[Publib] Larry McMurty on Books

[Mindy Kittay]

I am looking forward to reading his new book.  In response to the quotation
below I would just like to say that I love books, I collect books and it is
like a prayer - books are why I became a librarian.  But that said, we must
provide what the public wants or we will not survive.  I am tired of seeing
libraries stuffed full of books that never check out - they just collect
dust.  I think that providing more computers and updating the collection to
the materials that the public wants to check out is our responsibility and
duty.  Most modern libraries with lots of computers and reduced collections
- but more modern collections - have higher check out statistics than when
they were full of books that no one was reading.

Mindy Kittay

On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Pat McMahon <pmcmahon at galwaycoco.ie> wrote:

>
>
>
>
>  Dear Colleagues,
>
>
>
> Many of you will probably have seen this, but for those of you that have
> not, I think it is a very important statement, and I hope you will not mind
> me using the quotation here. It is from Larry McMurty's   *Books: A Memoir
> * which has just been published. I found the quotation in the *New York
> Review* (current issue) where the book is reviewed by Michael Dirda.
>
>
>
>
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> "Today the sight that discourages book people most is to walk into a public
> library and see computers where books used to be. In many cases not even the
> librarians want books to be there. What consumers want now is information,
> and information increasingly comes from computers.
>
>
>
> That is a preference I can't grasp, much less share, though I'm well aware
> that computers have many valid uses. They save lives, and they make research
> in most cases a thing that's almost instantaneous.
>
>
>
> They do many good things.
>
>
>
> But they don't really do what books do, and why should they usurp the chief
> function of a public library, which is to provide readers access to books?
>
>
>
> Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to
> work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the
> place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library."  (end of
> quotation).
>
>
>
> Further good points in relation to librarianship are made in the final
> third paragraph where Dirda quotes Cyril Connolly stating that "book
> collecting is a kind of prayer." Surely, the putting together of a book
> collection in a public library is also a kind of prayer, something sacred.
>
>
>
> Every good wish,
>
>
>
> Pat McMahon,
>
> County Librarian,
>
> Galway,
>
> Ireland.
>
>
>
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