{"id":2606,"date":"2005-01-29T21:10:59","date_gmt":"2005-01-30T02:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/29\/2606.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:48:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:48:05","slug":"puff-piece-williamsburg-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/01\/29\/puff-piece-williamsburg-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Puff Piece: Williamsburg Regional Public Library"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

OK, our public library<\/a> rocks.\n

Now, Your Humble Blogger had been accustomed to an academic superlibrary<\/a> before moving to town, and before that the local public was the BPL<\/a>, which is a great library and all, and was, like, the first municipally funded library, and was all cutting edge in 1848 and all. So it’s possible that the stuff I’m finding cool is common everywhere, and has been for years. But it’s new to me.\n

The idea of requesting a book that is out and getting on the waiting list for it, is not remotely new, although it’s cool to be able to do it with a click from the on-line catalogue. What’s particularly cool, though, is that I can request a book that is on the shelf, and they will go and get it and hold it behind the circulation desk until I get there. Well, and you may be thinking that Your Humble Blogger must be unbelievably lazy to want that service. But then you don’t realize that YHB has a Perfect Non-Reader who is not interested in hanging around with YHB during shelf-browsing, or even whilst going around grabbing books from a pocketed list. No, after amusing the Perfect Non-Reader in the magnificently well-apportioned children’s room, YHB must go directly to checkout and then out of the library with no stops, or YHB will be the center of censorious stares. Some of my Gentle Readers will know just what this is like, others can well imagine, or think they can, although it’s far worse than that. Anyway, with this service, I can browse on-line, clickety-clickety, and then a couple of days later when at the library go directly from the children’s section to the circulation desk, pick up two or three books for myself<\/I>, and go ahead. Magnificent.\n

The second thing I think is V. Cool is the Gab Bag<\/a>, a service for reading groups where you can check out multiple copies of a book for six weeks on one card. They have (if I’ve counted more or less right) something like 75 titles. You grab a handsome canvas bag with ten copies of The Professor and the Madman<\/I> or eleven copies of Carter Beats the Devil<\/I> and distribute them to your group, collect them at the discussion a month later, and return them. You may wish to ignore the questions and supplemental material “to stimulate thoughtful discussion”, or perhaps you’ll want to use them. Your choice. Oh, and as with individual books you can have the bag held at the desk. I haven’t used this, as I haven’t a book group, but if I did, I sure would.\n

Third thing: Adopt-A-book. There’s a big binder with a list of bestsellers, magazine subscriptions, CDs, DVDs, audio books, and other items. Find one you are eager for, pull the page out and bring it up to circulation along with some lovely money (bestsellers are mostly $15). The receipt for your tax-deductible donation is on the page. The library buys the book and after it goes through acquisitions, you get an email and it goes behind the circulation desk for you to pick up. You get it first<\/I>. Now, I know you could just pre-order the thing through Amazon and then donate it to the library whenever you finish it. But this is cooler. And, I suppose, more tax-deductible. But mostly cooler. I would feel much more involved with the library this way, and (absurdly, I know) on occasion go past the shelf to see if my adopted book is in or if somebody has taken it home. I am also more likely to give the library fifteen bucks this way than as an outright donation. I haven’t actually adopted a book yet, but that’s in part because of the Perfect Non-Reader, who has little patience for YHB flipping through a huge binder, even while on-line at check-out.\n

Well, and also the library has a decent collection, a particularly good collection of children’s books and paraphernalia (oh, and you can check out toys and puzzles and puppets, and they have children’s Lit Kits with four books on a theme together with a toy or a doll or a puppet or a puzzle), and lots of comfortable chairs and meeting rooms and a theater and so on. And Eddie from Ohio plays there a couple of times a year. You know, it’s a cool place. But that’s not particularly new or impressive, it’s just the library.\n

So, am I hopelessly behind the times, impressed beyond reason at the commonplace? What’s cool about your local public library, Gentle Reader?\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, our public library rocks. Now, Your Humble Blogger had been accustomed to an academic superlibrary before moving to town, and before that the local public was the BPL, which is a great library and all, and was, like, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17287,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions\/17287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}