I now know something about the background and history of public libraries and about other people’s views on and experiences of them.
There was a long discussion about free public libraries on the old Conservative Conspiracy Forum. Some posters approved of them, others did not. I made several contributions in their favour and challenged some of the points made by the antis.
In addition to my personal memories, those old posts and some information I compiled at the time are the main source of material for the public library articles.
This one will bring my personal experience up to date.
Leaving the public library behind
After leaving school, I continued to be a great user of local public libraries for some years. Then came a time when I allowed my membership to lapse and even forgot that public libraries existed! Buying books instead of borrowing them became the norm for me.
There were several reasons for my defection:
I had moved to an area where the local library was not at all impressive; it was small and there was a very poor showing on the shelves, with little to make browsing worthwhile.
I became interested in New Age and other types of metaphysical books that my library didn’t stock.
I could afford to buy whatever books I wanted, fiction and non-fiction, new or second-hand as available, and I was spoilt for choice as there were many bookshops of various kinds within easy reach including specialist, second-hand and discount. There were charity shops everywhere and they were a good source of cheap books. Some street market stalls sold books too. Browsing in all these places was enjoyable and very productive.
Later came the buying online from Amazon and eBay, primarily for the convenience and good prices.
Returning to the public library
After some years of buying instead of borrowing books, I decided to rejoin my local library. This was partly to save money as my earnings had dropped, partly because bookshops were disappearing and charity shops rarely had anything I wanted and partly just because of an inner prompting, a feeling that the time had come to return to and reconnect with the past.
I think that despite my experience of doing things in other areas of life online, I must have subconsciously expected public libraries to have remained unchanged. I was in for a big surprise: I found a whole new world!
Everything had been digitised and automated during my long absence. The pink and green ticket holders and the long wooden card index boxes that I remembered no longer existed. There were machines for checking books in and out and paying fees. I was impressed by the new digital procedures:
I was delighted when I discovered that I could search the catalogue and reserve books online at any time of the day or night.
Better still, the catalogue is a joint one: I can see what stock other boroughs have, reserve one of their books and have it delivered to my local library!
I get email notifications when a book is ready for collection and reminders when it is close to the return date. I can renew a book online if necessary.
With less space allocated to books now, there is even less to interest me on the shelves now. Most of the books I want have to be brought from the storage areas or other libraries.
It may seem a problem that the machines can’t recognise most old books so they have to be checked out manually, but it is a link with the past to see the librarians use the date stamp on them!
Old card indexes and new checkout machines:
The underground treasure troves
There are many good but sometimes old and out-of-print books in storage. I have had some pleasant surprises when checking the catalogue just on the off-chance the library might have a book I wanted.
The demand for these stockroom books may be limited, but some of them have provided inspiration and material for articles.
A Study in Southsea is just one example. It sounded interesting when I discovered its existence while researching online. I found it on eBay for £10 but was reluctant to get it in case it was full of irrelevant material: I didn’t want to pay all that money just to read about Conan Doyle’s cricketing activities! I was surprised but delighted to find it in the library catalogue. For a reservation fee of just £0.40, I found a few lines towards the end that put me onto a story that inspired a whole series of articles about Conan Doyle’s witch Helen Penclosa.
Stella Gibbons’s biography, her novel Shadow of a Sorcerer and biographies of Stella Benson, Marie Corelli, Georgette Heyer and Mary Webb are further examples of library books from storage that have been mined for material for articles.
Online reading options
Project Gutenberg has many books in the public domain available for online access at no cost. I have been making good use of the Gutenberg sites ever since I first discovered them.
Google Books and Amazon facilities such as View Sample, Look Inside, Surprise Me, Search and Snippet View etc. are a very clever way to read parts of books online. I use these options mainly to refresh my memory of books I have already read.
Despite all the online facilities and e-books, I still much prefer the paper volumes, which means making good use of my library.
Other facilities in modern public libraries
Libraries, at least the big city ones that are all I know, have free publications, free WiFi and PC access, free access to websites that normally require a subscription and many other amenities and facilities, some of which I have used myself.
A few years ago, I was on a short break and wanted to check my emails. I went into the local library and they let me have 30 minutes’ internet access free of charge.
When I had a problem with my one and only laptop, I used a PC in my local library to do some work and find a repair company. This was all the more useful as the local Internet cafés have all closed down.
People can now collect Amazon items from lockers in my library, and a coffee machine was installed recently. The old-style librarians would be horrified!
Looking backwards and forwards
With hindsight, I should never have stopped using my library.
I would have saved a lot of money if I had only stayed a member and checked the catalogue before buying a book, as many more titles, fiction especially, became available for borrowing over the years.
Other people benefitted from my extravagance as I eventually donated most of the books I bought to charity shops, but I still regret those gap years. I feel like a traitor!
Then there is the matter of support: in theory at least, the more regular users a library has the less likely it is to be closed down.
Councils are cutting their budgets, which means less funding for public libraries. This had resulted in many closures. I think that my local library is as safe as any, but, as with many others, its future is uncertain.
I had better make the most of it while it is still there. I plan to scour the catalogue and take out a lot of books this year.
