Piggy-backing on Molly’s post last week about the wonders of Interlibrary loan, I wanted to express my love for the library. In college and grad school especially, I wandered the stacks a lot, and allowed myself to be surprised and take chances on things that I often would not have found in a bookstore or online. Taking a book out of the library requires no commitment. It just required curiousity.
As a bookseller, for the last 5 years, I often found myself reminding people of the library. When people would moan that the book they wanted was out of print I’d check the Chicago Public Library website to tell them what branch it was available at. People forget about libraries, and have pretty much entirely forgotten about all of the knowledge and serendipity that can come from browsing a whole book, or a section of books, on a subject instead of an article. Don’t get me wrong. I loves me the internet, but books: boy howdy!
Here’re some highlights from the Room for Debate discussion last week, “Do School Libraries Need Books?” As many people are arguing for libraries as against, but I especially liked the girl who says that schools could use the money spent on books to plan more proms. Priorities…