library as bookstore

My response to Marylaine Block's piece Library as Bookstore

I guess I seek out three types of books: Technical, fiction, and essay.

We'll start with the simple one first: Technical.

The last time I was in a library for the library (rather than dropping off or picking up Catherine), I had a reference question. I was looking for an ISO spec, I had the number, but I couldn't get the reference librarian in question to understand that ISO documents extended beyond the then-in-vogue 9000 series. Which is a shame, because although they didn't have the one I was looking for, they did have more than the 900x documents in their collection, once I tracked the proper area down myself.

In one case, I actually was impressed by the computer section in the main branch of a county library. I mentioned this in a professional meeting and a colleague piped up with "Yeah, I got fed up, so I went down to the bookstore and bought them a computer section. We'll see how long it lasts before it ends up in the yearly used-book sale."

This is typical of my experience, even with university libraries, generalists buying books and periodicals based on reviews by other generalists, occasionally hitting the mark, but more often that not ending up with shelves of Time-Life series. I've generally gotten slammed doors when I've suggested that I could put together a roomful of people who'd use the resource if they could help with ordering.

Not that bookstores are any better, but at least in the bookstore I can usually say to the minimum wage flunky "Punch this number into the Ingram catalog. No, not in the 'title' field, in the one labeled eye ess bee enn. That one [gesturing]. How long will it take to get here?" If I pick a small bookstore and do this a couple of times, eventually they get really good about telling me "We'll have to order this from the publisher so we'll need a full deposit" in person, rather than calling me at home and having me make another trip to the store, delaying my order by yet another week.

(Hate to tell you how many small publisher's books have been dropped in the cracks because the store clerks think that if it doesn't come from Ingram they're not making any profit on it. Even in the small stores which advertise that they're better because they're small independents. Thankfully I've gotten to know the staff in a small store now who know that I'm happy to pay full list and buy other more profitable books while I'm there if they'll take care of the ordering hassles for me.)

Fiction: I read more than Michael Crichton. Most libraries seem to stock mainly Michael Crichton novels from the '70s in hardcover. And when I do read Michael Chrichton it's cheaper to buy it in paperback and not have to worry about leaving it on an airplane. Besides, it's easier to read fiction in paper, I can hold it one handed and not worry about losing my pinky when the weight of the book shifts.

I don't buy fiction from large bookstores (I'll buy technical from large bookstores because sometimes they'll screw up and actually have something useful in stock, and it's worth my time to check rather than wait for the order to come in). In small bookstores I go to the table in the front where the staff have laid out their favorites and work from there. Smaller selection is better, it takes me a couple of passes to find a store where my tastes agree with the store's, but once that happens I'm in love.

Essay: Either I heard about it on NPR, in which case the staff of my local bookstore probably has a list of books mentioned last week on the various NPR shows and can put me on the list for next week's order, and it's going to take the library 6 months to get it in anyway because they do block ordering, or it's fairly esoteric and would probably cause the general public to go into conniptions so if they do end up ordering it it'll end up questioned and put the staff through hell, so the staff isn't all that keen on stocking this kind of stuff anyway.

Again, the specialty shops win.

There is one place that University libraries are really good, and that's professional journals. Without a degree I'd have to jump through hoops and pay hundreds if not thousands to join professional societies whose goals I don't agree with anyway to get the journals myself, so I used to go hang out in the stacks at college library occasionally to read their journals. In the SF bay area parking's too much of an issue, so I don't any more.

If libraries were as easy to get to as the bookstores I frequent, I guess it'd be less of a hassle, because they do have some books I'm interested in, but usually they're not close to commercial centers so I have to make a separate trip, for a given book I have to drive there twice, and they generally cater to a different set of tastes than I've got.

A coworker of mine is fond of saying "Remember, 50% of people are below average". A library, by its nature, is catering to the average; the people who scream to the newspapers or the town council when it doesn't meet their needs (or, worse, when it offends them). A bookstore would be competing with the library if it were catering to those people (most of whom probably wouldn't buy books anyway, they're used to "free" entertainment like TV), so it's far more likely to try to carve out a niche by catering to me.

There's my bad attitude for the morning.


Monday, June 22nd, 1998 danlyke@flutterby.com