouver Public Library loads - mostly research material, occasionally fiction, but less likely.

a few graphic novels, but nothing too grand. The building itself is impressive, despite local criticism.

however, there's this anecdote about York University's Library in Toronto...

the engineering department won the contract to design & build the new Uni library. They were quite excited, and threw themselves into the task. Very creative design. The plans approved, the construction went ahead, and come September, the beautiful new library opened to the student body.

and all was good.

except...

several months later

someone noticed that the library, was, well, sinking.

incredulous engineers scrutinized the details of their calculations to find the oversight: soil density and load bearing potential, supports, foundation calculations...

they'd forgotten to calculate the weight of the books.

"do you ever get that sinking feeling when you're reading Proust?"

ta
tenix

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

21:41 / 04.09.05

quantum

do they really have a tome made of human skin?

for real?

ta
tenix

02:52 / 05.09.05

Tenix: Alledgedly.

My local library is great, and not just because I volunteer there. The people are super, Wake County has a pretty good collection, and I dig it. I've seen more massive libraries, and more complete, but if there's something you need, it can usually be I.L.L.ed.

13:00 / 05.09.05

I work for the council, in the same building as our lovely library and always have 10 CDs, a DVD and a few books out. My top perk is, no late fees and free requests for new stock (not that they'll be buying any for a while, I think they're broke).

14:01 / 05.09.05

I love libraries, but for me the books/dvds are never free as I have a seemingly pathalogical inability to return things on time, no matter how easy it is to phone up and extend the lending period. Having said that, I almost enjoy giving money to my local library, seeing as how they're all so broke. Think DVD/video rental is one of best kept secrets of UK public libraries - costs same or less as scummy blockbuster and get to keep it for a week (two if its a bank holiday!!). Just last week I rented Elephant (Gus Van Sant) and Sideways (bloke who did About Schmidt and Election).......

06:24 / 06.09.05

At the moment I've been using the Central Library in Oxford, which is pretty good. The range isn't amazing but you can usually find books on the computer if you want something specific. I've rinsed their graphic novels, but the fiction section is quite good and they have plenty of films and cds. I have access to the University libraries to though, so if I really want a specific book I'll use one of them. What I like about public libraries is the fact that you can just wander round and browse through the books. I usually have between 12-15 out at any one time and its always the most random selection!

11:00 / 06.09.05

I use the public library lots, though the staff in my local branch are the grimmest, most unfriendly people ever. I've been going there at least fortnightly for nearly 5 years and have yet to receive a smile. Which is strange because the branch on my walk back from work is super friendly. I've always loved the library ever since I was a nipper.

21:46 / 07.09.05

I always wonder how much other people use the online catalogues. Do people just browse to see what catches their eye? Or do you search out and reserve particular books?

A few years ago I would just see what I could find, but now that I know can search through the stock online I get a lot more out of the libraries I use, even though I do still chose most of my books by wandering around the building itself.

05:27 / 08.09.05

For some strange reason I can't think about the library without remember that bit from I, Robot about all the libraries being shut down to preserve the internet.

wembley can change in 28 days

07:27 / 08.09.05

Thank you for reminding me: I have about 65 books that are due back today - from three separate libraries in Helsinki. The university library kicks ass on the public ones here in general, but the National Theatre School library is a favourite of mine simply because they have everything I need. Dodgy library interiors seems to be a Finnish standard, though.

07:37 / 08.09.05

i just wanted to write in praise of peckham library, which won building of the year of few years back, a large brightly coloured upside down L, with wonderful views over to north london, a great little comics section and a fantastic local history and black history section (though the walworth road one is better for those), always full of kids behaving themselves and the largely poor of peckham hell bent on self-improvement, a lovely place, and real heart of the community.
i'm sure it has other things than comics and local history but well, that's what grabs me when i go in.

07:46 / 08.09.05

I think my library has a decent comics section, but it is kept in the Teenage section and this makes me feel uncomfortable browsing through them. Maybe that's my problem, but it hardly does the "Comics-as-Literature" movement a great favour either.

