What have they done to my library?

I just got back from a trip to the central branch of the county library downtown,and don't know right now whether to be sad, or frustrated, or angry.

They've remodeled, and as port of that remodeling, they've gotten rid of a lot of books. A lot. The adult non-fiction section doesn't seem to have suffered as badly as the adult fiction section, although both are considerably reduced. It is the state of the adult fiction section that has me dispirited, possibly because the non-fiction section has never been as up-to-date or inclusive as it could have been. But the fiction section seems to have been reduced by at least half and hidden in a back, ill-lit corner of the library. It seemed so...forlorn.

They have also gotten rid of over half the table space for patrons to sit down and read a book or work on projects. There are plenty of computers, and table space reserved only for those who have brought a laptop to work on. Which is not a bad thing. But the lack of seating makes the place seem much less welcoming.

I don't know what he idea is behind the changes. Maybe they've decided that no one really reads anymore. Or, perhaps, that the only people in the future who will have a right to read are those who can afford an e-reader. And perhaps they are trying to make the library less hospitable to the homeless. If that is so, I think it is unfortunate.

I don't know what they've done to the children;s and young adult sections. I was afraid to look, after seeing what they've done to the adult collections. I might not want to know.

I can't really write any more about this now. I'm still too upset about the changes to be entirely coherent.

My Library Cards

Do you remember the old American Express commercials? The tag line was "American Express: Don't leave home without it."

Well, my paraphrase of that has always been: "My library card: I never leave home without it." And that's the truth. I got my first library card when I was five years old (although, at that point, it wasn't an actual card; just an entry in the library's records that I was allowed to check out books. By the time I was six or seven, they'd gone to a card that looked very much like a credit card and was run through a machine like credit cards used to be, before they could be swiped electronically. Each book also had a card, and you got a separate receipt for each book you checked out.

Then we moved, and again for a few years, the library kept the card instead of the individual patron, and I kind of felt like I was missing something. Now, of course, library cards have barcodes, at least where I live, as do books, and in some places you get to check them out yourself, at a self-serve machine, without having to even talk to a library clerk.

I actually have two library cards. Of course, there's my public library card, which gets lots of use. But I also keep a Community Borrower Card at the university library at the school where I graduated with my BA. It costs me $25 per year to maintain, but that seems like little enough to pay for access to that very good collection of books, which specializes in books about religion (its a private Christian school, run by the Mennonite Brethren) but has a nice general collection as well. I mean, how many Christian university libraries do you know that keep up a subscription to The Skeptical Inquirer?

Soon, I hope to have a third library card. If I can find the money, I'm also going to get a Community Borrower Card for the local branch of the California State University's library. It costs more than the one I already have, but as far as I'm concerned, you can never have access to too many books.

So, when did you get your first library card? Do you have more than one? And if you don't have one at all, why not?

A few words on what you'll find here...

So, far, the books I've mentioned here have had to do with religion, serial killers, rock and roll. Oh, and then there was the mystery novel.

This might be causing you to wonder about what you might be seeing here in the future. What kinds of books I'm going to review, what kind of other reading material I might write about, that sort of thing.

The short answer is: Almost anything.

No. Really. I'll read almost anything. Fiction and non-fiction. Oh, I have my favorites, of course. I read a lot of history and current affairs, and quite a bit of anthropology and the other social sciences. My education was in anthropology, with an emphasis in the anthropology of religion, so there will be some of that. In fiction, my favorite genres are science ficiton and fantasy and mysteries. But I do not limit myself to those genres and topics. Right now, I've got a book about trilobites on my to-read pile, as well as a couple of books about conspiracy theories (one advancing them and one debunking them), a memoir by an Iranian woman, and a Russian science fiction (or maybe it's fantasy) novel in translation. And those are just the books I've got out of the library right now.

Besides writing about the specific books I'm reading now, am getting ready to read, or have read in the past, I also plan to write about the topic of reading in general. Because, and I'll be frank about it, I think that most people don't read enough.

I'll probably also be writing about libraries from time to time. I love libraries. I use them all the time, and I think more people should use their public libraries more often. I'll likely also write about bookstores and their somewhat precarious position these days.

Another thing I hope to do here is to point you all toward interesting things to read on the internet. I love books, but there is also a lot of information to read on the 'net. Even entire books, free for the reading. When I find those, I'll tell you about them.

So, you'll just have to come back and check, to see what I'm on about on any particular day. Of course, I won't promise that I will post new content every single day. I do have a day job that I have to keep up, after all. But I'll be around most days, even if it's just to let you know what I'm reading and to see if you've dropped any recommendations of your own into comments. Which I really hope you will do. I'm always looking for more good things to read.