Relucent Reader, lives in Mechanicsville, Virginia, and worries about the threat posed to libraries by the wonky economy. I sympathise. The best public library I’ve used was at Mount Lebanon, a Pittsburgh suburb. Light and airy, well endowed (it was a swanky suburb) and it had a monster letterbox down which you could avalanche your returns at any time. A first for me then.The assistants were predominantly women, living tributes to the high standards of orthodontics in the USA.
What I can’t recall is the check-in/check-out system which is one way of marking the passage of time in any country. Scroll back several decades and my UK library ticket consisted of a paper pouch. Inside the library book cover was a similar pouch holding a card that identified the book. When I took out a book the card was transferred from the book pouch to my pouch and was stored in a shallow rack.
Processing a returned book the librarian riffled through the stored cards to find the relevant one. This took time. The cards developed a furry look from being riffled. Frequently they weren’t where they should be. More time.
Now the bar code and the computer have speeded things up. But our reading habits are recorded as are the number of fines we've incurred. There’s a price to pay for progress. Also, no one has yet computerised the need to stamp the return date on the book.
Libraries have a special smell, the same on both sides of the Atlantic: dust combined with something sharpish which may be the glue used in book production. I buy more books than I borrow these days but would go to the barricades to protect the library concept.
