I saw that National Library week is coming up in April, and that led to some questions. How often do you use your public library and how do you use it? Has the coffeehouse/bookstore replaced the library? Did you go to the library as a child? Do you have any particular memories of the library? Do you like sleek, modern, active libraries or the older, darker, quiet, cozy libraries?
National Library Week, eh? Well, it’s not coming up anytime soon in my part of the world — our library week is in October.
I was going to begin this post with a small admission:
Here’s a confession: I almost never use my public library. I think I’ve used the public library system about five or six times in the last, I dunno, six or seven or eight years.
… but then I went to the library yesterday, which throws off the whole count. Talk about inconsistent, self.
I went to the public library quite often as a small child, and as a middle-schooler, and sort of fell off after that. Once I got to highschool, I found that the school library could adequately take care of all my book needs (and indeed, I once earned the school’s “Avid Reader” award because someone noticed how often I was checking books out). And once I got to university, well, sheesh. Our library system is the fouth-largest in North America* and I have not once been unable to get a book I needed from the school system. So really, the public library system didn’t enter my mind for years. I got all my books from the university libraries, and did most of my studying there too.
* Actual numbers, from Wikipedia: The collections include more than 10 million bound volumes, 5.4 million microfilms, 70,000 serial titles and 1 million maps, films, graphics and sound recordings. Yup… that’s a lot of books.
Then back in December, I had a harrowing exam experience of which the end result was that I ended up spending several hours at a public library close to campus. And it was all delight, and I remembered, hey, I used to love the public library. And maybe I can again (actually, it would be an expedient thing, since I am graduating this term).
So to answer the question of how often I use the library, I would have to say: not very. Not very often, but slowly ramping up. Right now I use it most as study space, when I can’t be productive at home. And when I eventually lose my borrowing privileges at school (assuming that I don’t fork out for an alumni card, which, probably, I won’t) I’m sure that I’ll start borrowing more/at all as well.
Did your library habits change as you went through school?