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June 10, 2007
In praise of older books
Many people have quite rightly made a big fuss about how few new books are being bought by the public library service (less than 7% of the library budget is spent in this way). There is often a confusion about what is meant by "new books". Frequently one person means a "new publication" while another means a "new copy" - and so on.
However some of the great assets of the public library service are their deeply hidden collections of older books. I don't mean just those of antiquarian value- but the huge landscape of publishing of the past, trivial and fascinating which often lies in locked or inaccessible storage; mostly not available to the public
I spent happy hours yesterday in a glorious pair of second hand bookshops in Felixstowe. Shelf after shelf of well organised lines of other people's discards, piled high and a little bit dusty. Most villages and small towns have these, with a bookseller at the desk wondering what happened to his life, but happy with his unfathomable knowledge of history and literature and the town in which he lives (they are mostly men- I could be one of them; it is the perfect garden shed).
I am told that publishers marketing folk worry about the growth of the second hand market which has certainly flourished with the arrival of www.abebooks.com; and I suppose that Abe has taken a serious slice of income from many second hand dealers. So I don't know whether my growing addiction to old books (which has been going on for some time) is a sign of the times or just my own age.
However, I do certainly think that public libraries could make more use of their own rooms full of these books. We should trawl the basements and locked rolling stacks and put the stuff out on the shelves. Why not?
I found a copy of the Ward Lock Illustrated Guide Book to Aldeburgh-on-Sea, inscribed by a young hand: "P.Hutton Summer holidays 1920" The opening line goes: Amusements: These are of the quiet open-air order. Restfulness and absence of excitement are characteristic of the town"
A summer holiday in two sentences!
Posted by Perkins at June 10, 2007 10:04 AM
Comments
It is extraordinary that public libraries - or, rather, the powers that be - have turned against the very thing which makes them distinctive: being able to supply books that have all too quickly vanished from bookstores.
All too often, here, one has to forage around Sussex for the one copy in the system of a particular book, and, worse, so often all copies have gone.
There is a myth among library controllers that readers want "attractive" books when in fact people are after particular books and do not mind if it is a bit rough and ready.
All too often, library documents state that books must be "relevant". But relevant to what? If somebody has taken the trouble to write a book and somebody has thought it worth publishing, then it is presumably to some part of the wide experience which is life and should not be sidelined by the reductive notion of "relevant".
Posted by: Christopher Hawtree at June 10, 2007 12:54 PM
Christopher
Thank you- reading further into my guide book I find a quote from Edward Fitzgerald, who was a local, which seems to say rather better that which I was trying to explain: "Each morn a thousand roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?"
Posted by: Tim Coates at June 10, 2007 1:29 PM
One major problem is that many of the older and antiquarian volumes have been sold off in Library booksales. It was always a major function of Libraries to be a repository of out-of-print items - unfortunately many library managers no longer see this as part of the Libraries function. Strangely enough they have abandoned this traditional role just at the time that the commercial booksellers like Amazon are discovering what in modern business terms is called "the long tail".
Ironically one reason Libraries have broken up the bookstacks and sold off the contents is the success of the British Lending Library, which is increasingly becoming the first resort for interlending for many books.
Posted by: Martyn at June 11, 2007 6:01 PM
"We should trawl the basements and locked rolling stacks and put the stuff out on the shelves. Why not?"
Space? Time? Usefulness? Seriously though, if items are taken out of general circulation through lack of use, why would you then put them back on the shelves? Most libraries I have used allow books to be borrowed from the reserve stack once you check they are available on the catalogue.
To Christopher, I think a lot of the time people are after subject specific information from their library, wouldn't you agree? If you wanted a particular item, you would be more likely to buy it?
Posted by: Paul at June 12, 2007 11:47 AM