07:47 / 08.09.05

I use my library every week. Actually I drift between three libraries. I live in Stoke Newington, Hackney so I regularly use my closest (but rather small one) in Church Street, and then if I can't find what I want there, go to the other two closer ones in Stamford Hill.

Some people say they prefer to buy their books and keep them afterwards. Firstly with the volume of books I read, there's no possible way I could afford that (around 4-5 books every 2 weeks incl. graphic novels), nor have any place to store them. So yeah the library is fantastic for me.

Just to name a few, if it wasn't for libraries I would never have discovered Evelyn Waugh, John Fowles, Alan Moore's ABC books, Y the Last Man, and in my younger days Asterix and Tintin.

A library is definitely a sign of civilisation imho.

Z

11:43 / 08.09.05

I'm joining the Rare books section to look at this, whether or not it's genuine longpig leather-
The most infamous book in the collection is the book of magic 'Trinum Magicum'. Printed in 1573, it is special because it is supposedly bound in human skin.

Flowers, I thought a fresh thread couldn't hurt. Especially one extolling the enormous virtues of the Library system, woot! Libraries are ace! Go libraries! We love librarians, especially in nice skirts! It's a great place to pick up sexy intellectuals!

03:18 / 09.09.05

I use my local library because, yeah, FREE BOOKS, and it's like three blocks away. But I have to admit, it kinda sucks. There are a buttload of mystery novels and a good-sized large print section. The fiction selection is pretty awful - I can't seem to find anything I'm looking for, whether old or new, even popular books and classics, so what the hell IS that stuff on the shelves? Yet I doggedly scour the selection and take out books one after the other, because I have a library card so why not?
On the plus side, they offer free passes to the MFA and the Aquarium, and that's cool, though of course I've yet to take advantage.

09:43 / 09.09.05

a fantastic local history section

doctorbeck, you've just reminded me of the great time my partner and I had looking up the history of our last house at local (Leeds) library. We ended up with copies of maps dating back to 1830's showing our actual house and copies of census records listing previous owners/tenants and their occupations. When we moved it was great to pass on this folder of documents to next people. And it was all 100% gratis, including help and advice from wonderful friendly librarian. Must do same with current address!!

09:45 / 09.09.05

PS I've often thought this would make a great house-warming gift, as info is free for all and only takes a few hours to put together. Its especially intersting when you can get maps of local area showing how land use has changed over decades/centuries.

12:06 / 09.09.05

I love my local library. We have a county-wide network so I can get any book that's in the county system delivered very quickly to my library.

And quite possibly the only truly wonderful thing about living in Ohio is Ohiolink. 84 Libraries! Millions upon millions of volumes! Delivered to my local uni library in 2-3 days! Or I can zip over to the closest ones and just use my university ID to check out books, etc. I never have to use ILL any more, essentially. I love librarians! They're so into sharing. (Much better than libertarians! They're not into sharing at all!)

vanishinghitchhiker

04:59 / 15.09.05

I think my library has a decent comics section, but it is kept in the Teenage section and this makes me feel uncomfortable browsing through them.

Word. The library I go to so far for comics (nearest one with a reasonable selection of some of the things I want to read) keeps them downstairs in a sort of glass-walled room, which is the kids' section. No one's ever staffing it and inevitably some security guard stops me as I grab the door's handle and tells me I can't go in there, it's closed. I tell them I just want to get one thing, and they say fine, get it and come out again. Goodness knows what trouble I might cause in a glass-walled room by myself if I stayed there to sit and read.

Anyway, do I use my local library? Not nearly enough. Partly that's the result of the obsession I've developed over the last few years with buying most books I want to read. I'm beginning to get myself back in the library habit, but...

