We’ve really enjoyed the [regional] Gothic meme going around Tumblr. So much so that we tried to make a library version. Let us know what you think or add your own.
There used to be more books on the shelf next to the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. You like to think that they just got checked out. You try not to notice how your copy of the Cthulu Mythos looks thicker.
Some library cards are plastic. Some library cards are paper. Some library cards are clay tablets; these are the hardest to scan.
You are trying to do some cataloging, but you’re not sure which standard your records are in. It’s not RDA, it’s not AACR2. It might still be MARC, but what’s the field designation for ancient runes?
You’re pretty sure that Dewey Decimal Classification numbers do not go into seven digit integers.
The library programs include Storytime on Saturday mornings, Book Club on Monday evenings, and a meeting for beekeepers that happens only when the moon is full.
The child who reads the most books during the Summer Reading Program gets a very special monkey’s paw.
The library has many regular patrons. You assume. It’s kind of hard to see faces under all the hooded robes.
A patron goes to the reference desk to look for a book on mountains. She is politely informed that mountains do not exist and is directed to the relevant area in the fiction section.
THERE ARE NO WALLS. THERE IS NO CEILING. THERE ARE NEITHER TABLES NOR CHAIRS. THERE ARE ONLY BOOKS.
Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.
shealwaysreads 