It’s amazing that libraries are not more popular. In an age of austerity, these are big buildings packed with thousands of books, audio books and more – all available on free loan! What’s not to love? The fact that people don’t use them, goes to show just how uninspiring public libraries have become.
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. Neil Gaiman
A trained librarian, is a powerful search engine with a heart. Sarah McIntyre
Most public libraries don’t offer the same passion and interest that an indie bookstore owner shows. But if you have no money, use the request cards to ask your local library to stock the latest releases you are interested in. Libraries and councils can help by giving their local libraries a makeover:
- Offer books that people want to read! Check local indie brochures to see what’s happening in the book world, instead of just stocking the same old boring recommendations. This helps indie authors, who get a small commission if their books are read in public libraries.
- Have a library inventory. Rip out the pages of old boring and unethical books that’s been on the shelves for years, then recycle the paper and bin the spines (or have artists make them into new things at local art schools). Then think outside the box, and rearrange your shelves.
- Offer a walkable delivery service, with volunteers bringing books to the housebound. Rather than them having to wait weeks for the next mobile delivery vehicle.
- Do some interior design on a budget. Instead of sticking up school-painted handprints, get some eco paint and make the place inviting and get local authors to give talks, and get local artists to have displays of art.
- If you have outdoor space, make a welcoming garden for people to sit and browse (know toxic plants to avoid near visiting dogs).
- Find a local vegan baker and give them a little concession tea shop, for people to ‘read and browse’, just like American bookstores.
One person not keen on librarians is the bookseller who wrote Seven Types of People You Find in Bookshops. This self-proclaimed grump writes:
A teenage girl who had been sitting by the fire reading for an hour, brought three Agatha Christie paperbacks to the counter: £8. She offered me a fiver and I refused, telling her the postage on Amazon alone would come to £7.40. She wandered off muttering about getting them from the library. Good luck about that: Wigtown library is full of computers and DVDs, and not a lot of books.
A woman looking around the shop told me she was a retired librarian. And thought this was some sort of bond. Not so. On the whole, booksellers dislike librarians. There is nothing they like more than (with no sense of irony) putting a plastic sleeve over the dust jacket, to protect it from the public’.
