Musing Monday..Not an Open Book

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 Another Monday, so let's Muse!! Here are the questions from  Should Be Reading...

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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.

• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!

• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.

• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!

• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

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Since we were talking about libraries...

We were last week, and it seems that many of us have fond memories of the local library as a child and probably as an adult as well. Most likely we are thinking about our local branch. However, if you live in a city or a large community, how about your central library. You know, like the place in NYC with the lions outside. Whatever the future of our local outlet in this digital age, what about those places with stack after stack of 'real' books? Are they needed in the modern world, the digital information world?
Well, according to another article from the WSJ, The Library's Future Is Not an Open Book....what can I say, they have good articles!...that future is not as clear.

Branch libraries have long served as community hubs offering book clubs and after-school story times. But central libraries, dedicated to the care and maintenance of weighty collections within ornately crafted and lofty spaces, are having to recast themselves. Thanks to the shift of emphasis to online resources over hard copies, the prevalence of mobile technologies and changing approaches to studying and learning, libraries have a different social purpose.

These day, these central libraries are not about books, those stacks often being moved to other places. No, now it is about 'information', it is about being 'relevant'! The problem is no one is really sure what that means. And if they can determine what it means now, today, and shape the library for that use, what will it mean in a year or 5 years. Timeless this is not.

Librarians themselves don't talk about "books" much anymore. The library today, said Michael Colford, the director of library services in Boston, "is more of a platform launching you in all different directions."

Launching you in different directions...
Is that how people learn? Personally, I know I need guidance, direction. If not, why just not give everyone a laptop and launch them out there. In fact, lets close the schools altogether and let kids just decide what is revelant themselves.

I fondly remember my days in my local branch library, but I also fondly remember my trips downtown to the central Newark Public Library, an impressive old building, to work on some school project. Yes it was full of stacks of books, and microfiche for newspapers article and rooms full of cabinets with illustrations and prints. There were librarians to help me and guide me and get me to pull my scattered ideas for a project into some sort of order, to guide me to where and for what I might need to look.
But maybe most of all, the building, the atmosphere, convinced me that learning was an important thing. Look at this beautiful building built to its honor, in honor of knowledge. There was a timeless quality to it, something way bigger than me, Big Things and Big Ideas. These beautiful buildings, these..

structures still serves the function for which it was created—to hold books—and inspires awe through the ideals expressed in its architecture and the intellectual resources housed within.

Inspire awe..what a nice idea!

Musing Monday...Beg, Steal or Borrow

I think it was on Shelf Awareness that I saw this link to a cute article, How to Shop at a Bookstore: An Easy 20-Step Guide for Authors.
Even though I have never seen a bookstore through the eyes of an author, as a reader, bookstores are certainly places I  enjoy going to. So I enjoyed reading this list...until I got to number 18... and it gave me occasion to pause.

18) As you cross the street with your bag of new books, remember the first time your mother took you to a bookstore and told you to pick something out. To keep, not borrow. You were overwhelmed by choice and wonder. Remember how you pulled things off the shelf at random because every book was equally unknown and fresh and promising.

Mother...bookstore...why does that not ring a bell?
In fact, why to I have no memory of bookstores when I was a kid.
Actually, what was the first time I ever went to a bookstore?
Gosh, I have no idea!

I have written before, perhaps ad nausem, about my happy memories of wee caite going to the library with my mom, a great book lover and a great reader. My memory of going upstairs to the kids floor, picking out the books I would take out. My memory of how happy I was to finally be old enough to get my own library card. Happy days...
Ok, I will stop. But still, libraries, yes, bookstores, no.

There were many stores in our neighborhood in Newark, NJ at the time. Jewelry stores, and shoe stores and two supermarkets and drug stores and a florist and an ice cream and candy store and several banks..but no bookstore that I remember. And even in downtown Newark, then the home of a great big Bamberger, later Macy's, department store and lots of other stores, I remember no bookstores. Was there a bookstore?
How odd is it that I have no memory of going to a bookstore until maybe I got a drivers license and could drive to the then new mall maybe a half hour away. Honestly, I do not remember going to a bookstore there either, but I must have. Right? Maybe the Bro will remember and post a comment.

Libraries were always the center of my book reading world when i was a kid. And oddly, now that our local Borders shut down and there are no independent bookstores nearby, libraries are once again playing a big part. That, and the Evil Amazon and Nookbooks from Barnes and Noble for the Evil E-reader and of course, that towering pile of review copies.

Do you have fond childhood memories of bookstores..maybe your first trip to a bookstore?
I would love to hear them!
Because it seems I don't!
!

If You Think Your Library is Small....

...check out this one in the village of Westbury-sub-Mendip in England. Seems the village was going to lose both it's public phone box and it's library around the same time, so someone got the fine idea to combine the two. Take a book...leave a book.

Villagers... can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs.

Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not.

"It's really taken off. The books are constantly changing," said parish councillor Bob Dolby.

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I Feel Myself Being Pulled To The Dark Side...

In my continuing effort to bring you all sorts of e-book news, there is an interesting story in the NY Times about e-books and public libraries.

"Eager to attract digitally savvy patrons and capitalize on the growing popularity of electronic readers, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves.

The idea is to capture borrowers who might not otherwise use the library, as well as to give existing customers the opportunity to try new formats."

Now there are a number of issues to be settled it seems. One is that these books can not, in the vast majority of cases, be downloaded to Kindles, because of Amazon propriety software. So let me see...if I choose an Evil Kindle, rather than the growing number of other e-readers, I cut myself off from major source of free books. Seems like more of an issue for the Kindle than the library or e-readers as a whole.
Then there is the issue that most libraries treat e-book loans like print copies, each 'copy' loaned out to one person at a time. So for a popular new book, there may be a 'line' just as there is for print books now. So the reader has a choice, as they do now, to buy it immediately or wait for a bit to get it free from a library.
And also there is the matter of now publishers feel about this issue of libraries and e-books.

"Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free."

I am not really sure how that is any different from the issue of libraries and print books now. Can someone explain the difference to me? But regardless, if this format become more popular, which seems inevitable, I am sure in time it will all be settled.

I must say, I found this article quite thought provoking. Now, you know about my many concerns about e-books. No secret there. But if you combine the convenience of being able to instantly download a book, read it anywhere, anytime on a wide variety of devices from a PC to an e-book device to a cell phone for a 'loan' period of several weeks and then you make it FREE...ok, I must admit it, now you have my attention!

But I can't get that image of that prep school with the empty shelves from my mind... ;-)