Is my local library good? Yes and no. My local library is the New York Public Library, which consists of a whole lot of little branches here and there. I will say that the branch I've been using has a good selection of books in Spanish, and I'm glad to see that. Regarding comics, even systemwide, the selection is pretty shoddy, and most of them are concentrated at the Mid-Manhattan branch, to serve the greatest population. Here in the Bronx, I can find a small number of comics by moving from one branch to another, but still not a lot. Even regarding non-comics titles, I'm sometimes surprised at what the entire city of New York is lacking in its libraries. And sometimes the system's only copy of something will be in a branch on Staten Island, which is about as long a trip from here as, oh, Wyoming.

All that said, the research branch is wondrous.

And in any case, I don't use the libraries enough. The other day I was thinking about going to my usual branch of the library to do some writing, since I was distracted here and the air conditioning would've been nice, but it didn't seem worth the trip on the subway. Later, walking down the street, I remembered there's a smaller branch three blocks from my apartment. I haven't been going there cause they have no comics, but... Yah. You'd think I'd remember it was there.

17:39 / 16.09.05

Went to the Library today to pay off fifteen quids worth of fines (note to self- never again let SO borrow CDs on your card) and found a load of new graphic novels! Including Y the Last Man (One Small Step), Tom Strong book 3 and another six ace comic TPBs I'd not read, hurrah! While there, I noticed the Art exhibition in the lobby had changed, thus the posting here-
The new exhibition is a bibliophile's dream- it's about bookbinding, so there's dozens of novel books and some beautiful objects inspired by books, abstracted beyond function but oh so beautiful. Any Brighton lithers, go see it, mmmmm.

11:12 / 07.10.05

I'm glad there's a new thread on libraries, because since the last one I've made a complete u-turn, opinion-wise. I think in the last thread I said something about not using libraries so much because I like owning books, but now I love the feeling of having a book to read without having to think about where it's going to be stored at home.

Incidentally, having just been to my local library in my lunch hour I have an enormously geeky question: does anyone know how standardised the classification systems are, or how they work? Surrey libraries put books on gender theory in exactly the same category as Mars And Venus On A Date, which seems a little odd.

12:13 / 07.10.05

I thought they all used the Dewey Decimal system.
However this is based on a lesson I had in school about 10 years ago, so I may be hugely out of date, or possibly just flat out wrong.
Some librarians however do seem to operate on a fairly random sorting basis, especially if the book's subject is unusual/ not spelled out explicitly in the title (not that gender theory is unusual, but you get my drift). My local librarians have sorted books into frankly crazy categories.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:43 / 07.10.05

There are any number of classification systems, Dewey's certainly the most common, but there's also Library of Congress, which I've never used and which scares me. The problem with Dewey is that as it classifies everything by subject if you have a lot of books on a particular area, if you're a specialised library, it ain't so good because you'll have shelves of books with the same Dewey number. The British Library has it's own special classification system for precisely this reason. With libraries that use Dewey things the classifications will be the same, however books may be catalogued in different places, as people might think differently on what the emphasis is, a book might be in the 680s because it's management in one library and in the 300s in another because it's the management of a specific company.

20:50 / 07.10.05

i work at a library (only @ a low level position) so it is most heart warming to read this thread. support the hell out of them. if run well they can really invigorate a communtiy.

i know i go out of my way to help people find what they are after and suggest other work that may plant a few seeds.

there are quite a few in the profession who have an overt technofetish and are pushing for full digital libraries w/no books housed in the buidling. i think this has already happened at some university libraries in the states. if you ever catch wind of this at a local library please do what you can to dissuade them. it is the death knell of libraries as far as i am concerned. these people have obviously never read virilio on the 'integral accident.'

13:46 / 08.10.05

As a small aside I just stumbled across this gallery of bellydancing librarians, on Bruce Sterlings weblog. Hey and I thought Librarians were cool before

.

foolish fat finger

20:54 / 29.06.06

I love Manchester Central library. I think, like Morrissey, I spent my best teenage years hanging around the literature department...

