Libraries

What is it about a book?  The feel of it in hand, the story waiting to be revealed in its pages, the anticipation of entering into a new world in your mind, the sheer pleasure of finely crafted thoughts made into words.

According to random internet sources there are more than 120,000 libraries in the US. In FY 09, visits to public libraries totaled 1.59 billion, and there were 2.41 billion circulations of library materials.The Old Colony Library Network (OCLN), which serves my home area, is a cooperative of 28 member libraries located on the South Shore of Massachusetts. OCLN membership includes 26 town and city libraries and 2 academic libraries. OCLN’s cooperative nature enables member libraries to provide services that they would not be able to afford on their own. This network provides access to more than 800,000 books - for FREE to the reader (free is relative - of course somebody's taxes/contributions had to pay for the library system in the first place). Best deal on the planet!

Here's my neighborhood library. It is open four days of the week.....

...but I can return books anytime.

Call me old fashioned but I prefer the feel of a paper book in my hands. And when I nod off in my chair reading at night and the book crashes to the floor waking me, all I have to worry about is finding my page again.  With an e-reader, I fear breaking an expensive electronic product.  I hate to sound like a Luddite but I think you'll have to pry a paper-paged book out of my cold, dead hands before I willingly give in to technology on this point.

Here is the same book in both formats - I prefer the paper book.

And yes, I did try an e-reader.  I read four books on it.  It was pleasant, the typeface was very clean and readable, but I returned it back to the store for a refund.  Reading is tactile - physically turning the pages, riffling through past chapters to find and re-read a particularly poignant or important paragraph, seeing how many pages are remaining so I can pace myself to prolong the ending or accelerate it, taking books with me when traveling and then leaving them behind in random places for someone else's surprise reading pleasure. Or, the treat of stumbling upon an old scrap of note paper, or hidden money, or a pressed leaf or flower tucked in the pages. Reading is about more than just the words.

In the final analysis, does it really matter which method of delivery is used? Probably not - but I can read a book by candlelight or sunlight without ever having to charge a battery - I like that. I also wonder about the day when technology completely supplants the library system and the only access to the global repository of  knowledge is by paying some company who controls the ebooks to use them - seems like the wrong direction for a free society - too many Orwellian overtones for my preference.

I'd better stop now, this blog post is starting to sound like a cranky old man railing against progress and paranoid about government/military/industrial conspiracies..........