Welcome

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, ‘The library, and step on it.’ ”

from  Infinite Jest by  David Foster Wallace

 Ever since I first read this quote I have longed to jump into a taxi and say that. What a wonderful, whimsical way to live!

To me, libraries are living, breathing places. They each have a personality of their own.

I have always loved spending time at libraries. For the past seven years I have been lucky enough to be paid to spend time in my local council library system.  Being a casual library officer, I have been called upon to work all sorts of shifts with all sorts of people in all sorts of places.

One summer I spent many a sultry Saturday afternoon manning (or should that be ‘womanning’?) a mobile library, a bus parked in the civic plaza.  This was the only access locals had to borrowing facilities on Saturdays while the main library was being refurbished.  The poor old book bus is no more.  It’s gone the way of the dodo.  The library, of course, still offers home delivery of books to housebound readers.  The delivery service goes out to people in retirement villages too, but I know many people in retirement villages miss the social experience of  being able to clamber up into the book bus with their friends, and the opportunity to browse the shelves independently and not have people choose their books for them.

Other times I have worked shifts in small, dark decaying library sub branches (which have long since been closed down) where it smelled wonderfully of old books and was probably a health hazard to every asthmatic who entered.  These  libraries had a special feel and were my favourites.  They were intimate and cosy and everyone who walked through the door was a regular. It was not uncommon to hear the librarian shout out things like “Good morning Mrs Bates, I’ve saved the new Woman’s Weekly for you” or “Gday Bob, we got some new Westerns in last week.  Check the second shelf down”.  Small children would eagerly bound up to the  front desk to spend several minutes making the big decision about what kind of stamp they would ask for on their hand today:  fairy, dinosaur, Thomas the Tank Engine?   If a student came in to ask for help with a school project, there was time to find things for them and spend time with them.  Elderly regulars would often just drop by for a chat.  For those living alone it was sometimes the only human contact they had that day.

Most of my work has been in large, spacious, brightly lit,  well-resourced branch libraries. These places are an Aladdin’s cave of information, stories, entertainment, music and movies.  They have comfy, colourful spaces that encourage youngsters to sprawl on the floor looking at a picture book or curl up in a lounge chair with a graphic novel.  These libraries are busy places.  they are always full of people browsing for the latest bestseller, or asking for Book 3 in the sci-fi trilogy they are currently enjoying. In the mornings there are tired looking young mums herding tots into the story pit for 5 minutes blessed peace while the librarian reads to them.  In the late afternoon there are gaggles of schoolchildren giggling at the computers and pretending to do their homework.   There is always someone using the photocopier, squabbling over today’s Illawarra Mercury,  enquiring about books on alpaca farming, looking for jazz music from the 50’s,   reserving the latest Dan Brown, wanting knitting patterns, needing help attaching a photo to an email to their grandchildren overseas, or desperate to know the name of the autobiography by that bloke from South Africa.

All of these libraries are happy, productive places that play an enormously important role in our community.  I am proud to work in them and look forward to a long career within libraries.   Which brings me to the reason for this blog.  I am currently working towards my Diploma in Library and Information Studies and producing this blog is one of my assessment tasks.

I plan to have fun with it and explore a whole bunch of subjects somehow relating to libraries and books.  I thought about a specialised blog (eg featuring only children’s literature) but to me libraries are wonderful, open-ended, limitless places and so I wanted my blog to reflect that by being limitless too.

cheers,

Lisa E