Making peace with libraries

When you examine something long enough, sometimes you realise you can't see it at all.

Last week I joined a local library, for the first time in years.

It’s not that I’d forgotten about libraries. I have, as many who read this newsletter will know, a long history with them. I’ve written about them many times before.

I like to tell people that I come from a family of librarians. My mother, her two sisters and my grandmother were all librarians. (I began a postgrad librarian degree but didn’t complete it). Dewey catalogue numbers loom large in my childhood. My grandmother remembered phone numbers via Dewey - my aunt’s number was English Miscellaneous Writings (828) and something I can’t quite remember (if I’d finished that postgrad I would).

One of my earliest memories is of riding my little red bike to the local library, the year before I began school, taking myself up there to look at books. I knew even then: I’d found true freedom.

I’d become estranged from libraries because of books. There are not enough books anymore.  

What is the point of a library if I can’t wander amongst books?

Dash in the Newtown Library, circa 2006 and the other end of the scale: Fisher Library Stack at Sydney University.

I understand why there are not many books. There is not enough space. There needs to be space for study, for children’s storytime, for computers. People don’t read as much. E-books are a thing.

When I say I understand why there are fewer books, I mean, I UNDERSTAND IT.

When I found out the UTS Library was moving a large proportion of its books to an underground storage system, I lost my mind.

How could I find what I was not looking for but desperately needed to have? How could I browse? What would happen to the one true freedom I’d discovered as a child?

When I say I lost my mind, I mean, I was so upset I ended up writing a PhD thesis about libraries, not being able to look at the books, and how digital catalogue interfaces inhibit our ability to explore, in their quest to help us find exactly what we want.

Sometimes we don’t know what we want. Sometimes it needs to find us.

Walking amongst the shelves is still one of my favourite ways to allow things to find me. You have to create the conditions under which good things - ideas, people, good weather, rescue dogs – can find you. Sitting at home, waiting, is not always the best way to be found (I need to remind myself of this every day and even then, I don’t always listen).

Libraries don’t help me create these conditions anymore. There are no longer enough shelves for me to lose myself, to feel like there is something new just around the corner, something I’ve never seen before but have been waiting for all my life. (And in one academic library whose name I won’t mention, they don’t even bother to display the spines of books that don’t “fit”).

A certain university library and its habit of shelving books like this hurts my heart; Greene Library Stanford University, something I found on the internet.

Last Thursday I considered going to Marrickville Library to work, but I thought of the meagre shelves and I was underwhelmed. There are not enough books! I exclaimed to Liz, Dash, the dog, anyone who would listen.

Dash assured me Green Square Library had a lot of books.

More than Marrickville? I asked. Ahhh, about the same, he said, realising this was not the answer I wanted.

I went anyway.

I caught the train. I emerged from the underground station and went back underground to the library, a pool of quiet at one end – students working at shared tables, equipped with thoughtful desk lamps – and the chaos of storytime at the other, divided by a lightwell over a garden. 

I didn’t look at the shelves.

I looked at the catalogue.

I registered for a membership.

I found a book I wanted, one that was actually on a shelf, here in this library, and two others I reserved, to be delivered here within a week.

I chose to join this library because I enjoyed my train trip. I joined because I noted there was a café called Noun at street level (I messaged my mother immediately, knowing she would be one of the few who would appreciate this fact). I joined because I noted the physical design of the library and the raucousness permitted at storytime.

I didn’t have a library card – having just signed up online – and was embarrassed to admit I didn’t then know how to borrow a book. I asked the woman at the desk.

Welcome! She said. Do you need any help?

She was young and rocking on her chair slightly. I liked her immediately.  

Ah no, I said, I’ve used libraries quite extensively.

So you don’t need my long spiel then! She seemed pleased, like I was saving her some work.

Nah, I’m good.

Then I couldn’t help myself.

I come from a family of librarians, I said.

Are you a librarian? She asked.

No. I managed to dodge that. But I did write my PhD thesis on library catalogues, I said.

I realised at that moment how ridiculous I sounded.

Who writes a thesis about library catalogues? Who designs alternative, but admittedly crazy, visualisations of the library catalogue and takes it seriously? So seriously that the university awards you a degree?

Who hangs around in small public libraries (there don’t seem to be any other kind these days, if we’re talking about books), having done something like this, pretending that they are experiencing this library like a normal person?

It’s impossible to interact with these systems without being haunted by the years of thinking, of failure, of effort and ultimately, success. This success has lately seemed hollow. I’ve noticed how it has separated me from the world, how deep thinking on a very narrow topic does not lend itself to getting along. (Thank god for sport eh?)

It’s not the books that are my problem: it’s the fact that I’ve analysed this experience intricately and intimately, over the course of five years, and now have to find my way back to the library and why, riding that little red bike, I fell in love with it in the first place.

I’m going back to Green Square this week.

Thesis work

For those interested: I borrowed Jenny Offill’s ‘Weather’, having absolutely RIPPED my way through The Dept. Of Speculation earlier last week. Expect both to turn up in “Georg’s writing influences” sometime very soon. And the books I reserved: Hua Hsu’s  ‘Stay True’ and Teju Cole’s ‘Blind Spot’.

What are you reading? Anything good? Tell me why I should read it.

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