My local public library was closed for several months earlier this year because of the coronavirus restrictions. The online reservation service was not available for a while after they re-opened; now that it has been reinstated there are so many rules and restrictions that for me library visits are just not worth the trouble.
I don't want to have to deal with the welcoming committee at the door with their demands for contact details for Test and Trace, not to mention the compulsory face masks and hand sanitising! Reserving books would entail letting them know in advance what time I am coming to collect them, which doesn't appeal either.
I took two library books out just before the first lockdown started; they were automatically renewed so I didn't have to pay any fines for non-return. Taking them back when my library re-opened in July is the only time I have visited the place since March.
Some people max-ed out their library cards just before the first lockdown started so as to get a lot of reading material in before holing up at home; I have been filling the gap with online and downloaded material and by reading some of my own books one last time before donating them to charity shops.
Former library books: a slight digression
My local library has book sales from time to time, but I have never seen anything I want. When it comes to buying books, there are much better sources.
Many of the books I have been reading during the lockdown were second hand and came from charity shops or eBay; ironically, many of them were ex library! I bought them either before I re-joined the public library because I had no choice but to pay for reading material or after because they were not in the online catalogue.
The ancient date stamps showed when the old library books I bought were last taken out; in many cases this was decades ago. They would have been sold off some time after the readership dried up.
So some library books continue to circulate and inform and entertain a series of people, not to mention make money for the sellers, long after they are officially 'dead'. Who knows how many people had read and passed on, for example, my biography of Ouida after a library sold it and before I bought it. By donating it, I have started a new cycle.
Libraries during the first lockdown
Some branches of London’s public libraries opened just to provide PC and Internet access for people with no other options, with social distancing and hand and equipment sanitising enforced to prevent infection. This was a very valuable public service indeed; I didn’t need it myself but it was a lifeline for some people, those looking for a job for example.
The libraries continued to offer many free online resources to their members, including eBooks, eNewspapers and eMagazines. This helped to compensate for the unavailability of paper material.
They also continued to operate a home delivery service, and they waived reservation and late return fees for the duration.
Back to semi normality
After they re-opened – with reduced servces and many restrictions – in July, the libraries in my borough offered 'book bundles' for people who don't know what they want! People who use this service give details of their interests and the genre of fiction they enjoy and the librarians select and bag books for them. This service is not very suitable for proactive people, but it reduces the time some visitors spend inside the library. A one-way system with time limits was implemented for people who wanted to browse the shelves.
Libraries also gave priority to providing study space, although places, power supplies for laptops and time slots were necessarily limited.
Another lockdown
In the article referenced above, which was published before I first heard about the coronavirus, I said that I planned to take out many library books in 2020. My plans for this year have been sabotaged!
Things are not looking too good for 2021 either.
There is currently another strict lockdown in London, with much the same effect on the public libraries as the first one. Unlike last time, my local library is continuing to offer book reservation, collection and return services; as before, they are providing controlled PC and Internet access for essential use.
There is currently no indication of when libraries will return to normal. So long as the lockdowns and restrictions continue, I will have no choice but to either go along with all the health and safety requirements or carry on living without library books.
I still have some books of my own to read while I wait to see what happens next and there is still a huge amount of online material of interest to get through; I can manage without library books for a while yet.
