#LIbrarie

[mels-notes]

02.11.24

ma promenade à la librairie aujourd'hui 🍂

[soniadiez]

[100anspourtouttedire]

En difficulté financière, une librairie féministe lance un appel à l'aide : "si chacun·e d'entre vous nous achète un livre, on est sauvées"

[forthepleasureofmylife]

Paris

Photo: Dieter Krehbiel

[doctorslippery]

[hauntedhotel]

Me, on the welcome desk in the library: Good morning, how are you today?

Customer: I have welcomed Jesus into my heart and so I am well today and every day.

Me, a little unnerved: Okay then! Is there something I can help you with?

Customer, digging around in his bag and pulling out an iPhone in a box: Unfortunately, Jesus can't help me with this fucking phone, so I came to the library.

[wedarkacademia]

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[inside-my-gay-mind]

[faeriekit]

...I had a guy come in today asking about how to get his kids library cards. I told him. He asked me how hard it would be for them to get them, and I said that all it took was their presence and his government ID.

He told me about how nice the system was here, where it was so easy to get a card; he said that there was a beautiful public library in Beijing that was top of the line and everything, but that the only way to access it was if you were a high ranking government official or a top professor or something. Instead, our library "serves the reader." His kids will be able to take chapter books home at no cost. He'll even be able to get books in Chinese here so that his native language skills don't atrophy.

I didn't even really know what to say, so I told him how to ask us to buy books for him that we don't already have so that he can still read them at no extra cost. I don't know how to shore up what it must feel like to know that there are books out there you can't read; I've always grown up with a good library nearby. It reminded me of working in my old library, though, where families who spoke Spanish were startled to find out we took any government ID with a formal address in town— even foreign IDs— so that their kids could get access to all of our titles in all the languages we offered.

Ah. Anyway, I hope you check out a library book with this thought in mind. I checked out the first volume of YJ98 today with that thought in mind. I didn't have to pay anything. I put it on hold, and there it was.

Edit: for those who struggle with reading comprehension; no, this patron interaction is not meant to represent the status of the Chinese public library system at large nor the country of China itself; this was my response to a random Chinese immigrant dad's anecdotal concerns as he expressed them to me, because the whole breadth of concern I'm responsible for while on desk starts and ends at recommending which library services would fulfill his needs. If you think he misunderstood or was lying about the status of public libraries in China, that isn't something I'm charged to verify before writing my thoughts and feelings about the patron interactions I was exposed through throughout my day. Expecting anything else is absurd.

Edit edit: Also, your library may not actually use Libby as the distribution method for their ebook collection. The best way to find out about how to access your library's ebook collection is to call them directly.

[yeehawpim]

[laughroditee]

"She's so beautiful! I bet she goes to the library."

- my 7 year old daughter

[myjetpack]

My latest cartoon for @GuardianBooks.

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[daily-spooky]