How to Make Use of Your Local Library
If someone told you that there was a bookshop down the road, and all the books were free – you would go, wouldn’t you? Yet that is what a library is. So how come they are not popular?
Did you know that usually you can request a book that you want to read? Do so. Most of us only read a book once. You can then give it back, and someone else can read it.
And don’t worry – writers do receive royalties for books that are rented from libraries too! They are paid by the number of loans.
Most modern libraries also offer reading clubs, free use of computers and many other community services. Like churches, libraries are right in the heart of our communities doing good. So make use of them. Because if you don’t lose them, you’ll lose them.
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A library can bring you back the right one. Neil Gaiman
One Man Visits All of England’s Public Libraries
An English Library Journey is the unique story of a man, who decides to travel the country, becoming a member of every single public library in England. From Solihull to Slough and from Cleveland to Cornwall, this 10-year journey sees him visiting different buildings (from Art Deco to a converted corset factory). And pondering over the role of the public library in our national life.
Book Crossing (a free worldwide sharing library)
BookCrossing is a lovely idea. You read a book you liked? Then go online and enter the code number. Then you tell others where you are leaving the book (in a restaurant, at a train station etc). Then someone picks it up, reads it and does the same.
You then can follow your book all over the world, to see who is reading it, and see who they pass it onto. Instead of a good book read once, then stuck on a shelf forever more.
Booksellers (not always fans of librarians!)
Of course although we want to save independent bookstores, there is a little bit of off-balance between them and libraries, as giving away free books, means they sell less of them!
A woman spent ten minutes looking around the shop, then told me that she was a retired librarian. I suspect she thought that this was some sort of a bond. Not so. On the whole, booksellers dislike librarians.
There is nothing they like more, than taking a perfectly good book and (with no sense of irony) putting a plastic sleeve over the dust jacket, to protect it from the public. Shaun Bythell (an indie bookshop owner)
