[Publib] Reading Recycled Books

[Backwage at aol.com]

I have to confess something:  I don't go to the library very often at  all.  
Last night is one reason why.  There is a one-dollar book outlet  in Burbank.  
I went there with a friend.  Got these:
 
Reporting World War II:  American journalism, 1938-1946
 
An anthropologist on Mars (Oliver Sacks)
 
The periodic table (Primo Levi)
 
The seashell and the mountaintop (Alan Cutler)
 
German drawings (an art book)
 
The how and why of mechanical movements (had to have this old book)
 
Tunney (Jack Cavanaugh)
 
Philip Vera Cruz (biography of this farmworker's movement pioneer)
 
At any rate, this should hold me for a few days.  I got a couple of  other 
books that I gave to a pal of mine.  Quite often I shop thrift stores  and 
similar outlets for books.  I get tons of reading and don't have to  read right 
away--there's no return date.  Afterward I give the books  away.  Quite a few 
come from local libraries, which are always eager to  dispose of extra literature 
to make shelf space.
 
The thing I find difficult about the public library is the unavailability  of 
older books, particularly scholarly books and nonfiction of the more serious  
kind.  Sure, I could scout around the large systems here in Los Angeles,  buy 
why?  Eventually I'd have a book, but only the one or a couple.   Here, I get 
a ton for practically nothing and can browse easily.  
 
[The best thing about used book stores is death.  The best thing about  a big 
city is that there are people there who read.  And they die.   Their books 
end up in the second-hand store.  The best thing about the  library, for me at 
least, is the New York Review of Books, for free.]
 
It always gives me a dose of the guilts that an avid reader and MSLIS  holder 
like me doesn't use the library more.  It also scares me that there  are 
probably many others like me out there.  What can be done to make folks  like us 
go through the portals?  
 
First, I'd say that large public library systems (such as Pasadena's and  the 
two Los Angeles giants) should open a branch devoted to classical fiction  
and scholarly/serious nonfiction.  If they have children's libraries and  
sections, why not this?  Many of my friends think of the public library as  a sort 
of Barnes and Noble--filled with stuff they neither need nor  desire.  I tend 
to agree, though I think that's part and parcel of  democracy and the role of 
the library to please everybody just a bit.  Out  of the more than a hundred 
public libraries in this county, couldn't there be  one for us?
 
Another thing:  I've helped weed books, and what goes out is what  doesn't 
circulate, and what doesn't circulate is often very important, serious  
stuff--the Bronte's lesser fiction, translations of books like Primo Levi's  Periodic 
Table.  I could fill my house with like-new library discards I  find of this 
sort.  And I do.  And this sort of thing prejudices me  against my own library. 
 Very often it seems that, in the war for shelf  space, the flashy, the new, 
the popular, the light stuff--this material  wins.  I know that publishing is 
a fast conveyor belt of books pushing at  the library door, but come on folks.
 
I remember when librarians tilted against the new.  Now they tilt  against 
the old.  It may be a long time before I brush the dust off my  library card 
again.  Any thoughts?  By the way, I can save you the  time if you think that I 
should go to university libraries.  You can't use  them unless you're a 
student, and my alumni status is for a school 400 miles  away.  Comments welcomed.
 
M. McGrorty

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