I hate to disagree with you, Quantuum, but I didn't really like the new Brighton library- the stairs are too small, and the soundproofing is terrible... I am a fan of cobwebs and 'shushy' libraries tho... (my claim to fame, I was the third person thru the door when it opened- I would have been first, but I like staying in bed... I did get to shake hands with the leader of the council tho, what's his name...? he's got a funny sounding surname... oh, yeah, Ken Bodfish)

it's probably better now tho... have they sorted out the lifts and the toilet yet?

14:10 / 30.06.06

There are two libraries in my area; a HUGE one in the city, and then a tiny one in my neighborhood that doubles as a community center. The city library is amazing, but I hardly ever go there because I don't live within the city limits, meaning I can't have a library card. I go to the neighborhood library occasionally, but it isn't great. There are so few books, and all of them have been donated to the library by schools and private collectors, so they're all falling to pieces. The only good thing about the library is the computer system. Free broadband!

11:19 / 05.07.06

My local library sucks. Its so small that Im pretty sure that Ive read everything thats actually worth reading in there. Poor selection. No comics. Hell, I couldnt even find Kobo Abe. And no pretty girls. Theyre all old. Its sad

12:59 / 05.07.06

Manchester Central Library is pretty good; wide range of authors, titles and subjects, as well as a selecction of DVDs and CDs, though the range is somewhat limited and you have to pay to book them out.

I've never booked a book out because I'm usually reading the ones directed for my creative writing course, and besides, these are usually booked out because someone else has had the bright idea of forsight, but I have borrowed a couple of DVDs because my collection is limited and I just don't have the cash for £20 on new titles all the time.

What is particualrly nice is that they have regular poetry and prose readings from established and emerging writers which I think makes to library all the more appealing to public.

For comics though, you have to go to the All Saints Park Library on Oxford Rd, and also be a University student, else you can't get in.

11:38 / 09.07.06

I don't borrow books from my local library, I haven't returned some books, and this was over 10 years ago!!! But I use my Uni library everyday. (They must think I'm cookoo for sure, the amount of books I borrow) I think I'm addicted to it. I have a lot of fond memories of libraries. I "discovered" myself in a library, insofar as what I wanted to do with my life, (and no, it was not to be a librarian, however I did toy with it, afterall it requires a Uni career.) and it also provided a shelter. I love books, and I love books that have been well read. I buy alot of books also. But nothing compares to a library book, Libraries are also special places. They are a refuge, a place where someone can go to, to escape. They don't discriminate. If I can't afford to buy a book, I always check the library, and if I like a book at the library, I buy it. Libraries are comforting places. Personally I think that it is the sound of the wand scanning the books and people entering that is most exiting. (it's that "tck tck tck" sound of someone rolling over the the theft detector system) Throughout social upheavals, good and bad days, sorrow and happiness, the local/uni library will always be there. Also the culture of people who work there -never really seems to change. (my local library still loves macrame and thick red carpet no matter how modern it is supposed to be!!) The study desks, the catalogue system, and the satisfaction of finding a book, the smell of a library, the responsibility of returning a book on time, finding books from your childhood, and sitting to read them, and remembering events, people, years gone by... the memories... Oh, I love it, I love it all. The only problem I have with the library is that the books have to be returned.... I wish also that libraries were open till midnight on some days. But a library to me is a place where time stood still, the same books, same atmosphere. Nothing much changes. That I suppose is was makes it comforting.

16:35 / 10.07.06

Am I crazy for thinking that more libraries are switching to the Library of Congress these days? My local library is LCC and I despise it. DDC seems so much more intuitive and easy to navigate. LCC's order of categories, the way some things are grouped together (Geography and Recreation? Whosie whatsie?), and the awful alphabetical coding... some letters are actual subdivions of other letters... blech, I hate it.
(General rundown of library cataloguing systems here.)

11:46 / 14.07.06

I used to use the local library a huge amount, must get back into the habit especially after this enthusiastic list!